She made me feel like a slacker, and I’d only let her in the door a couple hours ago. I quickly tossed some English muffins in the toaster oven and fried a couple eggs. Sandwiches were the go-to when I needed to eat, but didn’t really care what went down. Hopefully, she wouldn’teither.
I carried the plates back to the office, and this time, I found her sitting on the couch, the blanket now folded neatly over the back. Carte blanche for five minutes, and I return to an entirely new room. “Uh…did you turn into Mr. Clean overnight?” I handed her the plate as I studied the paper piles in a neat line across thedesk.
“I don’t remember you being so neat and tidybefore.”
I watched her gently peel small pieces of egg off the edges of her sandwich. “I don’t think I was. The motion and the activity give me something to focus on. It turns the other parts of my brain off. It helps meforget.”
I knew rocky terrain when it punched me in the face. Treading carefully might keep her talking. If I charged in, she might clam up and never speak on the subject again. Unfortunately, I’d never been known for my tact. “What are you trying toforget?”
She took a bite of the sandwich before glaring atme.
“Okay, bad choice of words. I’ll shut upnow.”
She finished chewing. “It’s not that I have to forget. More like my mind goes quiet. It’s one of the only times everything feels still and silent. I don’t get that much. Between random headaches and ringing in my ears, plus the staring when I go out in public. I just long for these stretches of serenity, but I barely get ahold of themsometimes.”
“If it helps, that isn’t a brain injury thing, that is a lifething.”
Her forehead wrinkled, and she ate some more. I couldn’t help but watch her. These little things were the stuff we never got to do. The last time we ate together had been in the high school cafeteria. And we only sat together because neither of us could stand to sit alone. Solidarity inexclusion.
We never got to have a real first kiss. We never got to dance together. Wake up in each other’s arms and make love in the shower. An entire lifetime of things toppled through my mind. All the things I spent the year writing to her about. None of it ever happened. Was now our chance? Or had too much damage been done on eitherside?
When she finished, she stood and gripped my plate. “Are youfinished?”
I nodded and watched her walk out the door. Even going to the kitchen, when her back faced me, it brought up something deep and dark I’d shoved down. The anger and the humiliation of falling in love and then being left with endless silence. I’d spent years assuming she didn’t want me. Now she’d returned, and I had yet to forgive or forget, even though it wasn’t herfault.
I didn’t have a doubt I loved her. But I also didn’t doubt a tiny part of me hated her for the years she robbed from me. The years of need and longing and emptysilence.
How did I rectify the two emotions? It seemed simple enough, forgive and forget. This wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t my fault, but that excuse didn’t dull the edge of the pain. It didn’t just invalidate years offrustration.
So how could a man love and hate a woman at the sametime?
My thoughts were stalled by the severe yank of a ripcord when I looked up to catch her entering the office again. This time, the only thing barring every inch of her skin from my eyes was an apple printapron.
