Okay friends.
I’m setting the scene, because we did a little setting switch up. I left off on our date with Hot F., but now I’m back home in Toronto. Can I say that I have two homes, now? I think I can. It’s 4:45 PM on a Saturday afternoon/evening. I just woke up from a nap. I’m sitting outside on my balcony in an oversized tee from H&M. It says “Burrata, Tomato, Pasta”. My best friend got us matching ones for my birthday. We both wear them to bed. I spent the morning in the sun, laying by the pool, so we smell like coconut and grape seed oil. We are slowly building our summer glow. There’s a water bottle beside us, of course, because we cannot glow without hydration. Hydration is key. Hydration is always key.
Today was the first day, since being back, that I haven’t had any social obligations. To go from a semi-weak social life, to one that is filled back-to-back-to-back, sometimes takes a tiny toll on the system. But I have absolutely 0 complaints, because seeing my best friends…there is something so energizing, yet beautifully centring about them. I never feel drained, I never feel bored. We leave feeling loved, we leave feeling like the best versions of ourselves.
“Whoever you decide to end up with, and whoever I end up with...wherever we both end up living. Whatever our lives end up looking like…I just want you to know that I will always, always love you.” One of my best friends tells me over our third or fourth cocktail last night.
“But that’s just it. It’s always been…pure love between us.” I tell her. My spicy margaritas do not make me as eloquent as my dirty martinis, but the sentiment is there. And I mean it.
No matter where me and my best friends are in the world, no matter what we’re doing, no matter who we’re with. Love is that one constant.
Love knows no bounds.
-
Now, when Hot F. suggested a “writing session”. I didn’t think he was actually serious. But he, in fact, was. He was very serious.
“Let’s take turns writing phrases. The first sentence that comes to your mind.”
He passes me his pencil and his mini notepad of post-it notes.
I write down: Angels in the form of strangers. It is one of my favourite lines. I wrote it during a time where I had lost hope, where I had lost faith. And then, the universe sends you an angel, or a messenger, in the form of a stranger.
He raises his eyebrows and goes quiet for a few minutes.
“Angels in the form of strangers.” He repeats to himself. “That’s really…I really…I really love that.”
Now, if Hot F. was trying to have the upper hand on this date by teasing me about my non-Italian Italian, and my inability to drive, I felt like I really had just won the power back.
“Occhio che guarda nello specchio dell anima, conosce la strada.” He writes.
“It basically translates to: eyes that look into the mirror of the soul, know the way.”
He’s deep. This keeps getting worse.
“What made you write this?” I ask.
“The eyes are the one human body part that doesn’t change as we get older. It’s like the soul. It’s ageless.”
I look at those words for a long time.
When she passed away, her eyes were donated to someone who had lost theirs. I think about telling him this, but I choose not to.
Those angels in the form of strangers.
“It’s beautiful. It’s really beautiful.”
He shrugs. “I like yours better.”
We go back and forth. Back, and forth.
“I think I want what you’re having now.” He nods to my Vermentino, and orders us two more glasses.
We finish our drinks, and after we write our signatures (“it’s practice for when you’re a famous author”), we start to walk back home.
I’m shocked at how comfortable I am. At how comfortable we both are. We walk slowly, with my hand on his arm, past a group of police officers.
“Polizia. Another word.” I’m proud of my first grade level Italian.
He starts to laugh. “I think you have your own personal polizia in Rome. Me and The Man at The Front.” And this is true. God forbid, if I ever needed anything, or anyone, the Man at the Front would be the first I’d call.
It’s chilly. I fold my arms across my chest. I will never understand the 30 degree days and 15 degree evenings.
“Are you cold?”
I nod.
He takes off his denim jacket and places it over my shoulders.
It feels good to feel taken care of. I make a mental note of this moment. I need to let people take care of me more.
We arrive at his car, parked right outside my apartment.
“I think the car stopped buzzing. I can’t hear anything.”
“I told you. Tinnitus.”
“Or maybe I’m just crazy.”
“Pazza. Another one.”
He smiles. “Pazzo. Pazza for girls, pazzo for guys.”
I decide to not tell him about “Where’s that crazy girl?” I can’t imagine how that story would go. “Did you know that PN went up to your best friend and demanded to know where I was because I was talking to 2 other guys outside instead of him? And then he told your best friend that I was the crazy one?”
No, there’s a time and place for that.
Instead, I remain silent and look up at his dark hair, brown eyes, and 6’7 frame.
You know those moments leading up to a first kiss? When you’re sitting side by side. You think of the logistics. If I turn towards him at any moment in this conversation, who will lean in first? My heart is racing, and I settle my nerves by focussing my green eyed gaze on a spot on the wall across from me.
But I don’t have time to think of the logistics. I don’t have time to think about how he’ll reach me, or if I’ll need to stand on my tippy toes to reach him. Or if it will be awkward, or if the conversation was the Only Good Thing.
