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My eyes sting again but I manage to hold back my tears. I manage to hold myself back even.
Because I want to lunge across the couch and wrap my arms around him. I want to wrap my arms around his neck and tuck my face under his chin and hug him to me.
Hug this dreamless, lonely, forlorn looking man.
He is sitting there, all rigid in the shoulders and straight in the spine and with an impassive face.
But I know it’s affecting him. It’s in the way his jaw is locked tight and his fist is pressing on his thigh.
So I tell him, “You know, when I was like five or so, I had a ton of imaginary friends. I’d talk to them all day. I’d read with them. I’d listen to music with them. Because no one would play with me and everyone would play with Fiona. But then I realized I didn’t want imaginary friends. What I wanted was imaginary parents. I mean, I did have parents but they weren’t really… around, you know. Like, my mom’s always boozed up and my dad – who isn’t my real dad, by the way; my mom had an affair – is never home. Anyway, I invented these fabulous imaginary parents who always remembered my birthday. They gave me gifts and hugs and all the regular shit they gave to Fiona. My imaginary mom baked me a cake and my imaginary dad took me to amusement parks. So that’s why.”
“That’s why what?”
I give him a sad smile. “That’s why you took care of those roses. The same reason I invented imaginary parents. You wanted to be less lonely. You wanted to be closer to your dad like I wanted to be closer to my parents.”
A pulse runs between him and me. A pulse so thick and so full of voltage that I’m surprised that we aren’t electrocuted by it.
This is it, isn’t it?
This is why I felt something that day, when I saw him on my sixteenth birthday. I recognized him, something in him.
He’s made of the same lonely fabric as me. Lonely and abandoned and alone.
God, he could be my soul mate, couldn’t he?
The one person who electrifies the very being of me. The one person who could set it all, my soul, my heart, my body on fire.
How is it that we aren’t meant to be together?
How is it that I drunkenly kissed him and ruined things and he hates me now?
“You don’t want them,” he says, breaking the silence with a low growl that vibrates this pulse around us. “You don’t want your boozed-up, clueless mother and your dumb as fuck father who doesn’t realize what he’s got. They’re not worth your time, you understand?”
I’m so taken aback at the sternness of his tone that I don’t know what to say except, “Okay.”
“You don’t want anyone who’s stupid enough not to realize what they’ve got. Yeah?”
He looks like he’s waiting for my answer, so again I go with, “Okay.”
“And that includes Brian. That includes all those kids who wouldn’t play with you. All those dull, boring people who have ever looked at you like you didn’t matter. Fuck those people. People are motherfuckers, okay? They lie. They cheat. They gossip. Most of all, they leave. Because they’re selfish. No matter who they are. So don’t waste your time on them. Don’t waste your time on those fuckers who don’t know what you are.”
“And what am I?”
That’s the logical question, right? That’s what I was supposed to ask because I’m not really sure.
I’m not sure if I’m even breathing. Or forming the right words or putting them in the right order.
I’m not sure of anything except this man in front of me.
This man who just defended me to the entire world.
And he’s staring at me with a burning gaze as he rasps, “Something made of moon and magic.”
After this, he looks away at the TV. Meanwhile, his hoarse words settle in my bones like warm honey.
They settle and settle and make everything sticky and slippery as I blurt out, “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
I notice his hands.
They are curling and uncurling, fisting and unfisting on his thighs. Until they decide to remain fisted and tight as he replies, without looking at me, “Someone will. You go to college, don’t you? Some guy will say that to you. He’ll say it better. He’ll even write you poetry or something. Or whatever the fuck kids are doing these days.”
I don’t want someone to say that to me.
I want him.
I want his words. His poetry. His growls and his hands.
I want his hands on me. The ones that are still fisted and digging into his thighs like the words he just uttered about college were some of the most painful ones he ever had.
