Slipping Through My Fingers Part 3

Not long after that party, The Hotel closed down. Jeremy, Jay and Erica had all graduated. One by one they got jobs and moved away. Perry moved on. (Much to my grief. I adored Perry.) And you got a little house a block or so away.

Oh! We were all so in each others’ laps in those days! Living in this tiny set of city blocks we all called “The Ghetto.” A single tornado could have wiped us all out! When my car died, and I was walking to class every day, I remember that I knew everything about everyone. I knew whose cars were parked at the wrong houses at 6 A.M. I knew who stayed home alone. I knew who was happily in their lovers’ arms.

And still you wonder
Who’s cheating who?
And who’s being true?
And whose car is parked next door?

Remember? We laughed about that, you and I.

But I’m digressing again. Getting lost in all these tangled threads…

I was with Lena. We were constant, but not exclusive. I still went out with Jessica. Jessica with her lovely Nordic features, and her breasts like over-ripe melons. Jessica who would sit on my lap and kiss me in the University Center in that conservative town in those conservative days. And if I remember correctly, you found Jessica to be rather a fine bit of eye candy too. She’s a doctor now, you know? I lost track of her sometime after her divorce (He was a jackass). Another loose end. Another piece of my heart.

I also dated a friend of Jay’s from back east. Always drunkenly, but never seriously. At least not for me. But I suspect it was quite serious for him. He was waiting for me to recover, to get over what Jeremy had done to me. He was patient and sweet and – I think – quite in love with me. That makes me sad now. He was a good man. I hope wherever he is, that he met someone wonderful, made beautiful babies, and is ridiculously happy. Please let it be so.

I kept seeing Tom now and again. Sometimes he saw Lena. And Lena had another man, Jake, in New York.

And you were mostly, but not always, with Melody. It was always somewhat scandalous when you weren’t with Melody. Fodder for gossip and speculation.

I remember DeAnna telling me one night that she had gotten drunk and made a pass at you. A rather blatant pass. What might once have been considered throwing herself at your feet. She told me she took off all her clothes and offered herself up to you. She also told me you were a gentleman about it. That you refused “to take advantage of her condition.” You can’t imagine what I felt hearing that story. It took every ounce of control to not let the sheer jolt of jealousy and then the relief, show on my face. I actually screamed once I got out of her apartment and into my car. A long, gut retching scream.

I remember sharing ice-cream with you at the University Center. It was obscene, the way we ate that ice-cream together, feeding each other. Dancing our tongues across the spoons we held out to each other. It was passionate and young and hungry. It was everything we never said out loud. Perhaps even to ourselves.

I remember countless meals at that Mexican food restaurant eating machicado and spicy chicharrones. Chicarrones so hot they’d make your eyes water and your nose run. Chicarrones hot enough to kill even the worst of our hang-overs.

I remember walking up to Our Table at the UC one morning wearing a black mini skirt with a slit up the side. You slid your hand along the outside of my thigh, reached the top of the slit, and whispered to me, “You aren’t wearing anything under that? Are you?” I just smiled. I was wearing something under it. But you were so much enjoying the thought of me not wearing something under it, that I couldn’t bring myself to steal that from you. So I smiled. And enjoyed the thought of you enjoying that thought so much.

We danced a paso doble’ that never reached a conclusion. A volcano bubbled under a calm surface. The passion between us could have melted the walls. Yet there was a careful, studied distance between us. A distance I was too afraid to try to cross.

Then one night, inevitably, I found myself at your house. I’m not sure how I ended up there that night. If there was a gathering of courage and a jump, or if you led me there.

I should remember, I really should. But I don’t.

There was, of course, a crowd there. And we were all, of course, drinking. A lot. In the middle of it all, it began to pour rain, and Jonathan saw that his car windows were unrolled. All you guys – you tough, radical guys in your leather jackets and steel toed boots – stood on the porch and did nothing! So I did the only sensible thing: I dashed out into the rain and rolled up his windows. I came back soaked to the bone, with my black dress clinging to me like second skin.

Gradually, much too gradually, people drifted off. Then it finally was just you and me. And when you took me in your arms that night, I wanted the world to stop. I wanted the whole universe to slip away and leave you and me there in that moment.

Our first night together was stolen from Jeremy. This one, almost 18 months later, was stolen from Melody.

And that night, like the first night, as we made love, you asked me over and over, “Will this happen again?”

And over and over – like a damned fool – I said, “I can’t be the one to answer that.”

Why the hell not? You were asking!

What a fool I was! Why, oh why, didn’t I just say, “Yes”?

For twenty years now, I’ve lived with wondering what my life could have been like if I had just summonsed the courage to just say, “Yes.” Yes to you. Yes to all the possibilities of love. Yes to the risk of having something that important to lose. Because Lli, even though I never said it, I was all “yes” to you.

And when you fell asleep near dawn, I stayed awake with you for a few hours, and then quietly dressed and went home. When I saw you the next day at Our Table, I kissed you on the cheek and whispered, “Still friends?”

You answered, “Of course.”

Then you graduated and moved. Left Mel. Left me. And I began to wait.

The telephone became my enemy. It would ring, and it wouldn’t be you. And then one night, I was very ill. So ill, they wanted to put me in the hospital, and when I wouldn’t go, they insisted that I find someone to stay with me that night. I called DeAnne and she came. And that night, you called.

I was too sick to talk to you long, and she talked to you for over an hour. Never knowing that I was hating her each moment she spent on the phone with you. Hating her for stealing what should have been my conversation with you.

And you never called again.

*          *          *

Years later, I was talking to Wanda one night and she asked me who had been the great love of my life. Wanda and I were close. She knew all my stories, all my lovers, even our story. When I answered, I told her it was you. A man I had spent two nights with. The love of my life.

My best friend now, a friend who has been close to me for 17 years, a friend who is one of the few people who can even keep track of my old lovers, asked me something similar once. I told him it was someone I didn’t speak of.

And I don’t. I can’t even talk about you. I can barely speak your name.

Every since this world began
There is nothing sadder than
A one man woman
Looking for the man that got
away…

*          *          *

You are married now. You have two daughters. It pleases me enormously that you have daughters. I’ve never known a man who loved women more than you. How lucky these girls are to have you for their father. How lucky your wife is. And I hope, oh god, I hope, you are lucky too. I wish you all joy. I wish you every precious thing my heart can dream.

And me, I look at my empty hands and remember. Remember all that slipped through my fingers.

And my heart – twenty years too late – whispers into the darkness, “Yes.”