Everything's different

Everything’s different…

         I’m driving home and it is 35 seconds into So Damn Lucky on my Dave Matthews mix CD (I rue the lost days of the mixed tape. What a great present that was…) which means I’m about 6 minutes from Laura’s house and heading further away. I always put this on when I leave her house.
         It is raining, not too badly. I mention it because my windscreen wipers are making that irritating screech likes there’s not quite enough rain to justify them. I’m trying to multi-task the best a man can: I’m driving, thinking, fiddling with the volume and singing my heart out but in truth I’m not doing any of these things well. How could we leave it like that? How can I just walk away and accept that I’m losing the love of my life without a fight? Can I just let her go? How different literary history might have been if Romeo and Juliet has split amicably. I look at the passenger seat of my messy car and see my mobile phone, partially hidden underneath the copy of Dante’s Purgatory I’m struggling through and the director’s cut  version of Donnie Darko (it’s not enough that I didn’t “get” the original, my friends feel the need to make me watch another version just to make sure.)

I’m so damn lucky, that you went on ahead…

         I won’t stand for this! The rain is still coming down, heavier now, and I fumble to pick up the phone. While  it’s ringing I make the u-turn to the right and the disc skips.
My head in the clouds…

         Her line is busy but it doesn’t matter, I’ll be there soon. I pass familiar houses and cars along the way back, after all I must’ve been this way 300 times. It seems to take forever to get back there and this truck in front of me is not helping. Apparently the rain makes everyone forget how to drive properly. Finally, I get to the right turn that signifies her street and the driveway that I know so well, just there on the left: first house. I park slightly too far up in my haste and dent the front of my car against the wall. Shit! 

Sun spills round and round and rou…

         My knock on the door seems to go unanswered even though I know she is still home: car in the garage and the lights are on. The bell isn’t working. She must be in her room, the room I know so well and from which you can’t hear anything going on in the rest of the house. As I have occasionally done I let myself through the door which is defined by having a peep hole altogether too low…for anyone. Still I can’t hear a sound and I make my way down the stairs to the right and then to the left, a path I could take in the pitch black if necessary. In truth, my heart feels a bit weird, like someone is inside it gradually chipping at it until it becomes hollow. I am by no means sure that my new-found resolution not to give up on love is going to be met with enthusiasm.
         Standing hesitantly in front of her bedroom door looking at the No Doubt poster I so often teased her about, I hear familiar giggles rippling out through the small threshold opening. You have to be this close to hear anything going on in there. The way she is laughing she must be watching Simpson’s DVDs because the only other time she makes those sounds is when she is with me.
         Her good mood gives me the confidence to enter and I provide the necessary push to unblock the door. What I find is worse than I could ever have imagined. The two of them look as startled as I’m sure I do. How long could this have been going on? I could’ve caught them when they were naked. Sure, that would’ve been bad. This was worse. I caught them in that pre-naked wholesomeness of a destined couple but at the point where the nakedness was inevitable. Everything I knew about love was totally thrown out the window, or ripped out by a blazing wind. I liked them both, individually, and if you asked me I would’ve said I’d like to see them both happy…but not like this. Not at the expense of me. How did it come to this?

