Parks & Cafés

IWouldHaveKissedYou

Soft and comfortable lips. Firm and warm lips. Your lips. For those six weeks that was all, I thought about. Your lips were all that I thought about. How well our lips fit together. How I wish I told you those words. How my lips held them from you. How I missed you. And how I would tell you as soon as I saw you.  

It took weeks of me building my confidence up like a child build up their blocks. I had convinced myself that there was no other way but through. That I wasn't allowed to go around or over these feelings. That I had to go through them. That even if your lips brought me pain that I was prepared to bear it. And if your lips brought me more joy I was prepared to embrace it. To allow it to consume the better parts of me. I was ready to open up my rib-cage to you. I was ready to openly give you my heart. I was ready to love you out loud.

I waited six short weeks just to say that to you. Those weeks didn't give me enough time to prepare myself.  Those six weeks stretched and spread themselves into more weeks. Six turned into seven, and seven turned into eight. 

You had rejected my phone calls and vague text messages. I was utterly confused and a part of me was hurt. 

"He knows what you want to say and he's avoiding you."  Anxiety said. "He doesn't want to break your heart."

"He's such a good guy. Perfect actually." Depression added. "He wouldn't have felt the same way. Impossible."

My confidence was being eaten away the more you made me wait. I was beginning to worry about you. You had been gone two weeks after the break had ended. 

I waited on the opposite end of the phone as it rang into my ear. I then heard your voicemail for the dozenth time that week. I huffed heavily into the phone before saying anything. 

"Nick, where are you?" I asked. "Listen, I actually really miss you, dork." I paused. "Please call me back? Let me know what's going on." I sat at the foot of my bed. My first class of the day was about to start. "You're missing a lot of class." I hung up and almost immediately you called me back.  My heart skipped a beat, like a dead end actress who wasn't expecting a callback. "Nick?" I said, my voice filled with both excitement and happiness. 

There was a long silence. A deep and meaningful pause. I didn't understand it at all until a voice came.  "Sofía?"

"Lori?" I questioned as your sister's voice came to me. I was disappointed and confused.

"Yeah." She said. 

There was something wrong. I could sense it in her voice. Her words were covered in tears and soaked in sadness. It was like listening to the lyrics of a hopeless break-up song.

"Sofía, I meant to call you-" Her voice fell flat. I could hear her sniffling through the silence. "But I felt like that would just make things more real."

This feeling came to me. It did not creep or sneak up on me. I felt it coming, like rain on a cloudy day. My stomach felt sick and I was hoping my thoughts were wrong. "Where's Nick?" I asked. 

"He fought so hard and I'm proud of him." She said. My eyes become misty without valid reason just yet, but all the signs were there. "But he didn't win."

"He didn't win what, Lori?"

Irritation plagued my voice. I was becoming angry with her for not being clear. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO, NICK! I wanted to scream through the phone. I wanted her to feel my passion and anger in order to understand. I wanted to hear it. I wanted to know. 

"Cancer."

It took one word to ruin my life. It took one word to help make everything clear and blurry at the same time. It took one word to make me question everything I knew. 

"Cancer?" I  questioned. "What do you mean?"

"It took his life, Sofía." She said. "It finally became too much for him and killed him."

In that moment I was in more pain than anyone ever. My whole body had been set on fire and my emotions spelt out of my eyes in liquid form. I shook lightly as my depression told me all the things I had feared. 

What if he loved you? Now you'll never know. What if you could've been happy with him? Now you'll never know. 

Why Nick? Why the hell didn't you trust me enough to tell me such a thing? Love and cancer are not the same. I can refrain my love, but you must not keep such secrets. 

Would it have made things different between us? Hell yes, it would have made things different between us. I would have loved you out loud from the beginning. I would have held you and kissed you more often. I would have told you how much I loved you without the fear of being called a liar because I would know you'd believe me. I would have kissed you. I would have gone on more walks through that cold park. I would have kissed you. I would have had lunch, and dinner, and breakfast with you. I would have kissed you. I would have written crappy poems just to give you something to talk about. And, Goddamn it, I would have kissed.

I would have kissed till our faces went numb. I would have kissed till the taste of your lips and my tongue became the same. I would have kissed you till we both became one being with a single heartbeat. I would have kissed you till my body adjusts to surviving off of the carbon you breathe into it. Dammit, Nick, I would have kissed you.

I had forgotten your sister on the phone until her voice broke into sound again. I barely listened to her words but my heartfelt it as soon as they replayed in my head. Those words play in my mind all the time now, Nick. All the time.

"I'm sorry I didn't call you sooner, Sofía." She said. The tears in her voice matched mine. "I couldn't find your number." She paused for a few seconds and I could hear her pulling the phone away from her ear. "Your name is saved in his phone as, Her."