False Love

I lower my eyes. "Maybe someday I’ll be able to say the same to you, too," I say, and wish I could have said it right then and there and meant it too, with all my heart.

Love. It’s such a curious and yet wonderful feeling. It comes when one least expects it, and it sticks around, for the most obscure periods of time. And then it fades, and comes nothingness. It is lucky when it doesn’t, and it is rare too, for two people to love each other through the years with the same momentum as when they were seventeen. With the same strength and passion. With the same magnetic pull that is pure magic…

Alex keeps looking straight at me and I can feel his eyes fixated on my forehead. "I understand," he says, his voice all sadness. The sweet blue-green eyes, full of sorrow, drop a tear.

"You do, don’t you?" I plead. "I just met you. What was it… last Thursday?"

He nods.

We were in a car, parked in some church’s parking lot. As usual we had been driving around the hills in the evening for that wonderful feeling of speed mixed with danger mixed with the cold night air. I suggested that we park somewhere dark and secluded and make-out, like all the real couples did on TV and like what I had heard from my friends. So here we were in this parking lot that wasn’t very dark, nor very secluded, but weren’t those only insignificant details?

We didn’t kiss, but held each other, very intimately, very warmly. We didn’t talk. It was a moment borrowed from the best of romance novels, or maybe one from a Shakespearean sonnet. A moment I had never thought possible.

He looked at me and his gray eyes were shining, reflecting the street light by the car.

"Anne…"

He stopped and took in a deep breath.

"I want to be able to tell you, and I don’t know if I can." He spoke slowly, measuring out his words. Even then I knew that what he had to say I would remember for the rest of my life.

"Anne. I feel so wonderful right now. I love you so very much. I only wish I could tell you how much… I… I guess I love you so much that… I could marry you right now…"

He was silent now and looked away, afraid he had said too much, made himself too vulnerable.

"It is only a momentary weakness, of course," he added after a few of seconds.

I felt wounded, of course, by this retreat, but I also understood it. In his language I knew it meant, "No, I am not proposing to you. It’s a crazy idea that you and I should get married. You are sixteen and I nineteen. It would never work. But I wish I could express how I do absolutely adore you, my love."

The image changes now and I see David next to me in my bed at home, with his face turned away from me and his eyes looking off into the distance.

"What’s wrong, David? Please talk to me… We don’t have any secrets. We can tell each other anything. I can understand anything… Just please, don’t lie there like that."

He turned to me and gave me a hug. His cheek felt wet against mine.

"What is it?" I thought I might start crying myself…

And then, suddenly, "Are you going to break up with me?"

Where did that line come from?? Did I really just say that?

He turned his head away again.

"It’s just not working out, Anne. I am sorry."

And my entire world crumbled.

Alex’s face comes up in my memory and I am happy for it because there is no pain associated with it. Not yet.

And then David’s eyes in front of my face. "I love you so very much. I could marry you."

And now Alex’s. "I have to tell you. I love you."

And now the gray and the blue-green all blend into one and love rings in my ears. Perhaps now is the beginning of another era for me. Perhaps love will once again scent my life with its beautiful caressing fragrance. Perhaps now…

"How could he?? How could I? David, David, it was supposed to be wonderful and he was so sweet and then this??!!"

He strokes my hair gently and lovingly, like a best friend, like a brother…

Finally my sobbing hushes.

"He is just an asshole, Anne. Don’t think too much about it. You just didn’t know. You were too sweet and innocent. And now.., you’ll know now if a guy is a player."

"But David," I start sobbing again. "How could I think he really loved me? How could I? I wasn’t a little girl. I knew what love was. I was SO stupid!" I drive my nails deep into the palms of my hands. Maybe they’ll bleed, I think hopefully.

"Sweetie, please, please stop." David doesn’t know what to do. All he has is words and words don’t help. "Please, Anne, please stop. I love you. It hurts me so much to see you like this."

And I stop.

I suddenly realize something. David’s face emerges in my memory again, and next to him Alex’s. "I could marry you…" "I love you." "I love you so very much." "I have to tell you." "I don’t know how to tell you."

Once you’ve had it, it’s inconceivable to lose it. It’s inconceivable to live in a world without that one person who never leaves your mind. And so, you look for it. In unscrubbed corners and under the sheets of an unmade bed. In the closet and behind the refrigerator. And when something looks slightly, just slightly like it could be love, you grab it and hold on to it. And you do this just because it shines just like the one that had been lost. Just because it gives off the same pleasant clink.

But the false coin will be uncovered, and the real—no, the only—love will always prevail.

And that’s what it did, as David and I sat together, close as never before, and as never before we knew that this was the one true love.