3. Intaglio
Nov. 15th, 2021 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gunwithoutmusic1,443 words. Approximate reading time: 7 minutes, 12 seconds.
There are, in everyone’s life, those people, places, and times that etch themselves into your brain and stamp themselves on your heart. It may not be until years after the fact that you realize it, but a certain smell, a random image, a song playing on the radio will take you back and all of the same feelings will come up as though you had just experienced them the day before. For me, that person is John, and that time and place is our (not quite) date at a busy shopping mall on a balmy summer evening.
At nineteen years old, I found myself in a new town with very few friends to call my own. Those that I knew and loved were a hundred miles away and, while I made every effort to travel back to my old hometown most weekends to see them, I knew that it was only a matter of time before those connections would fade to a mere whisper of what they once were, before they would eventually disappear altogether and we would all lives our lives as though they had never been there at all. Distance has a tendency to do that, if you don’t make an extraordinary effort to keep those connections alive.
It was difficult making new connections in my new town. The people I lived with had been there for some time, and had their own friends, which they were happy to share with me, but it wasn’t quite the same as having friends of my own. All I did in my new town was travel from work to home and back again, and my work friends were great, but spending time with my work friends outside of work felt strange to me, like a blending of two worlds that were never supposed to meet. I worked past that after some time (mostly because I didn’t really have any other options), but when I first moved, I still had that idea that I shouldn’t be mixing the professional and the personal.
I spent a lot of time online in those days; I would generally spend every day after I came home from work sitting in my bedroom on my computer and making friends with words on a screen. John was one of those friends. We seemed to have a lot in common and quickly became close through our conversations. It wasn’t long before I found myself having some familiar feelings for John, like a crush but stronger. We had exchanged photos; I knew what he looked like. We had talked on the phone once; I knew what he sounded like. I had an image of him in my head that I spent my evenings building up while we conversed over an instant messaging program, sharing life stories and jokes, strengthening that connection that I was so desperate to have with more people than just those that I lived with.
John didn’t live particularly close to me, but he did live very close to my old hometown, the one that I visited on weekends that I felt particularly lonely and in need of friends. It was on one of those weekends that we first met in person. Ignoring even the possibility of seeing any of my old friends, John and I had spent Friday evening online, making plans to get together at a shopping mall that marked the halfway point between my own hometown and his current hometown. On Saturday morning, I said goodbye to my roommates for the weekend, hopped into my car, and began the two-hour drive to my parents’ house, where my old bedroom waited for me like I knew it always would.
From time to time on the drive, I’d find myself clutching the steering wheel too tightly, and I’d have to remind myself to relax. I was nervous. My heart was fluttering at the thought of meeting John, and more than once I imagined myself kissing him, feeling his arms around me holding me tightly, before shaking off those thoughts that I knew I shouldn’t be having. John and I were friends, and nothing more. I didn’t know if he felt the same way about me as I did about him; we hadn’t really ever had any sort of discussion that led in that direction. I wasn’t going on a date that evening; it was just a friendly get-together at a mall of all places.
When I got to my parents’ house later in the morning, I tried to take some time to just relax, though my mind was racing with all of the possibilities that the evening ahead held. I watched TV, I went for a swim in the pool, telling myself to act natural and stop being so nervous, telling my heart (futilely) to stop fluttering so damned much. I wasn’t going on a date.
An hour or so before I was due to leave for the mall, I started getting ready. I scrubbed my body all over in the shower with some nice-smelling body wash. I washed and conditioned my hair, which I then spent nearly twenty minutes on in the mirror, trying to make it look as good as possible (but also trying to make it look like I hadn’t spent twenty minutes on it). I had brought the cologne that I never wore with me, and spritzed myself with it before carefully selecting an outfit that made me look my best. My heart wouldn’t stop fluttering. My nerves wouldn’t calm down. I wasn’t going on a date, but I was desperate to impress on this friendly outing.
I arrived early (as I usually did) and waited eagerly in the place that John and I had agreed to meet, trying to calm myself down and being wholly unsuccessful in my efforts. When John finally appeared, coming around the corner looking just like his photo, my heart firmly lodged itself in my throat and stayed there while we greeted each other like old friends. When he wrapped his arms around me in a friendly hug, it took all of my willpower not to just melt into his arms right then and there. But I managed to push aside those feelings that I knew I shouldn’t have, and we walked around the mall together, catching up on the day’s events, and chatting about various topics.
He asked me if I was hungry, and I told him I could eat, so we stopped at a grab-and-go restaurant to get some dinner. I awkwardly announced that I was good paying for my own, and he gave me a look before saying, “Well, yeah, I figured.”
We were not on a date. We were not expected to be sharing the costs here. We were not on a date.
As the evening continued, the crowds thinned out to the point that the mall was almost empty, and the romantic (or possibly sexual) tension between us kept rising until I felt that I might have to physically push through it to get close to him. We sat together on the edge of a fountain in a remote area of the mall, and I felt sparks as his hand casually made its way over to rest on top of mine. I had been rambling on about nothing in particular, and the feeling of his hand on mine caused me to stop short. I looked at him, and his eyes met mine as he smiled.
“I hope I’m not the only one feeling it,” he said to me, and I shook my head gently.
“We probably shouldn’t be,” I managed to finally say as his eyes pierced through mine and straight into me. “But I guess... I guess I’m feeling it, too.” I wanted so desperately to come off as nonchalant, to seem surprised that we were maybe actually on a date.
He slid closer to me and leaned in toward me. “You know what this means, right?” he asked me with a devilish grin.
“I know,” I said, and let his lips touch mine. Fire and electricity shot through my body as I moved to put my arm around him and pull him closer. I closed my eyes and breathed him in for a few moments while we kissed, letting the newness and excitement rush over me. This connection that had formed between us burned brightly in a way that I had never felt before.
He pulled his lips from mine and stared into my eyes. He reached up with his hand and ran his fingers through my carefully-crafted hair, holding the back of my head as we sat, mesmerized with each other. “You’re cheating on your boyfriend,” he whispered to me.
“I don’t care,” I responded, and leaned in for another electric kiss.
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Date: 2021-11-16 07:30 pm (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)