Page 71 of Two Marlboros

“Do you really think he will text me?”

In his eyes, I read all the hope for that blossoming love again. To me, it already seemed to wither, but I didn’t have the courage to tell him.

“If he really wants to see you again, I’d say he will.”

“In your opinion, am I someone worth seeing again?”

After all, he and I were there, together, but it was not an answer I could give him: too ambiguous. Yet yes, he was worth seeing again. He was nice, but that wasn’t what he wanted to hear either. I didn’t know what to answer him.

He chuckled.

“Sorry, it was a stupid question. I just wanted to ask if you think I have any chance for him to be really interested in me.”

“I think you do. He has sought you out several times, after all. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t feel interest in you.”

A shy smile broke out on his face. He took the last puff and exhaled quickly as he always did. We re-entered the kitchen and he flew to the stove, then flashed his best smile.

“So, shall we eat? I’m so hungry.”

Nathan rubbed his stomach and rested his head on the wall behind him.

“Ah, everything was delicious!”

“I’m glad. You could learn to cook, too.”

He chuckled and, for a moment, I felt like the boy I had met right after the robbery was back. He was good at putting on that cheerful mask, but I thought that in that moment, maybe he was truly happy.

“Nah, it’s tiring. It takes too long.”

“That’s true, it does take some time.”

“Then why do you do it?”

In the early days after we lived together, Oliver always came home from work half an hour or so after me. The desire to make him something decent had arisen spontaneously.

“I hope you can find out soon.”

He laughed again, and I was glad to see him like that. It seemed that even his melancholy was gone.

“What a cheesy answer. It’s almost embarrassing.”

We both laughed and, in that moment, I felt a sync I had not felt in a long time. There were no obstacles in our chats, there were no awkward silences, and even if the conversation died, I didn’t feel compelled to find something to say right away.

And I liked to observe him. I had just found out about the existence of thecigarette-meter: I would only have to observethe way he smoked to understand what was going through his mind. Then there were his smiles and his looks: any combination of the two was enough to tell whether he was being silly out of embarrassment or because he was happy, as he was in that moment.

I thought that each new person was like a parallel universe, there all along, but visible only when it collides with our own. Since I had met Nathan, I had learned a whole range of things I had never paid attention to, began to consider as normal those habits I had always found silly, and to dwell on smells that, not long ago, I would only have ignored and despised.

It almost felt as if I had lived an entire life under a glass jar, always in contact with ways of thinking similar to my own and with people who often had the same opinion I had. Nathan was very different from the people I had known. He was often rambunctious, but, somehow, he always managed to pull himself together; he had slipped into a kind of relationship I knew only by hearsay; and he had vices and habits that I had always dismissed with a dirty look. Yet, I didn’t even know how, he sat at my same table and ate the food I had prepared for both of us; we talked to each other like two friends, and I stood there listening to his problems.

If they had told me two weeks earlier, I would never have believed it.

We finished dinner and he helped me tidying up. We threw ourselves on the couch and I felt immediate relief as soon as I sank into the softness of the seat. Nathan turned to me and stared at me with the eyes of a child who has just seen his favorite toy.

I giggled. “Alright, what do you want?”

“I’m almost out of cigarettes.”

I shrugged, even though I understood where he was going with this, but it was amusing to see his hopeful expression that I would soon upset.

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