Right on cue, he leans down and kisses me. It’s slow at first. Then, I wrap my arms around his neck. We’re leaned up against his car.
I really like kissing him, I decide. I really like kissing him.
I pull away first.“Should we…”
“Get another drink?” He asks.
“You read my mind.”
It’s now midnight on a Tuesday. We’re north of the city centre, so nothing is open. We go inside to my apartment instead.
Thankfully, I have amaro. I pour us two glasses.
He’s pulled me on to his lap. I put my glass of amaro down, and I turn to face him. I wrap my legs around his waist. And we both have that drunk look in our eyes.
And it probably is the amaro talking. Or maybe it’s the fact that we’re both writers, we’re both emotional people, and we both know that we’ll probably never see each other again.
With our foreheads pressed together, I admit the following:
“I don’t think men take me seriously here.”
He holds my drunken gaze for a while and looks down. And what I desperately am hoping for in this moment, is for someone to prove me wrong. To tell me that I’ve just been mixing up with the wrong men, to tell me that it’s them and not me, to tell me anything that will seemingly make the past three years make sense.
“I think…” He’s careful with his choice of words. “It’s hard for a man to picture a future with someone who doesn’t feel…stable. I think we both know what tonight is going to be.”
Do you want to know one of the reasons why What Isn’t Ours is my favourite? Me and the men here. I think every single time, everyone knew that whatever interaction it was, it wasn’t going to work out.
I don’t think I adhere to what they are looking for, and I don’t think they even want to change that. I think it’s all part of the allure. Make believe. But it’s not always a bad thing, to be seen as the Other. It’s getting a glimpse of a parallel life.
I must be someone (s) parallel life. Someone’s parallel universe.
In another life. I’m sitting outside at a wooden table in a white dress. We’re up in the hills somewhere. Maybe Tuscany. The sun is setting. The colours - the pinks, the blues, the oranges. All stacked up on top of one another. My hair is always loose. I’m writing. I’m always writing.
My legs are still wrapped around his waist. He’s holding me, but now examining my hands. The sting of the stable comment lingers, the sting of “we both know what this will be” lingers, but I am thankful that the amaro isn’t letting me feel as much as tomorrow will.
I had hope, you see.
I always have hope.
“This is beautiful.” He traces the rows of diamonds on the ring on my left hand.
I smile. “It was my moms. She turned her engagement ring and wedding band into one.”
“And this one?”
The ring on my right hand is a small rose made out of one single wire.
“I got it 7 years ago. I can’t take it off.”
It feels strange to talk about jewellery, and the permanency of objects with someone who will be gone by the morning.
“The feelings I had for you…the feelings I still have for you. They’re the same as the first day I met you, all those years ago. But you don’t know where you want to live. You don’t know where you want to be.” Our First Muse says to me.
Me and Hot F.’s tired, drunken, eyes meet.
“Can I ask you something? What is it that you really want?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want love? Do you want a relationship? Because it seems like…you’re always off. City to city, every few months.”
“I’ve said this to you before. I believe that love finds you. And it shouldn’t matter if someone moves or wants to experience and live in different places. If you have the love, and the right kind of love.. then it…should just always be there. Wherever you are. Wherever you go.” I know this feeling too well.
“But what if someone wants to build something with you?”
Love is boundless, isn’t it? And pain is boundless, too. We can try to rid or empty ourselves of any discomfort, of any proof that we’ve lived and had our hearts broken in the process.
We can change countries, we can change settings, we can change characters. We can look into the eyes of strangers on a Tuesday night in June:
Maybe you’ll be the one to fix me. Maybe you’ll the one to make me stay. Maybe you’ll be the one to help me forget.
I untie the two bows that hold my shirt together and let it fall. He pulls his white t-shirt over his head. It’s the routine that I’m used to. Those few hours. Those brief moments in time. The glimpse into a parallel universe. What Isn’t Ours. Nothing is mine, and nothing is ever ours to hold on to.
He lifts me up and carries me into my bedroom. He lays me down, gently. The way he moves, the way we move, the way he looks at me. Everything is gentle, but everything is sad.
The eyes that mirror the soul.
Everything is sad, but everything is beautiful.
“I’ve been thinking about melancholy lately. It’s never about the pursuit of happiness. But it’s about the pursuit of beauty. And I can talk to you about this, because I know you see the world like this, too.”
“Happiness is fleeting.” I tell him. “My best friend told me once - everything that’s beautiful is also sad. There’s always an ending.”
And I’ll leave this parallel universe, and you’ll leave it, too. You’ll pull your white t-shirt back over your head. You’ll zip up your jeans. My suitcase full of neatly folded clothes will lay open on the bedroom floor.
The notepad sits on the kitchen counter. Angels in the form of strangers.
You’ll fold the small piece of paper and place it in your back pocket.
And I’ll pretend to have some sort of light left in me when you hand me one of your notes to keep for memory. But I don’t know if I want to keep remembering this.
This leaving, this being left, and all of these endings.