Mirror image

We sit in a deli, munching on chips and waiting for our sandwiches. I trace the black and white checks on the little table and glance around.

There’s a young couple to our right, good looking and likely aware of it, if their faces are any indication. It’s the look I wear when I’m made up – chin raised a bit higher, a slightly haughty, bored with it all expression. They stare silently at each other across the table and I’d be willing to wager that the only reason they aren’t speaking is because we’re within hearing distance.

To our left is an elderly couple, their bodies curved toward each other like weathered parentheses. I can only imagine what lies in the protected area between them, but that doesn’t really matter because, like most sentences, everything I really need to know is already out in the open. Further explanation would just ruin the effect of their shared side of the table, or the battered ring on his exposed left hand.

A group of teenagers sits, barely visible, around the corner of the counter. They’ve ordered their food to go, talking and laughing loudly amongst themselves while they wait. The crew making our sandwiches seems to find their exploits more interesting than the other patrons do.

And what about the two of us, this final pair? What, if anything, do these people notice about the way we sit and the way we speak to each other? I try to picture ourselves through a stranger’s eyes and it’s difficult.

She recently dyed her hair a dark, chestnut brown and I wonder if it dilutes our other physical similarities. I don’t think I look good as a brunette and prefer to keep as close to our original blonde as possible. Dark versus fair – she calls herself “the good twin”, but we have different opinions on what constitutes goodness. In fact, we have differing opinions on just about everything. Can they tell?

Our sandwiches arrive and, between bites, we continue our conversation. She lowers her voice, while my louder tone mingles with the laughs round the corner. We’re discussing a trip I’m taking soon and, though she isn’t angry as I expected her to be, she doesn’t understand my wanderlust. Everything she wants is right here in her own country, in her own backyard. She thinks everyone should be content with what they already have. It’s only one of the many ways we frustrate each other.

I complement her on the choice of restaurant and she smiles, offering me a taste of her sandwich. I don’t give compliments and she very rarely shares with me. She claims I always take what I want anyway, and perhaps that’s true. But we both seem to be trying harder today, and I wonder if our thoughtfulness seems as new to those around us as it does to me. Like the palpable awkwardness of a first date, can onlookers tell that we are more at home screaming at each other than having a normal conversation?

We’ve just finished wrapping up what’s left of our meal when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I look up and into the smiling face of the old woman, her husband waiting patiently behind her.

“You look just like your mother”, she says, patting me once.

“Thanks”, I reply.

I glance across the table expecting to see my own face, twenty years older, smirking back at me. But I don’t. This is the moment when she always says, without fail, “Actually, I’m the better looking one” or “She’s the evil twin”.

Instead she says nothing. And suddenly I wonder if what she, and everyone else, has been seeing, is my reluctance to be like her.

The end

I watch the playback from our video one last time before sending it into the Internet abyss.

We’re talking, but I barely listen to the words. I’m too busy reading between them. The smiling, the head tilting toward him, the hair touching - the smug satisfaction plastered all over me. But I’d dimly noticed those things about my body language before. This time, I pay attention to his. The lowered cap, cast down eyes, his body angled straight forward and slightly hunched...keeping me, and everyone else, out. This time I’m looking for the “Dead End” signs, deliberately not thinking about how he pressed me up against a wall shortly after we stopped recording, and became someone completely different.

I shred the skin from the corner of my fingernail, leaving a red open area that hurts. Yet I continuously pick at it; dig into it with my other nails, actually liking the tiny flickers of pain. I click the delete button with regret.

It’s not usually in my nature to erase the past. I prefer to wallow in it, pick at it. These might not be the feelings I want, but surely they’re better than nothing. After all, I can’t write about nothing.

*****

My biggest regret is not that I let him in. It’s not sleeping with him or even falling for him. I’m not embarrassed (anymore) that I ignored warning signs that were always there.

What I regret is that I was ashamed of how strongly I felt, because of our circumstances. When I wasn’t delirious with feelings I’m not exactly accustomed to, I was hiding them from everyone because they might think it was not only weird, but impossible.

