On the very last night, before the flickering, dim lights over the dark
fields of the forest went out, he asked her a question, and she answered:
"No."
There was nothing left to say, no spare time or energy left for
additional pleas, bargains, or talkings-out-of. The bags were packed. The
plans for the future were made, and the preliminaries set into motion. It
had been a busy day. The time until the next morning would be short,
brilliant, and painfully poignant, so it made the most sense to stare
silently at the glittering, detached stars as they intensified into midnight.
Memories drifted heavily, wafting over the early spring forget-me-nots and
around their bowed heads.
Misty was going away the next morning. There was a scholarship in Tokyo,
a better opportunity... they both knew that the painful truth was simply that
it was time for her to go. They had reached a point in their companionship
where they could finish sentences for one another, but didn't always say the
words that needed to be said. They burnt together in the scorching summer
sun and drowned each other in their tears, and were thicker than thieves, and
yet she often felt that he was holding out on her, rationing his words and
actions with a finely controlled hand that might falter over her own
confusing. She was his friend, his sister, his soulmate... never his lover.
He didn't know why that hurt so much.
They didn't need words; the sky had enough. The moon cut a glittering
arc in the velvet oblivion that had separated soulmates, the late wind was
cool with the last stinging kiss of winter. It whispered around their heads
as they touched every now and then, combining here and there on the tender
newborn grass, so soft beneath.
After hours, he asked her a question, and she said:
"No."
What she didn't say was, "No, I can't stay here and marry you, and I
can't wake up beside you every morning and there's no way for me to possibly
stay... but I love you, good-bye."
She didn't need to. He knew it all, all already, on that last night,
that blew through their lives right after the last afternoon.
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Love in the afternoon.
She knelt on the bed where he reclined, to kiss his upturned lips, as the
crisp, white duvet wrinkled under her bare knee. The curtains at the winds
fluttered anxiously; it was sunny as could be outside, and he caught his
breath in the shifting shadows. Falling, trailing, he felt her pulse with
his mouth and found it wanton, beating.
He was so much older now, and he knew where to put his hands, how to
affix just so his breath on the juncture of her neck to make her gasp and
then exhale in a long, slow hiss, things he had picked up along the way. It
was not unlike the first time he kissed her, eons ago, to be sure, when they
were fifteen and timid, lanky, gawky... all arms and legs.
There was symmetry now, but still hesitance, still that rush at the
knowledge that any second they might do something they'd never done before.
On her knees she slid down his body as he lay back on the white pillow,
probing under his shirt with her hands so she could feel his heart there,
beating desperately although there were hours yet to go... minute upon minute
upon minute until that plane took off, that red hair glimmered out of his
sight like a sunburst, gone before one realized it was there. Like sifting
through the translucent layers of time between then and that moment, he
undressed her, as they fell further down, never speaking save a soft word, a
whisper that needed uttering, and slid beneath the covers together, where she
saw his body for the first time, and simultaneously got her first true pang
of loss. But never regret. To live for the moment, she saw only him, heard
and felt and thought of only him, as the seconds sped by and then she lost it
all, even that constant rhythm that trapped her between worlds.
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********************
At the final golden, painfully beautiful twilight, she lay curled in his
arms like a flower, half-sleeping with too much else to do. He kissed her
hair and she touched his face as if to memorize every minute detail, and then
she cried and he breathed. Better that way.
They got dressed and made the bed, dimming the lights and locking the
door behind them, since it was likely that neither would ever see that room
again. She dragged her handbags, her valise and her suitcase out onto the
patio, newly lit with the light overhead, and each one of the stars sparked
to life, each more lovely than the last.
Still, even as hours later the warmth of each other's bodies finally
cooled, and her lips hurt from the insistent pressure of his, they didn't
reminisce, because they knew those words by heart. It wasn't: "Remember the
time we were a team? And we almost had it all?" It was silent communion,
the greatest tribute they could offer on the burnt pyre of their innocence to
a life that neither could live. And they didn't say good-bye.
Right before she stood up, and he could feel her slipping her white hand
out of his, he asked her a question. She said:
"No."
He had asked her to marry him.
He had asked her to write.
He had asked her to stay.
He had offered her the world.
He asked her to kiss him good-bye.
When she stood up, she didn't look in his eyes, and she turned her back
with some effort, as if she still felt his arms holding her down. Then she
left him sitting there, as the pool of light dried out and died, alone with
the fading stars and the single tear, on the last night.
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