She dreams that he’s with her.
Sometimes, when she’s sitting alone in her quiet apartment, she can hear his voice. He tells her a stupid joke, he laughs at something ridiculous that she said. He asks her to come sit with him, he tells her he’s afraid, and he cries. His voice is low and its warm. He’s scared and he’s laughing. From somewhere inside, she tries to reach out, to touch his face, to wipe away tears, to bring him close. She can almost feel the dampness soaking her shirt. His hand slips into hers and she laughs. She can run her hand through his hair and whisper that he will be all right. She promises him a future that she’s not sure of herself. Alone, she opens her eyes. They are damp as she listens to the echoes of his company.
Her doorbell sounds long after she should have been asleep. Even before she rises up on her toes to check through the peephole, she knows that it is him. No one else comes to see her in the middle of the night. No one else in the world knows that she wouldn't be sleeping. He is fully dressed and smiling, but she catches the paleness of his skin, the subtle trembling of his hands and the glassy quality of his eyes that always signals the panic he is too proud to speak. She wonders if he is this tuned to her, if he knows that her heart always begins to pound when she sees him like this or if he notices how she wipes her palms on her jeans every few minutes. She wonders if he hears how her voice shakes when she asks him to come inside.
"I'm a mess," he declares, after the talking turned to tears when she forced him to pull up his sleeves and show her the scars on his wrists. They had spoken of this before, of course, but he had never shown her the proof, the artificial veins that ran the wrong way on his skin.
"We all are."
"Yeah, well, then how come you're never crying all over my shirt? You're a real mess, there. Definitely."
She laughs nervously, stroking his forehead and absently running her fingers through his dark curls. His eyes flutter and close in response to her touch and, briefly, he looks peaceful. She wishes for the thousandth time that she could make him feel like that in every moment for the rest of his life, however long that might be. Sometimes she isn’t sure that will be another year. Sometimes she thinks that, if he has made it this long, he'll live forever. Sometimes she is convinced that she can save him.
He opens his eyes and looks up at her, and she fights down the urge to shudder or cry at the helplessness she sees there. "When will it be ok?"
“I don’t know,” she whispers, and he shuts his eyes more tightly, forcing a few tears to pool in the corners and run unsteady tracks down his cheeks, “But it has to get better. I promise.”
His eyes pleading with hers ends their conversation, and he wraps his arms around her waist to pull her closer. It is difficult to tell where she ends and he begins, in these moments. Son, brother, friend, she isn't sure what exactly he is to her. She tells herself that she is selfish to want something else entirely from him when he is already so much.
“Thank you,” he breathes.
She closes her eyes, letting their moisture finally slip down her cheeks and spill onto his hair.
She dreams that he comes to her.
While she lies in her bed, swallowed by the darkness and the quiet, he is there. She can feel his presence in the doorway. He whispers her name in fear, in hopefulness, in need but never in desire. She feels his shadow next to her, the pressure of his arms around her. Warmed, she sleeps beside him but not with him.
She feels him watching her, bringing her partly to consciousness a full minute before she chooses to acknowledge his presence. The bed sheet that creates a division between where she sleeps and where she eats ripples from when he must have bumped as he entered the space she thinks of has her bedroom. The faded yellow stars on the fabric dance aimlessly, distracting her as she struggles to awaken fully.
"Hey,” she gives him a small smile.
“Hey. I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to wake you, I just . . .” he shuffles his feet slightly and doesn't finish.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” she murmurs. It is, at least, half-truth. “Caffeine at three am wasn’t such a good idea after all, was it?” His late night visits had become, at some point, twisted adult versions of slumber parties. Sometimes, after they talked and he had calmed down, she would make them tea before sending him to sleep on her slightly broken sofa. She reminds herself to buy more tea when she goes out next. Neither of them are really coffee drinkers, anyway.
He laughs softly, “No, probably not,” then, “Seriously, you look tired. I should let you go back to sleep. I’m sorry.”
"No! No," she has to fight down the urge to scream it as he starts to leave. When he turns his head back to her, her breath catches at the way the light from the hall filters through his hair, how it creates the kind of shadows on his face that photographers longed to capture. “C’mere.” He doesn’t move right away, looking at her curiously, and she can read his thoughts. “It's ok. I shouldn't make you sleep on that God-awful excuse for a couch. You should have your own bed by now, actually."
