I was almost down the steps, trailing behind the girls, when it hit me. I froze and whipped my head around to see you still standing there in your doorway.
“Wait!” the words flew out of my mouth, “This is goodbye.”
I didn’t mean for it to sound so cheesy and dramatic, but it did, no taking it back now. You stepped out onto the porch as I made my way back to you. It seemed like I was always retracing my steps back to you. I was well aware of my friends’ eyes, realizing I was missing, turning around to bore holes into us from the street as I approached your open arms. I don’t know how to describe the look in your eyes before my cheek was on your shoulder.
Even as the moment was happening, I was starkly aware that it was all too fast. Sort of like a shooting star; it comes and it goes, and then you’re not really sure if it was even real, or if you were just seeing a cigarette butt flicked out the window from the neighbors above you. Looking back on it, all our moments in the past four months parodied this. Fleeting. Calculated. Maybe that’s why I cherished them so much; I knew at some point they’d become rare.
Standing there, encased in your arms, we both inhaled a deep breath, our chests rising together. Simultaneously sighing, it was as if my chest sunk into yours. I don’t think Ive ever wished so much to go unnoticed. That my friends had never realized my absence and kept walking down the street.
My skin was frictionless against your cotton t-shirt. I hope you couldn’t feel the rapid pace of my heart. Yours was steady, and warm, and calming. As always.
It was a new day already, the moon was out and the night air was still, but nevertheless cold. Your friends were upstairs with the lights dimmed, riding on a high. Mine still huddled down the walk way. We stood there, chest to chest, at nearly 1am, in between two worlds, in between the pillars of your front porch.
I think that things know people better than people can know people. Things exist solely for us to use them. They are not self serving, they don’t want to believe anything for their own convenience. They just see the world as it is. Those pillars know me better than you know me. The blank look on my face, asking you for directions on the way home. They knew I was playing dumb. The way I playfully punched you for taking too long to let me in from the cold. They saw me bouncing in my heels, fists clenching and unclenching. They knew the goosebumps on my skin had nothing to do with the weather at all. Those nights that we sat on the porch steps, while muffled music and murmurs flooded through the doorway from the inside. The pillars, with my back leaning up against them, legs outstretched along the top step, they felt the way my heart pressed against the backs of my rib cage when you playfully scooped my feet up to drape them across your lap. And finally, as we stood there as one, they saw the wrinkles around my eyes, scrunched as if keeping them closed would keep the moment from ending.
But it didn’t. And then the moment was over. Just like those 5 months. I felt it that night; things were going to change. Sometimes it feels like anything that almost was already began to fade as I retreated back down the wooden steps to rejoin my friends. Almost. I think that’s the saddest word in the whole wide world.
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