It feels good. The sky is angry and it’s grey. It all seems familiar, like a favorite dream. George’s street is vacant, without any soul present. I am there, in the middle of the road. Standing restless with my hands falling down my sides. An unfamiliar expression is plastered on my face. My heart jumps each time the wind gets wilder, and it longs to see you. Just like that, the rain starts to fall. I see you there, striding towards me with a foreign expression. You are wearing the black shirt, the one you wore on the day I fell in love with you. Each step you take closes the distance between us. I could feel the coffee breath on my face, and your hazel eyes piercing into my brown ones. You softly graze my cheek with your rough yet gentle fingers, and that damn brush explodes the fireworks inside me. You hold my hand as if I’m your possession, and you keep me as dangerously close to you as possible. The warmth of your skin soothes me under the cold rain. Your touch and closeness calms me and makes me feel safe. Together in the rain, we dance slowly, with our soaking bodies close together, and our eyes fixed gazing into each other’s. And this moment is seized, I never want it to end. But every perfect thing is an illusion. Perhaps, you were my favorite illusion.
********************
Sitting down at my usual table of my school cafeteria, my eyes wander and search for you. There I see you, smiling. In all simplicity, just smiling, and making my heartbeat increase only impossibly by the second. You keep talking animatedly to your friends, unaware of the set of eyes admiring you from afar. Just as oblivious you’ve always been, for the past three years that I’ve loved you, or just mastering the art of making me believe it. Suddenly, your eye meets mine, and I avert my eyes in a heartbeat, knowing that blood had rushed to my cheeks furiously.
“What happened to you? You look flushed,”
I turn to my side and see my best friend, Jessica, sitting beside me, with a curious expression.
I shrug and reply, “Nothing, I was just caught off guard when you came.”
My eyes betrayed me and I glance towards his direction again, but only to see that he wasn’t looking at me anymore.
Jessica followed my eyes and said dryly, “Yeah right,” not believing in the slightest.
“What?”
She rolled her eyes, “Stop fooling me Laura. I know you were looking at Alec, like the hopeless romantic that you are.”
“What else am I supposed to do? Ask him out?” I say with a sigh.
Looking back, I think about all the times I tried to approach him, but didn’t have the heart to. In the hallways, the cafeteria, during history and gym class that we shared, I tried to show him the signs that I loved him, but never finding the courage to do so, afraid that he might reject me. Afraid that the rejection would change the now, the now that is perfect. Afraid that it might all go away. Jessica knew this, and she always tried to convince me to go up to him and confess.
“Laura, stop torturing yourself. You’ve been in love with him for since as long as I can remember. Juts confess, and if the answer is mutual or even if it’s not, you’ll know at the end that you tried,” she tried to explain with a concerned face.
Something told me that I had to do it, and face the truth. This was it. So I did.
In my last English class, I knew it was Calculus for him.
I glanced at the piece of paper that I was grasping gingerly in my hand, which read:
“I’ve had a dream that you were mine, I’ve had this dream a thousand times.”
-Laura from history class.
It was my favorite song (a thousand times), sung by Hamilton Leithauser. I thought it would explain my feelings. So I put it inside his locker, with my heart pounding heavily.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I imagined inside my head, what his reaction would be, and I waited for morning in anticipation.
Morning came after what felt like ages. I nervously stood a few lockers away from his, and saw him reading my note.
All of it happened in a rush, the constriction in my chest, the kiss, the falling of the crumpled paper, and the realization. He had read the note, saw me and in his eyes I noticed an emotion I couldn’t decipher. He let the note fall to the ground, followed by my heart that was broken into pieces, and a girl I didn’t know came up to him, and in a flash, I saw his arms envelope around her, and his lips on hers.
That day, I unluckily remember. I didn’t cry until I closed the door to my room, sat down isolated on the bed, and then the stream of tears started to fall. I cried, and cried myself dry. Days passed, and I realized the bitter reality that you were never mine. Finally, I escaped the thought of ever loving you, and I felt myself free.
*********************
I might not be your girl, we might not be together. I might not be the girl you’d take to prom, or I might not be the one you’d hold close, but that’s okay. Because five years from now, when you’d wake up feeling hungover with a girl lying beside you, the morning light would shine on her blue eyes and suddenly you’d feel regret, because they wouldn’t resemble my brown eyes. You’d feel nostalgia for what was never there, and desire for what could be there. Sincerely, that’s the only thing I need: remembrance of what you could’ve had, but lost.