He smiles as she pulls back the blanket for him. “You don’t even have your own bed.”
“Well, ok, at least a mattress on the floor to match mine.”
"I never thank you for letting me stay," he whispers drowsily after he is settled next to her.
"Go to sleep," she replies, and refrains from thanking him for staying. She doesn't want to think about how these nights are beginning to push at the boundaries between them. When she feels his hand slip into her own beneath the covers, she wonders if the boundaries that she has set match his, or if he had set any at all. They won't ever speak of it.
She dreams that he loves her.
His hand rests in the small of her back as they enter a room. She laughs as his voice whispers lightly in her ear. His arms are around her as she cries. He kisses her when the meet and she falls away from herself. She spends her days with him and he is with her in the darkness.
He hasn’t exactly moved in with her, so she can’t call him her roommate. One more possible title crossed of the list.
He still owns an apartment, the same hole a few blocks away that she saw the night they met and he invited her to see his artwork. His toothbrush is next to her sink, though, and a shaving kit. She has started buying 1% milk without hesitation, a compromise between her preference for skim and his 2%. At some point, she stopped flinching every time she found a pair of boxers in her laundry or jeans that were clearly too large for her still-boyish frame. She can’t remember the last time she spent the night alone. All she can think about is how the scars on his wrists have become thin ribbons of white against his tanned skin, how he hasn’t cried in over a month. He has begun to paint in colors other than red.
Her friends, their friends, now, ask if they are dating and she laughs them off. He has some problems and she's helping him out. They have connected, you see, are very close. Becoming involved would only complicate matters. Can’t a man and a woman just be friends these days? It is sad, really. They should see how lucky she is.
She tells herself the same things, over and over, while he lies next to her in the darkness, breathing deeply and evenly. They are everything they need from each other, like this. He told her, once, that he wouldn’t be alive without her. She can’t imagine a life without him.
As hard as she tries, though, she can’t quite ignore what other people see. She is giddily aware of their lack of separate personal spaces in public, how they hold hands sometimes at the movies, how none of his girlfriends ever really warm up to her and never seem to be around for long.
“I can’t tell anything to Jess,” he said one night, “Not what you know about me, anyway. It would scare her too much. She'd leave me.”
She knows that she should tell him how very wrong this situation is, explain to him that loving someone means accepting everything about them, even the darkest parts, wants to tell him that she loves him more for his darkness. Sometimes, she considers asking him why they're still just friends if she is the only one he shares a bed and his secrets with. When he comes back from working one night, smudges of blue paint staining his clothes, and kisses her hello, she comes to the conclusion that they are something beyond friends, something indefinable that no one can understand, and it feels beautiful. It isn’t that she doesn’t like his girlfriends, you see. It is simply that she can’t see how anyone could love him as profoundly as she does.
But he isn’t there. He’s distant, now, and his arms don’t feel the same around her. She cries, and he doesn’t hear. She’s feels more anger than she every believed possible but she continues to smile when she hears his name. As she fades, right in front of him, he doesn’t say a word. And at night, to ease her tired mind, she dreams.
It was, she thought, like someone had thrown a switch.
“I have to talk to you.”
She balances the phone between her shoulder and chin while flipping the sandwich in the pan.
“One does generally use the phone for talking," she laughs, until she realizes that he doesn't join in.
“I’m coming over in a few minutes. Is that all right?”
He never asks before coming over. “Why wouldn’t it be? I’m just making a grilled cheese. What me to have one ready for you?” She has never asked him that before, either. "If you're fast, it won't get all cold and greasy-brick-like."
“No, that’s ok. I’ll see you in a bit?”
She frowns. “Yeah, sure. I’ll leave the door unlocked.” He has had a key for two months.
Hanging up, she picks up the pan and tilts it, then bangs it a few times on the counter whn the sandwich fails to slide easily into the trash. She sets the pan in the sink and wanders over to sit on the couch and wait.
When she hears the door open, she is completely unaware of how much time has passed.
“Hey, there.”
She can’t read his face, she realizes, and her heart begins to pound. Coldness spreads from her fingers up her arms, toes to hips. “Hey. You want anything?”
“No, I’m good.” He sits next to her on the couch. “I actually just came to get my things. Jess asked me to move in with her.”
“You’re kidding.” I’ll kill you if you’re joking.
