The street is unusually quiet for a warm, Sunday evening in March.
I lean up against the brick wall, and think of how many times I stood up against the same wall in the heat of last summer, shedding a few tears of frustration while someone always had to light my cigarette. I’d inhale the smoke like a prayer for some sort of relief.
Now, in my early spring uniform of denim and silk and cowboy boots. Messy waves and rose perfume. Leaned up against that same very wall, not a cigarette and prayer in sight. I don’t think I’d recognize the girl from last year anymore.
But a very recognizable figure walks towards me.
I start to laugh. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
He sits himself down on an empty patch of grass across from me, and takes out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
Being out in the open, without groups of people on either side of us, somehow makes me more nervous. Those people were buffers, and I realize that it was always much more intimate when everyone else was watching.
Now, there’s too much space for too much to say.
“How are you, what’s new?” It’s an attempt to be friendly.
“The same. Work.” His eyes are tired and his face, gaunt. It’s unfortunate that when he looks bad, he still looks good. “And you?”
“Good. I moved into the area again. I always end up back here.”
“But it’s a great area.”
“I know.”
There’s always a sense of relief in his approval.
“On your own again?”
“Always.”
“You’re lucky.”
Now, more than ever, I can feel this, and now more than ever, I know that there is a lot more hidden behind this statement.
“So, how’s everything else?” I gesture to the bar, to the sky, to the empty street we’re on.
But he knows what I’m really asking.
He scoffs. “The same.”
The broodiness used to be endearing. The tattoos, the earrings, the tortured attitude.
Here was someone who desperately wanted to be alone. If choosing to be tied down to a place, to a person, or to a group of people was a type of currency, I think he would give up all of his chips if he could.
And here I was. Leaned up against the brick wall, standing across from him, on an empty street corner in the middle of March.
And at the same place where we first met, things felt different. Underneath the same blue sky, cloudless, dotted with the same tiny stars. The same tower that stands tall in the same empty piazza. The same overgrown trees that line each street, and the same cars and scooters and motorcycles that crowd the same parking lot.
I cave and ask him for a cigarette, but am proud of myself for lighting my own this time.
“You know you should really open up your own place.”
“That’s the plan.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
He changes the subject. “Tell me more news, Emily. Tell me something new.”
So much has changed.
“There’s always something new.”
“Like?”
“I’m here for a while. Another 6 months at least.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know, you can’t plan life - remember?” A quote from those infamous Sunday afternoons.
“Well if you have a certain number of months in mind, then you’re already planning on something else.”
He never striked me as someone who thought through things far in advance.
“I knew you’d be bored in Australia.”
And now he’s starting to annoy me.
“Then why didn’t you say something when I told you I was going?”
“Because you had to experience it. I didn’t know what you wanted, Emily.”
I wanted somewhere new to lay my head. I wanted to be in a city and in a place that wasn’t tainted by living on someone else’s time. On someone else’s terms.
We had no say in it starting, and no say in it ending.
“I don’t want to talk about me anymore. Tell me more about you. Tell me about your plans.”
“I’d tell you, but I’m superstitious.” He stands up to leave, his clothes hang off him.
A few steps separate us, and I decide to be polite again.
The back and forth exhausts me.
“Well. You look good.”
He looks taken aback, as if he wasn’t expecting me to compliment him. Or he just hadn’t received one in a while. A genuine smile crosses his face. “Thank you.”
It is silent for a few moments as his brown eyes slowly look me up and down. “So do you.”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “Thank you.”
He starts to walk away, stops, and turns to look back at me.
“I’ll see you inside?”
“Maybe.” I shrug.
He continues walking. “You know, it’s never good to keep somebody waiting.”