I regret downplaying my emotions to save his feelings, because it made me resentful. “I’ve always been brutally honest with you”, I said to him. But that’s not entirely true. I fell just short of that every time I bit my tongue to make him happy, every time I bitched about him instead of to him when he hurt my feelings or pissed me off, and every time I refused to call him on his bullshit. It’s the strangest thing – I wanted him to hurt, to feel raw and betrayed like I did...but I couldn’t bear the thought of saying or doing anything to cause him pain. And too, I was afraid that if I rocked the boat, whatever tenuous feelings he seemed to have for me would fade.

And finally, I regret that a friendship that made me so happy for so long is over. Not necessarily because I want it to be, but because it has to be. Not because he didn’t, as he said, “feel as strongly for me” as I did for him. Though it hurt terribly, I would have eventually gotten over the fact that I wasn’t what he wanted romantically. It’s because I can’t trust him anymore. And because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget feeling not only used, but pitied.

Six months later, though they are getting fewer and farther between, there are still days when I’m so angry at him that I can’t see straight. There are days when I miss him so much its inexplicable and days when, after something notable happens, I catch myself dialing a number I can’t seem to forget.

He once told me that he was glad he met me, that he needed to meet me. At the time I was upset and the last thing on my mind was using heartbreak as a learning experience. I thought, “Sure you’re glad...you got laid.” But maybe he was right – maybe I should be glad. Maybe one day I will be.

Maybe we did need to meet each other. Not just to see if what we’d started through words would translate physically, but to push ourselves out of the rut we’d both been in for so long. I may have gone about it in an unconventional way, but I’ve never allowed anyone to get to know me on such an intimate level before. And he’s definitely struggled with putting himself out there. So maybe we were always meant to be standing right where we are now.

Maybe, in the end, he was always meant to hurt me. And I was always meant to write about it.

The middle - continued

Our little road trip and hotel weekend together wasn’t what you’d call perfect. I suspected there would be a few awkward moments because, to put it quite simply, I am awkward, but I didn’t anticipate what actually took place.

For starters, it was unlike me to flop onto the hotel bed minutes after arrival and have a staring contest. “No, you go first” I might as well have said. And it was extremely unlike me to go out to lunch with him, and even sleep with him, while wearing no makeup. And it was a freak, once in a lifetime accident that I would get so flustered by something during sex that I’d stop, horrified, and attempt to explain.

It was our second day there, we’d just come back from eating lunch and planned to take a nap before going out later. Of course, napping didn’t really happen. Instead we attempted to get busy on the hotel desk, which didn’t exactly work out because, unfortunately, it was a little too tall. So back to bed we went. And it was just getting really, really good, when he decided to try a different position and swung my legs to the right.

The polite thing would’ve been to ignore it, or wait until I acknowledged it first, but if there’s one thing I learned about fucking a friend, it’s that the usual rules don’t exactly apply. The second it happened he stopped, then started to laugh. I was so mortified that I picked up a pillow and put it over my face. I was half laughing too, but it was the kind of humorless, slightly hysterical laughing that comes out when you have no idea what else to do and you figure if you can’t beat them, you might as well join them. And then, without thinking, I blurted, “Just so you know, that was a fart....”

While he laughed even harder, I tried to figure out why on earth I’d even said that. Because frankly, I wasn’t entirely sure it was true. I absolutely hate the word “queef” and the only reason I can come up with, the only way I’d ever claim a fart under those circumstances, would be to avoid uttering that word. I literally cannot say it and even writing it makes me uncomfortable.

But there was no taking it back after that and, periodically, throughout the rest of the trip, he would smile and mention the “fart”.

Then Sunday, on the way home, I ended up having a terrible argument on the phone with my dad in front of him...which resulted in tears. It was all just too much – them having to meet in the first place, the goddamn “fart”, and then the added embarrassment of him hearing the ridiculous things dad was saying, just because he was drunk and felt like harassing me. I couldn’t help it – I cried.

I was embarrassed by my dad, by who he was and, in relation, who that made me appear to be. It wasn’t the first time that had ever happened, but it was the first time with someone that I wanted to love me. I was angry about everything that had gone wrong since the moment we’d set eyes on each other. And I was worried that, once he dropped me off, we wouldn’t see each other again.

We had plans to see each other later that week, but I was afraid he’d cancel. So just in case, when we were two streets from the house, I made him stop the car. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him in front of my family.

I leaned over and kissed him, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time.

