Tears were streaming down my face. I was sobbing. It was one of the most romantic things I had ever heard. It was sad, but romantic. I had an insane combination of happiness and sorrow running through my body from the top of my head, down through the tips of my toes.
It goes back to that last season of Friends. Things ending. Different things beginning.
Brown Boot was my lobster.
And yes, that's another Friends reference. Look it up if you don't know, and then slap yourself in the face once a day until you've watched the whole series. Or I'll slap you slap bet style. (That one was from How I Met Your Mother... another show you need to watch if you haven't already.)
I'm not really sure of when we had talked before this conversation. I take that back. It was Mother's Day that year. Right after I had told him about losing the baby. I asked if that day counted for me too, and he said no. And then I hear from him while I'm getting things ready to move as far away from him as I could get....
The message he had sent me after he asked me about leaving, was something along the lines of, "I know you're leaving, and I don't know when I'll see you again after you go... But we always talked about having one last night together, and I'd like to see you one more time. Can we have one last night together?"
I sobbed as I read the text to my friend. She was in shock. I was in shock. My heart was in my throat. One hand was wiping tears away from my eyes, and the other was holding my phone and the steering wheel.
One last night... Would it really be the last night? Would it really end after this? I had always said that it was never goodbye with us. "Love is not dead" is permanently engraved on my wrist.
I said yes.
Yes?
Did I really say yes? Was I putting myself in that position again? That position where I would potentially hurt myself all over again? Destroy myself?
Apparently so.
His 21st birthday was July 16, and he would be leaving on the eighteenth to go down to Georgia to stay with his mom for a couple weeks, and then I'd be leaving for Florida a couple days after that. His choice. Not mine. Honestly, I would have settled to see him whenever, but the night of his birthday was his idea. He chose to be with me one last night instead of going out and drinking like crazy with his friends. He picked me.
I spent all day getting ready. I trimmed up my hair, styled it a million ways, tried on a million different outfits with a trillion different accessories, and played with my makeup. I showed each option to my friend, constantly running up and down the stairs to grab new things and try different suggestions. I mu
st have driven my land lady crazy.
His plan was to buy beer for the first time when he was done with work, and then come to pick me up. There was silence on both ends of the phone while he was at work. For a while I was nervous that he would back out. That I would have wasted a day getting ready to have one last night that would never happen. Something that would have only happened in my dreams. I waited down in my friend's apartment. I sat on her couch, and we talked, wasting time and waiting for my phone to make a noise and let me know that he still wanted this as much as I did.
And then my phone buzzed and danced on the table around 10PM. He was on his way. And he'd call me when he was there. My heart jumped again into my throat. That seemed to be its new home. It didn't want to stay down in my chest. Good thing hearts aren't colostrophobic, because mine seemed to spend more time making its presence known in smaller areas of my body.
By the time he called me, he was already at my door upstairs. And it was time for me to have my staircase moment. You know what I'm talking about. In a lot of movies, the girl has her staircase moment, where the camera catches her walking on the stairs, and that's when the guy gets hit with a brick and realizes that he is in love with her. My friend kissed me on the cheek and wished me luck.
I opened her door and turned towards that staircase. Two flights. Thirty seconds. About a dozen stairs. I could make it. I took a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other, and reminded myself to keep breathing. I focused on the smaller details of that hallway and the stairs of my 1920's apartment building... The worn carpet... The old light fixtures... The window that didn't open between the first and second flight... and then I saw him.
I swear, angels started singing in my head. My heart fluttered, and butterflies multiplied in my stomach. And the biggest smile spread across my face. There were a few times I had felt this way, and every time it was when I saw him. He looked good. It had only been a couple months since I had seen him, and to me he always looked good. He was wearing his hat and jacket and work polo, which was one of the few times you could actually catch him in a polo. He was holding his first six pack in his hand with a huge grin on his face, and a smile in his eyes. And he was wearing the brown boots.
Before I knew it, I was in his arms. I felt his scruff against my cheek, and smelled work in his clothes. He was warm... Cold from the summer air outside, but warm once our bodies made contact. And he kissed me like he always had, a hand up in my hair, pulling me in closer. He always kissed me like he meant it.
I showed him my empty apartment, and that was the moment he realized that I was really leaving. We didn't have a whole lot of memories in that apartment. Enough for him to remember what it looked like when I actually had stuff in it. Enough for him to recognize that once I left that place, I would never go back. My life was changing before his very eyes. I was growing up.
We drove separately so that I could leave when I needed to the next morning, and he could focus on getting things ready for Georgia. I met him at the front door and we tiptoed our way down to his bedroom.
I had only been in this bedroom one time before, and that was right before Mother's Day. Then, we couldn't stay in there for long, because we both knew where we would end up if we stayed down there. The quilt I made him was still on his bed. The stuffed animals I gave him were still in his room...
Now I don't need to tell you what happened between the two of us in that room. I can tell you that it felt like no time had passed between the last time and that night. We stayed up all night talking and making love like we had done so many times before. It didn't feel like goodbye. It felt perfect. It felt right. It felt like that was where I was supposed to be at that moment in time. I felt beautiful. I felt loved. I felt complete. That one thing that I knew I was missing had been found again. But I knew that we both still had to get on our planes when the time came.
The next morning, he gave me a pair of PJ pants to wear and a shirt. We talked for a couple hours that morning and decided that we were going to see Transformers that day... A date. A goodbye date? Or something? Whatever. It was like old times, but different. Something was changing. We were evolving.
I hate to tell you this.... But with Brown Boot and I saying goodbye? There is a part 3. He promised to see me when I moved to Florida while he was still in Georgia.
I told you, it was never goodbye.
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