I stood in front of my window, overlooking the city light up the natural darkness.
My last conversation with Levi a few hours earlier kept spinning through my mind like a black hole, ready to take every other thought down with it. He'd walked me to my door, his hand on my lower back the whole time. He'd said goodnight, and I, too. As his back turned, I sunk against the door, watching as he began down the steps.
But he turned back around and approached me again. "See me again." He'd said, his voice fast like he wasn't really processing what he was saying. It was just impluse.
"What?" I asked, having the same feeling.
"Coffee," His eyes shone as the above hallway light flickered with green tinted light.
"You want to go out for coffee?"
"No," He'd said. "I want you to come to my apartment, for coffee. French coffee is the remarkable. Better than any american stuff. Not even the indecisive can deny the persuasive powers of French coffee."
And being the coffee fanatic I was, I couldn't deny that that did in fact sound very appealing. But Levi's apartment? Didn't that seem a little... intimate? Like something close friends would do.
But that's what we were, wasn't it? Friends? I could keep him at a distance and still be friends, right?
"Yeah." 'd said, biting my lip nervously. "Yeah, sure." I couldn't deny that his company was welcoming.
He'd smiled a world of a smile, a smile I couldn't remember the feel of on my own face. And then he was gone, without another word.
So as I entered my apartment, my toes curling in on themselves, my bottom lip completely mauled by my teeth, I decided sleep wasn't going to happen.
I slumped against the door, the wood cold against my shoulders. I don't know what it was, but suddenly, I was struck with this foreign feeling. Well, actually, it wasn't such a foreign feeling; the way I reacted to the feeling was the strange thing.
Loneliness was something I dealt with often, living on my own, mostly working from my home 'office'. But I was usually okay with that. I liked to be in my own element, and to do that I had to be alone. Nobody had really ever understood or got me. They'd never made me want to want someone, something, so much that I changed the way I was, or even owned up to my problems that made me the way I was.
But last night, as I stepped into my apartment and closed the door behind me, the silence was almost unsurpassable. Because in the silence, everything is louder. All of the dead and the living can have their say, and they all pounded on my head and heart in that quiet moment, reminding me of why I was me and why I couldn't change. What happened to them is what happens if I let people in.
Like a deflating baloon, my shoulders dropped and my head sunk between my knees as I stuggled to catch a breath. The realization that whatever I was feeling for Levi had to stop, was sickening. I didn't want to be alone, and the fact I knew I had to be, hurt. A lot.
What the hell is happening? I had thought as I pulled in gaps of air between my locked jaw.
I stayed awake for the rest of the night, my back against the stiff board. And as the moon finally hit the horizon, I stood with the rising sun, and watched as another day began, people moved on, and things were forgotten. I wished, with everything I owned, I could rise and fall like the sun, moving on with everyday, shining with itself and itself only. The sun didn't need anybody else, but everybody else needed the sun, and that was a precious thing.