He tilts his head and looks at her, his brow creasing like it does when he studies his work. “Why would I be kidding?”
She responds with what she hopes is a casual shrug, “I mean, all your paints and everything. Does she have space for those?”
“Oh, I’m keeping my place, at least for now. I’ve only been using it as a studio lately, anyway.”
No kidding. Aloud, she continues, “Anyway, I thought you were afraid Jess couldn’t handle it.”
“She doesn’t know. I mean, she’s seen the scars. Those are kind of hard to hide when you’re naked,” he doesn’t catch her wincing. A friendship built on honesty is the best kind, indeed. “But who doesn’t have those these days, right? She's great. She doesn’t ask questions.”
An image flashes in her mind. He is sitting on her couch, head down to hide his face from her. She is crying, begging him to roll up his sleeves so she can see what has done. When he finally looks at her, his eyes are full of tears and he forms her name soundlessly with trembling lips. Had Jess cried? Had she gone into the bathroom after he’d passed out from exhaustion and wished she could be sick?
A shudder runs through her body. “So. Jess.”
“Yeah,” he grins boyishly, “I think it’ll be good. I wanted to tell you in person. And get my things, of course, but I did want to tell you in person.”
“That’s sweet. I’m happy for you.”
“Really?” For a moment, he looks like he notices, but it is past the point of mattering.
She smiles a bit too brightly. “Of course I am. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy. You know that.”
He stands and spreads his arms wide, then claps them together. Tangible punctuation, a book closing when you finish. “Great. I'll just get my things together. Jess is waiting for me so we can go out to dinner.”
“Hey,” she tries to sound like she’s kidding around, “It’s not like I won’t ever see you.”
“Of course you will. You’ll see me all the time, I promise.” He sounds genuine. She thinks he sounds genuine, rubs her palms down her thighs and over her knees and back up again.
Weeks pass without a word. Their friends, just hers again, ask about him and she smiles and tells them he is fine, just busy with his work and a girlfriend. No, she's okay. She told them that they were just friends, didn't she? They still are. Just busy. There's no reason she should hurt.
She finally sees him, a month after he moved out, in their coffee shop. Shouting his name, she rushes over to his table, throwing her arms around him when he stands in surprise. He hugs her quickly, pulling away almost as soon as her arms slide around his waist. The widening of her eyes, a startle reflex at his actions, is lost on him and he acts as if he just saw her just yesterday. No, nothing is wrong, he’s just been settling in. Yes, he will call her and they'll get together, he promises. It's just that he is starting a life, now, and he figured that she was busy with graduate school and her job. When she manages to stammer some form of goodbye, he simply smiles and waves coolly, turning back to Jess.
She stands and watches him for a moment, staring at his back. They met here a year ago. Dozens of people in the room, wanting to talk to him about his art work, and the only one he paid attention to was she. It is as if she is now seeing him for the first time. In a parallel universe, this is how they're meeting may have played out. This is the one where he brushes off the girl who sees who he is in his paintings, instead of inviting her into his life. She wonders when she switched realities with one of the other thousands of girls living her life in variation.
She realizes, as she walks out the door, that he still has a key to her place, but she doesn't ask for it back. Just in case . . .
She awakens in the kind of disoriented fog that fills your mind when you aren’t sure if you were truly sleeping. Blinking furiously, she tries to clear the heavy, dizzy feeling from her head. It isn't until a few moments later that she realizes that part of the heaviness came from the fact that she was expecting daylight to be filling her room, when it is actually still filled with the blackness of early morning. She shivers, the ghosts of her dreams whispering around her bed and shifting back into the corners of her room. It leaves her cold. Empty.
Closing her eyes, she tries desperately to conjure up the images once more. The touches and the whispers are the only things that take the edge off the loneliness, and they only come in moments like this- dark, quiet, desperate moments that are more and more frequent, now. It is only real in her dreams, though. When she closes her eyes and lets her mind wander, it is still only a memory or a faded snapshot of him, no matter how real it feels.
Suddenly, she gasps, sitting up and pulling the covers around her. Not for the first time, she swears that the door opened. And, just like every other time, there isn’t anyone there. You’re being ridiculous, she tells herself, you can’t dream him into who he was. But she can try.
Closing her eyes, she cries herself into a fitful sleep.
- May 2001