It's hard to believe it's her.
Looking up from the bustle of the street, I stop to marvel at a blimp wobbling precariously across the sky, and see her. She's staring out the her window, I can see her from a block over; she's like a beacon shining through the break between buildings. Standing there with her fingertips against the class, she's was breathing mist onto the single pane just a few floors up from this hole-in-the-wall Mediterranean joint, yeah that's right, the kind that's so small you might miss if you don't already know it's there. So as my gaze alights upon her figure, I stop dead in my tracks. Life continues around me, people are walking by, going about their business and heading...wherever. Me, her captive audience...recognition dawning. I turn slowly to face her, suddenly a moth drawn to a flickering light in the dead of night, and I start walking through some empty alleyway, and steam is hissing from vents of grungy basement apartments and it's floating upwards, diffusing in the icy morning air. My shoes shuffle old newspapers as I move towards her, avoiding sagging trash bags, half full of their deflated contents, sullenly laid to rest there and forgotten. But my eyes never leave her. Tunnel vision obscures my own awkwardness, and I move faster and faster, till I burst from that alleyway like a child from the hazy womb that has been my existence ever since she disappeared.
So I stand there, now at the base of this old brick building, connected to some other brick building, connected to every other building ever. I wonder if anything ever stood alone in the city, and I'm looking up because she's still there, drawing pictures in the condensation and smiling to herself. I bet she's laughing too, that little laugh. God, to hear it now.
I scan the ground floor for a door or stairs or something, and this pudgy lady at the Mediterranean place is looking at me with forlorn, basset hound eyes as she unfolds foil wrapping and shovels gyro into her mouth, and its so funny how people look like they got eaten up by fat suits and how sometimes its so obvious they're hiding under there; for some reason I just want to unzip her like Tyra Banks and unleash the tall gorgeous model inside, because I'm in that good of a mood.
What if she's been standing there for years? Has she been waiting for me?
All of a sudden I realize I'm grinning like an idiot and there's newspaper stuck to my shoe, and this lady's probably staring at my disheveled appearance and thinking she's about to be attacked by a maniacal homeless. And there's nothing left to do but laugh, and I don't care, and I'm already gone, moving towards the red door on the left that I hope leads up to some stairs, which will lead up to another set of stairs, which I hope lead to a hallway, and then to a door that exuberantly proclaims "Sam's Apartment!" and just...opens to a girl
I pray still finds it in her heart to love me, no tolerate me, as I get on my knees and beg her forgiveness for ever leaving her side.
As I reach for the handle, my heart's beating out of my chest because I've never been this alive, charged and riled up, and all my little cells are screaming all hands on deck! and pushing the blood through my veins and eating little proteins and handing cortisol envelopes to each other and probably calling for maintenance because I am literally breaking apart from the years of tension that's just built up since she's been gone. All I can think of is how,
how do I get up there and
be next to her.
And what the hell will feel like.
And what does that mean for me now, because clearly my life is over. Things will never, ever, be the same.
Now that I found her.
I barrel through the door, my feet are taking steps up winding stairs while my brain is playing catch up, and I'm not looking where I'm going when I round another corner and BAM! Body meets body. I take a step back into thin air, and in that faltering moment of falling backwards, I see her face. Blurred brunette.
I must have blacked out for a split second, because I'm on my ass, peeling paint flakes falling like ashes around me, after skidding gracefully to a rest, my back up against the wall. I look up, and she's still on the stairs, holding the banister and looking my way. Focus eyes. Looking concerned. I open my mouth, and muster a weak "Sam..." She cocks her head slightly, sighs out air through pursed lips and it rustles the short hairs around her face...She's wearing red. I'm absorbing her. I'm going in and out. She narrows her eyes, checking me out, and says "...In the flesh." and I pass out.
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