*****

He didn’t cancel, but the next three days were still unbearably long. I had to beg like a teenager to borrow dad’s truck keys. He was angry that I was spending so much time away on what was supposed to be a visit to see him. He kept trying to get me to issue a dinner invitation instead of driving to the city, but the last thing I wanted was to have those two around each other again.

He was sitting in the living room working on his computer when I arrived. I was more relaxed than I’d been during the entire trip so far – content to sit beside him and talk about writing, to read and offer pointers when asked. We sat at a table and recorded a video, laughed at how awkward some of it was and, when we were through, watched the playback.

When we finally kissed, when he finally touched me, it felt like the natural progression of things. Not like either of us had been waiting on the other to make a move, like the first time. Not a little awkward or calculating, like at the hotel. It was different.

I didn’t figure it out until it was time for me to go, until I was standing in the middle of the room with his arms wrapped around me, trying to say goodbye. I’d told myself that I wouldn’t think about leaving until I had to, and it snuck up on me.

“I don’t want to go”, I said, face buried in his shirt.

“I know...”

His hands framed my face, pulling it up to look at him, and I thought, “It ends, much the same way it began”.

I fought hard not to cry, but I knew it was coming. Other things were said, about the fun we’d had and how we were supposed to meet, but they all ran together in a big blur. When I finally made myself turn and walk out, he followed me. We exchanged one last goodbye before I shut the truck door and drove away.

I sobbed the entire 30 minute drive back. I cried because I finally found someone that I wanted to think about the future with, and it was virtually impossible to do so. I cried because I had to spend three more days in that godforsaken state and, though he’d be only a few miles away, I wouldn’t see him. I cried because I threw away the moment – the one where we were looking at each other and I didn’t say what I wanted. I cried because the whole thing was completely fucking nuts and I had no control over it.

Or did I?

*****

The next morning I came up with a plan. I was supposed to go out on the town with my stepsister Friday and Saturday night, then fly home Sunday morning. Saturday was when all her friends were going so I asked if she’d just drop me off in the city with him, then he and I could hang out while she partied, we’d meet later and I’d ride back with her. That way, my psycho dad would think I was with her and wouldn’t have a fit about me bailing on family again, we could spend my last night together, and I’d get one more chance to say what I wanted. She agreed, so did he, and suddenly I had one more chance.

Saturday came and I was in a rush. I had to drive two hours in the opposite direction to meet a friend and make it home in time to ride into the city with my stepsister.

On the drive back I called to make sure everything was still on schedule. My stepsister suggested that instead of bailing on her, I bring him with me to dinner, we all have a good time and then he and I could go on our way. I felt a little bad about skipping out on her, so that sounded fair to me.

We ended up fighting about it. He didn’t want to go and he didn’t want to give me a reason why. My stepsister kept pushing me to get him to say yes, she couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to go and neither could I. We bickered back and forth until he finally said something like, “Maybe I wanted it to be just the two of us for dinner.” Then he sighed and said, “But I’ll go.”

I immediately paused and thought, “Awwwww!”

“Why didn’t you just say that in the beginning”, I said. “We won’t go.” I couldn’t force the smile off my face for the rest of the drive. Up until that moment, I hadn’t been completely sure he really wanted to see me again.

But my stepsister ended up leaving a lot later than she originally planned and he had to drive downtown to meet us, which he was not happy about. He was being a pouty jerk because of traffic and it being too late to eat anywhere decent. It took us finally sitting down, eating and drinking a beer before he stopped looking miserable and I stopped being angry. I didn’t want to ruin our last night again.

When we got back to his place, I sat on one end of the couch and he lay down, putting his head in my lap. We talked, and talked and talked...more than we had the entire time I’d been there. And while we talked, I rubbed his head or let my fingers rest in his. Eventually he stood up, held out his hand and took me to bed.

Later, as I lay with my head on his chest (something else that’s unlike me), I knew it was “now or never”. Soon I’d get the phone call telling me it was time to go. He already knew a little about how I felt...I just had to tell him all of it, in person. What would happen after that, I didn’t know, but the in-between place where we said nothing was torture. I took a deep breath.

“You know I’m crazy about you, right?”

His fingers stilled on my back for just a second, then continued their lazy strokes.

“Stop”, he said quietly.

And I did. Just like that.

I wasn’t sure which one of us was the bigger coward.