* * *

         “You know, for the first time in my life, I feel like I believe in a higher power. Not like a God necessarily, but some form of fate watching over me.” I was sure Keiran didn’t need to hear this, infused with a playful bitterness that he is.
         “Yes, you’re a lucky son of a bitch. Well are you going to go over and talk to her or just sit here and tell me how much you want to?” He raised an interesting point. But what was I going to say? Truthfully, by this time, old Father Alcohol would be looking after my conversation. I hope he doesn’t fuck it up.
         “Give me a chance. I’m nervous. Should I play that up or down?” I had already told Keiran about how I had spent all week using my considerable(ly limited) resources to try and track her down. I would tell this story many more times to many different people but the best reaction it would get was at her 21st birthday. If I had’ve known I would be telling it then I would’ve never been so nervous in the first place and then maybe the story would have been lost forever. She still maintains that she came up to me and with an alcohol affected memory who am I to argue? The way I remember it is like this:
         “Oh my God it’s you. I’ve been trying to track you down all week, not in a creepy stalkerish way, but I had fun with you last week and I really like you.” That’s what I said. It just came out. Not exactly from the textbook of How to Pick up Chicks by Being Suave and Playing It Cool but it had enough individual charm to see me through. It must have… Then she goes:
         “Really? Wow, I didn’t think I made that much of an impression on you.”
         “It must’ve been you’re pool-playing skills. It’s such a coincidence that you’re here. I’ve just been telling my friends about you and asking them for ideas and then I saw you and I was in the process of getting advice when you came up. So if I seem a little under prepared that’s why. Not that I should need preparation to talk to someone but I was really nervous. I’m sorry if you think I’m crazy but it’s my birthday and I’ve had a few beverages.”
         “It’s still your birthday? So you lied to me last week when I gave you a lift home as your birthday present?”
         “Not exactly, it was close to my birthday. I’ll let you in on a little secret; the whole month of March is my birthday!” At this point, with these recollections I must’ve been in danger of losing all hope and as she informed me she had to leave, I pulled out this in desperation, which I have since claimed as my move:
         “Hey before you go can I get your number? Because I want to ask you out. Now don’t give it to me if you don’t want me to call you, because I will. But I want it. But you don’t have to give it to me. I’m just warning you that if you give it to me I will call you. So if that’s what you want, then give me your number.” Did I mention I was drunk? I remember her laughing and giving me her number which I was afraid I was too drunk to put in my phone correctly. After that? Lots of woo-hooing, more drinking and lots of this statement:
         “I got her number. Dude I got her number!” I got kicked out…unsurprisingly.
         You can guess what happened next I’m sure. My up front approach left no room for the game-playing that is usually required for dating. There was to be no, “wait 3 days before calling” oh no, I went in all guns blazing and that’s what did it for me in the end. She appreciated that for some reason. She said she could tell I liked her for who she was and not just what she looked like. It was true, after that lift home she gave me when we drove past the Sara Lee factory and I started ranting about Willy Wonka and how I thought that’s what it must be like in there and she laughed and said she thought the same thing. That’s when I knew.
         My new-found faith in divine intervention was justified on our 1 year anniversary, (not of marriage, just that lame anniversary of a first date) when we exchanged gifts in the car as if it was a secret club. I made room for her on my usually cluttered passenger seat by chucking my drink bottle and copy of Inferno in the back. I couldn’t let her see that or she would give me a hard time for being a nerd. She gave me a photo album of all our happy memories. It was the best, most thoughtful thing I had ever received and was enough to bring tears of joy to my eyes. All the memories were there: the Thomas the Tank Engine, the train tickets, ice cream, fish kisses, pez, sad face, kung fu face, Mr. Greedy Dugong, “yak”, big spoon, buttons. See, you don’t know what I’m talking about I’m sure but just imagine every fantastic memory you’ve had with your own loved one, everything unique about your love and you may understand how I felt. Things just kept on getting better with waterfront milkshake dates where the object of the game was to make fun of other couples. There were also the scary amusement park dates where I thought I would go deaf from her screaming in my ear.
         Then it happened… We were there, in her room, on her perpetually pink bed laughing because I was banging the headboard and making suggestive animal noises, pretending other people could hear them but that joy was to be ours alone and she says suddenly (we had talked and cried about it a few times before) that she got the job. I had kind of stopped think about that possibility. I knew she had done International Studies but I never thought that would mean the world would tear her away from me. I always wanted her to get what she wanted and be happy but I hoped that didn’t mean she had to go to England to get it.
         “So where does that leave us?” I needed to know, even though I was sure I wouldn’t like the answer.
         “Oh don’t ask me that, it’ll just make me too sad.” She had the nerve to give me sad face but I could tell it was breaking her apart too. This can’t be easy for her either.
         “I’m sorry, but it’s sad. I nearly cry when I’m not going to see you for three days and now I have to come to terms with never seeing you again.”
         “Aww don’t say that. I know, I miss you too even if it’s only like an hour. Why did you have to make me love you so much?”
         “I told you it’s not me, it is Destiny. We were meant to be and that’s what makes this so hard to accept. It’s hard to believe that we were only meant to have each other up to this point but that could be the cruel truth.”
         “I’ll keep in touch through the internet, and I’ll call you and stuff.”
         “But only as friends: only ever as friends.” I hated the sound of it but this was that bitter pill.
         She said “I love you.” And I said “I know. I love you too.” But now it was that desolate, unrequited love not the time-stopping supernova we had about 6 minutes ago.
It was then we said our goodbyes, not for the last time, but for the last time as people who might’ve been something to each other that no-one else could ever be.
         It was starting to sprinkle as I finally, on the third attempt started my car, and ejected Full Circle to put on my regular Dave Matthews mix. It made me exceptionally sad today. Stay Or Leave, I had put first and it got me every time with its chorus of I want you not to go but you did…
         The irony was overcome with sadness and I struggled to keep the car on the road. 5 minutes later and So Damn Lucky comes on and this brings with it a sense of hope, a determination not to let this slip away when there is something I can do about it. I try to call her to let her know I’m coming back, that we can make this work but it is busy. It doesn’t matter; the spontaneity of it all is the strength of the plan. I resolve to make it back there before the next song comes on (that is usually how I measure time) and I take the next opportunity to spin this car around and get back on the path to happiness. The track skips and I lament the inability of my car stereo to play burnt CDs. The rain has stopped and all the cars turn left at the round-a-bout except for the truck which turns right and is going to be in my way. Luckily the truck pulls over to the side of the road and I am able to make my way quickly back to her house. I pull into the drive way and fortuitously stop just short of banging into the wall. The bell rings out loud and clear over the post-rain eerie silence and all of a sudden light is flooding out and Laura is standing there smiling.
         “I couldn’t just walk away from this thing we’ve got going. It makes me too happy.” I feel like I’ve said it all.
         “Oh Ethan, I’m so glad you came back. That’s how I feel too and I just got off the phone with the company and they said it’s ok if I stay here and work down in Sydney.”
         “That’s fantastic!”
         “I’ll have to move to Sydney so I won’t see you all the time. But at least once every three days.”
         “Then I’ll still cry, but it’ll be good tears.”
         I walked into the light and into her arms.

* * *

         People were crowded around, in that usual “something happened” huddle. They had come out of their houses or out of their cars to see what was going on. In the distance, but closing in was the noise of sirens, that dreadful sound of hopeless emergency. The blue Laser was on its side with the passenger door smashed right in. A copy of Purgatory had been thrown clear and lay a few feet away, soggy from the rain. There was no movement from inside the car, just the skipping melody of the third track from whatever CD was playing.

Lost for you I’m so lost fo…for you when yo…you co…come crash into me