LOF

CHAPTER 6

'Need to talk!' The ominous message within those three words greeted Maria on her return; bowl of pasta in one hand, coconut water in the other. She didn't click on the message itself. No conversation, not yet. Not until he'd mulled some more, and the possibility had been firmly entrenched in his mind.

I need to touch your hand. Just that, she whispered to his photo. I'll know in that single moment if this is real. Don't you want to know too?

His far-off gaze gave no clue. The deep-set eyes focused on the mirror she presumed; the photograph taken indoors, in his home. The home he shared with his wife and daughters, the apartment too small to offer him any privacy - their late night conversations therefore shared with any number of distracting shows on TV. Oh how she longed to see him breathing open space! Walking lush hillsides, even sliding in the mud, hair whipped by the icy wind, hair mussed damn it!

Did he despise her right now? Common sense said he must - she'd overthrown his control and placed it outside of him, only giving the ultimatum, the decision she equally most feared dealing with. Would he? Could he? The previous weeks she'd felt him drifting somewhat; their conversations verging on the humdrum. She'd told him so but he had laughed it off - his usual way with laying aside unpleasantness of any sort. Lol this, lol that. Everything was a "lol" despite her knowing there was no laughter to any of it.

Long night stretching ahead, long hours to fill in... Could he not understand her need? Every word between them further tied her, further bound her and she had to know now, there was urgency, and there was her compulsion to hear, see, touch, smell, taste the air he breathed? That it was also too late? Could he not see this at least? That she'd never loved, not this way - and was this love, damn it? Love she could live with - despite the tragedy of distance and the screwed up timing. Love she could foster, and enfold and keep within her tears and her ensuing solitude, because she could lay claim, accept that she too finally had felt this illusive emotion despite the never actually claiming it. But if it was not?

That recent dream had messed her up; suddenly thrust her into a void? A house -  a home really, some stylized domestic scene with her in it, and he approaching, arms enveloping and he shaking, shaking, body one vast tremor saying, "I have waited for this, I have waited for this... Decades... all my life I have waited for this." Over and over his words and the holding on - the tremor a relief, release; "How did I get here... how is it possible... Do you know what this means... and is it real?" The words he'd uttered - words from within - she'd never disclosed those, she'd kept them to herself. He'd turned her dream into a joke of course, what little she'd disclosed.

Oh how to tell him if not face to face, that she sought nothing from him he could not give? Sought not to destroy his family, not be the interloper - for she was this already now, traitorously stealing time - never mind those other things not rightfully hers. And it bothered her and it produced guilt, foreign to her guilt; her every recent intrusion begun with an apology: "Am I disturbing you?" "Want me to go now?"

She craved him close to her, this craving overriding everything, everything. She craved his lips on hers just once - a brief kiss, that's all, just once before she could no longer properly disguise the flaw. Before he found her lips unenticing?

Perhaps too, she wanted to discover that it was all an illusion, manufactured by their twin and somehow complementary insufficiencies. Perversely, moments she ached not to feel the connection; her hand lying indifferent over his own? Or this... after their meeting - this thing between them settling into the 'friendship zone' - the place where no hearts dwell, just demented smiley faces maybe?