Before[present]Before[now]Before[we.are]
This is a short story I wrote not long ago. It felt fitting here. I wrote another to follow it up, but that one isn't exactly short [by any means really]. However, it requires a little back story. Matt and I dated once before. We have been friends for roughly five years. Through that we have spoken or seen each other every day. Long before we tried to be together, we shared more than most who have been together for years. He was the one keeping me company through my contractions when I had my son, and helped me to my room after. More than once we risked our lives exploring hobo infested downtown structures trying to capture the beauty of what was once there through photography. We spent countless hours wandering woods using google maps in attempt to seek out ghost towns. We had so many bonds forged tighter than most. When I first left my exhusband, restraining order and divorce filed, we tried to date. It lasted roughly four months. The time we were together was great, but we were both going through too much to really make it work. Sadly, it had a bitter ending. We didn't speak for roughly eight months, at the end of which we decided to try things again literally as soon as we got back into contact. That contact came by way of [as with all things in my generation] FaceBook. Matt sent me a message wanting to catch up and I sent him my new cell number. This message came roughly forty-eight hours on the heel of a dream I had. At the time I recorded some of the stranger parts of it in my journal. As I hadn't heard from him since March or so [a few months after we broke up] and it was November. Recently I filled in the blanks and made it linear, as the dream never really faded, here it is.
The keys delete and block are the most wonderful merit of social networking. Friends of friends make that a delusion. There is a video on a girl she hasn't spoken to since HighSchool's FaceBook page...of herself with a boy. They are painting a room, singing along to musicals, exploring the abandoned and unknown...and crashing to burn like the last leaves of fall. They are forgotten, stepped on and decaying. He tells her the video is "our room", "our restaurant"....in her memory it is nothing but our deterioration. This is nothing but a friendship that is fallen and singed. It has been a long year since and by pushing messages traced and filled in excuses, still hollow, to the back of her repository...she had forgotten. The girl tried, she did, to rekindle what they had before that clove smoke kiss and the pain of the months that followed. Always wanting, never having, always reaching and only falling. She joked lightly, spoke comradely and was rewarded with dishonesty. The boy with the burning eyes and gallic shrug that meant everything and nothing all at once used their past to strike her all over again. He had painted a picture of what caused the diminution, a picture that wasn't at all what he painted for her...a picture he began to impel in order to mar what was left of her. How do "unicorns and forever nights" turn into "I can't date you anymore because you're friends with my sister and I need a break from her". Then a year later turn into "She has issues and can't be happy, no one should be with her" before the public eye. And the "other girl" who was told he resented her, while he said the "other girl" was a liar...who just knew a lot of details about her that he swore she didn't get from him. It's amazing how many roads the truth takes once it passes from reality, she muses as she reflects upon old messages between them. From the clove smoke kiss to the third party end. They went from best friends to lovers to enemies as the leaves burned. The girl had forgiven, or at least she told herself she had. He forced her to admonish all the reasons they fell to ashes, he couldn't let it be.
The keys delete and block are the most wonderful merit of social networking, "friends of friends" are bitches. The girl accompanies their mutual friend to his home. The boy has moved, from the room they painted and sang and grew together in, to a different house. Ironically, she knew the people who used to live here, she had partaken in another love that grew and fell with her own heart. That love never really took flight, it was was repressed by a faint-hearted boy who danced through this living room just months before the clove smoke kiss that changed history.
The girls walk through the unlocked door to find a house dormant. She explores, as they once did together. At the end of a hall she finds a couch. It looks the same as one she once rested upon herself, sharing it with the boy who played a ninja. The once remembered boy whom she repressed in wait for the one she now sought. He had once stolen her breath away, only to move on into the night.
The friend who received the video summon wanders on, as the girl watches him wake with a smile. He strides to the girl, and leans into her with that look he gave a million times to a million girls. The look that screams his innocence and cries to be kissed. - [father says, i'll always be...a mess you see, it's my destiny] She turns away. "What's wrong? We can do this." he says, a wounded look in those once burning eyes. The girl whispers, "I can't do this again. You failed as a friend and so much more, I can't let myself tumble down again."
That look, searching her eyes, he whispers back "It would kill me to hurt you like that again, you can pull the trigger." The boy takes her hand and points it like a gun to his head as she falls into those eyes.
Five, Four, Three, Two, One...Bang. She pulls the trigger as their lips meet, exactly as she remembered.
It's as though the last year were a dream, it all falls away. Suddenly she is more alive than she ever remembers being. The world falls away as she wakes to a reality in which he no longer holds a place. The dream is farther from her than the wings she longs to sprout from her back as to carry her from it.
Nothing has changed, she wakes and she moves on.
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