Dream

 I kissed you.

I hadn't put the air conditioners in yet and we were on my now bare bed and sticking to each other and gazing. Two fools.

You were impossible. A dream.

"Do you wanna get breakfast?" I whispered.

You took a moment. 

"Mmhmm." 

You smiled a little and as you did your front teeth shown between your lips and my heart filled suddenly, a overwhelming wave of warmth. Dizzying, and I was right where I should have been. With you. Holding you. Just near you. Impossible. A Dream.

You kissed me. 

It had been a week since day one. Well, what we were considering day one, but it had been so fast and right that it was hard to tell when it actually started. The first exchange? The first moment outside talking about records? The first morning? Whatever it was, it had been about a week.

It took some time, through a chain of distractions and touch, stops and starts, but we got clothes on. Washed my face, pulled my hair back, threw shoes on. You grabbed what was closest to you. A sports bra and shorts. The smelliest fucking shoes I've ever been around. Out of the hot apartment, down the stairs, and out into the June morning. 

The sun bounced off your slowly tanning but still somehow pale skin. Through the brown but still somehow also red hair. Onto us and only us. I held your hand and it felt like I always had. There had never been any other moment than this. There would never be any other moment but this. The sun and the air. You and I. There was just nothing else.

Impossible.

A bistro around the corner. Breeze in the leaves above us. Shadows swaying and dancing around us. We sat at the only table outside, eating breakfast sandwiches and drinking Turkish coffee and there was no one else in the world. Your teeth just barely from between your lips. The shape of your jaw. The curve of your neck into your shoulder. The look in your eyes.

"We don't really get along," you said. "My mom's a lot better now, but we didn't talk for a long time. The whole time I was homeless she never reached out. Then the whole thing with my dad."

"Your dad-dad?"

"No. Thomas. Step-dad."

"What whole thing?"

I wanted to learn everything. I wanted to know everything. 

You took a sip of your coffee. "I don't know. It's bullshit. They split up for a while and he moved back to New York."

"And that was your fault?"

"No, no. But he came to visit me for a few days and we hung out, but my mom thinks I fucked him and she still believes it, I think. That's what my brother said."

I stored that. There was something else you had said a few days before, but I couldn't quite dig it up.

"Hmm. Weird."

"I know," you said, and took a bite of your sandwich. "I don't care though. I'll be out of there soon. I just needed a place to stay while I put myself back together."

I held my arm across the table and opened my hand. You took it and smiled a half smile at me. "I'm glad I met you," you said. "Re-met you." 

"Me too."

We finished our breakfast and walked back toward my apartment. The greens GREEN and the sky BLUE and the world ALIVE. Next to you. I wondered if I talked too much. Or too little. I wasn't nervous, I only wondered. It didn't seem to matter. It felt like you would love me either way, the way I knew I loved you.

Impossible. A dream.

"I love you," I said. We had crossed that bridge the first night. I had been staring at you and you had said "Why aren't you saying it?" and I was silent for a minute. "Is it because it makes you nervous to feel it so quickly?" you asked and then paused and said; "Well, I'm not nervous. Say it," and I said it. "I love you too," you had said. That first night on my couch, the outline of everything glowing and blurred.

And now here we were, a week in. In love. In sun and holding hands. Impossible. A dream.

"Do you remember when we met?" you asked.

"I mean, mostly. You saw me. I was a drunk back then."

"So you don't remember?"

"I remember chunks. Flashes."

"Like what?" you asked.

"A flash of laying on your floor. Looking at your records. Getting breakfast the next day."

"But you don't remember looking at my rabbits with me? You don't remember talking to me? Nothing else?"

"Not really. It's mostly a blur."

"Then I don't know how you can say you love me." You let go of my hand

We walked a few steps in silence.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I just think it's bullshit. How can you say you love me if you don't even remember meeting me? If you didn't know you loved me right away?"

"I was in a relationship anyway. We both were. Did you know you loved me?"

You didn't answer and began to walk slower. "I think I should just go."

"What? Why? We have the whole day ahead of us."

"I don't know. Why don't you go find some other bitch you can just forget. I'm sure your fuckin ex was fine being forgotten but I'm not."

We had come to my steps. 

"Let's go inside," I said. "Don't leave."

"I have to go inside and get my stuff anyway you fucking idiot."

"Knock that off. You don't get to speak to me like that."

"Can you just open the fucking door so I can get my things and then you can go fuck and forget some other bitch? It's obviously what you actually want."

I didn't know what to say and it took me a moment to pull something together. "Please, can we not do this outside?"

Your eyes were on fire and one had begun to drift at some point. I made a note of it. I could feel my heart in my chest, pounding away quickly. It all reminded me of something, but I couldn't place it. My entire body wanted to run, but I fought it. I tried to remain cool. You were going through something and I wanted to help. I pushed it down, walked past you

distance...

distance...

and unlocked the door.

I looked at you and you didn't move. I walked in and up the stairs. You followed slowly behind me, and shut the door.

Inside, I went to the kitchen. I filled a glass with water and stood over the sink, drinking slowly and disconnecting from the moment as best as I could. A trick I had learned a number of years ago to slow my racing heart and brain. After a moment I went out to the living room and you were sitting sideways on the couch and staring into space.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Your mouth was tight and you didn't move or speak. Only stared. 

"Is there anything I can do for you?" 

You turned, and bent and began to dig around in your small backpack, eventually pulling out head phones and putting them in your ears and then you were gone entirely. Somewhere in music. I sat on the couch across from you and didn't dare to look at my phone or to pick up a book or to do anything. You weren't there with me, but I knew that anything I did in that moment was inflammatory. So I did nothing. I showed you I was there, for you, and I waited.

Nearly an hour passed and I had found myself staring out the window at a spinning weathervane on someone's porch. I felt you move on the couch and then sit back again. I looked at you.

"I want you to take me out."

"Okay," I said. "What do you want to do?"

"Think of something. It's not my job to make me feel better."

It stabbed into me, and immediately walls went up again. "Okay. Well, do you want to get food?"

"We just ate. No I don't want food."

"Okay... Do you want to go walk in the woods? Go swimming?"

"Swimming where?"

"I know a spot a little ways from here. It's my favorite spot on this planet. It's beautiful."

You just looked at me blankly. I thought I could see gears and boilers, all re-pressurizing and working together. "I'll call my brothers and see if they want to come."

"I thought it could just be..."

"I want to take them, if that's what you're saying. You hurt me. I want to take them."

I wanted to go to hide. Sleep. "Okay."

We got ready to go swimming.

Impossible. 

Only a dream.