"somewhere other than inside the out there." -- part thirty six.
i would apologize for my absence, leaving you with the tail end flopping, but i'm not that kind of girl.
rockstar left new orleans a couple days after. boy and him had read their comics, played some tunes, and stayed up late into the night. me? mostly, i just let it sink in.
i loved watching him converse. his eyebrows did a softshoe over his forehead, and his upper body had a way of jumping when he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
when rockstar left, boy and i spent most of our time ordering in and talking like we couldn't over the phone. actually holding each other. tiny nuances of breath.
it was as though we were never apart. from five hundred miles, we had rediscovered the closeness that we had seemingly lost through daily dailies.
there was one morning. i woke up, and he was just lying there with his eyes pasted open.
"hey?"
he snapped out of it, looked at me, and grabbed me. "i just had the worst dream. i couldn't move, and all of these people were just standing over me, staring. i couldn't move. i just..."
i pulled him closer, and i could feel the wet of his tears on my bare shoulder. "it's allright, i'm here."
"i know you are. i just..."
we laid quiet.
rockstar was right, i didn't want to go back. i didn't want to leave him again. i wasn't sure that i could handle it.
explorer and philosopher arrived on friday night to pick me up and to see boy.
we walked down to st. joe's, the one place that boy and i sort of called a home away from home. the four of us sat on the back patio and drank our drinks, chain smoking, and remembering something better, maybe something real.
the next morning, we sat outside of starbucks and had one of the last conversations we would ever have. i don't remember what we talked about, but i'm sure explorer does. the four of us, we were an odd grouping. years of history repeating and us not learning, melodramatic relationships and open tabs, but over it all, some friendship that wouldn't let us loosen our grasp.
time has a way of wearing on us, darlin. we try to stay fresh and new, sucking up our humiliation with the most energy that we can muster. we try to reinvent everything surrounding what we've been holding on to. we try to breathe life into dead interactions. we try to make the plastic into real. but time will twist and worm it's way into the sixteenth of an inch crevice that you left vacant, and it will billow its lungs to fracture your whole.
and we all sat there, gelled over with time. i looked all over us, and i found threadbare connections that had seeped through. mainly, i felt sick to my stomach.
they hugged him.
i started to cry as he was kissing me goodbye.
"oh my, don't do that. i'll see you soon."
he touched my cheek. i looked down at the ground.
staring out the back of explorer's little vw, i watched him drive off to work, wiping his own eyes.
and i blew him a kiss.
that was the last time i ever saw him well.
