S A R A

Ch 55

55

I woke up feeling much better Sunday morning. Not necessarily fully recovered, but better.

I wasn't even sure anymore what this fully recovered state that I was always trying to get to looked like anymore.

I was hesitant to reach over and grab my phone, half expecting him to respond and half scared he wouldn't.

I paused myself thinking how it was all so stupid and yet relevant at the same time.

I felt only slightly rejected from last night, because I was honestly probably not in the state to see him, nor him I. Even if I wanted to.

But then, when I realized that I still haven't heard anything back from him that morning then either, it stung a little bit in comparison to his prompt reply the night before last.

But, as I was brushing my teeth, I heard my phone emit one sound, then another. And I knew.

I gave myself a moment before I picked up the phone again.

We stayed till the end. Brain is so fried though, slept all day yesterday.

Come through, we'll catch up

Little did he know but I would probably come through a fire storm.

He probably didn't know his.

"What did you think?" He asked me, smiling or smirking I couldn't tell.

"About what?" My voice going higher at the end.

"About last night." He stated, plainly as day, taking a sip of the Nespresso coffee he made for us.

We were sitting in the mid-morning sun, in his living room. There was a nice shaggy carpet on the floor and a record player, surrounded by a record collection 10 times the size of what you might find at...Urban Outfitters. But he put on some obscure record that I could only vaguely recognize. Like something you feel you should know, and you do, but it doesn't quite register or come out on the surface. Not yet.

"Do you mean last night, or the night before?"

"This weekend has sort of blurred into one, long experience without really a day or a night. I mean, was it ok? You've never been there before, have you?" He asked gently.

"No," I said carefully, because there it was again. That feeling that somehow, he was and always will be slightly better than me, slightly more advanced. I tried to push that inferiority aside, deciding I would wrestle with my demons later.

"But I also feel that I would only have wanted to be there with you," I continued, "not in any weird way, but in the sense that it would have been different. There, without you."

Realizing what I was saying, and hoping I wasn't crossing some unwritten line, though not like we had that many left uncrossed, it always felt like there was something else with him around the corner that I could never really be fully prepared for.

Then, I finally figured out the song that was playing and the record that he put on. I got pensive and quiet all of a sudden, trying to figure out how to express what I was really feeling.

He must have noticed the shift in my energy, because all of a sudden, he said something that took me by surprise.

"What do you want?" He asked.

I looked up, as if trying to find the answer somewhere in the air, "I don't know."

He looked at me discerningly "I know you don't know, but what do you see? When you think about us." He asked so simply.