Hello, Again

I saw the horrible boy who made me laugh today. I was out on the town for business and had to walk a back road through the old churchyard to get myself a cab back to the office because the Park's streets were packed with festival goers. It had been a long day, and the afternoon was not even halfway done yet. I finally got a cab right before the road turned in to the church. As I was seating myself, I saw him walk out of the double doors and turn to the direction where I stood seconds ago. Five more seconds and he would have seen me. I was relieved, at first, like I had dodged a bullet. But a few seconds later, as he began shrinking away in the distance, a heaviness settled over me.

I had half a mind to ask the driver to stop, no, I changed my mind, I need to speak to him. In my head I had already ran to him, a big smile on my face, ready and willing to continue our camaraderie as if the past two years never happened, as if he never broke my heart. In my head, I had snuck up on him and looped my arm in his, only to laugh as he would panic and push me away. He always liked his personal space, and he was never one for random touches. Then he would laugh, too, and it would be like it was before, I would feel nineteen again, alive again. He would ask me how I was doing, and I would tell him of the hellish day I was having, and the problematic people I was dealing with. He would laugh at my troubles, like he always did, and then put an arm around my shoulders, comment on my height and tell me I could handle it in the most backhanded and cryptic way possible. I would have left my cares by the road as we walked down the path he was headed and talked about movies and existentialism, and the coming elections.

But I didn't tell the driver to stop. Why risk opening the floodgates of emotions that you so sturdily locked away years ago? I watched, still, as he disappeared when the cab turned the corner, and I remembered how he used to make me laugh at everything: my stress, my problems, the characters I so loved in the book I was reading, myself. I miss telling him my ideas and watching his eyes light up with a million stars because he was thinking the same thing, and our ideas would get crazier and funnier because our cuckoo minds would meet each other halfway.

He was the thunder to my lightning, and although he judged me, and he judged me heavily, he understood. He was a horrible, horrible boy, but he knew what to say to make me angry, to make me smile, to make me feel. I was grateful for that, and had I not handed my heart so carelessly to him without his knowledge, without his consent, we may still be friends now. Because what he told me when he broke my heart would not have hurt so much. He did not ask me to love him, he did not want me to, but we love who we love. I think that was my fault, I have a tendency to feel too deeply, to love too much.

But there he was and then, just like two years ago, he just wasn't there anymore. I miss him, very much, and that, I guess, is my fault, too.