6 Rhys
6
Rhys
I looked at her as the sun rose, glowing through the window, brightening her face. That was the thing I liked most about the apartment I’d called home those past two months—the one I’d go on calling home until I had to pack my bags again, because the idea of remaining still while the world turned terrified me.
But not in this moment.
In this moment, I wanted to stay for a long time next to Ginger’s warm body, while she was curled up next to me, hands clutching my T-shirt as if she feared I would escape in the middle of the night. I was nervous. I was feeling…things since I met her in front of the ticket machine in the subway station. Good things. Tenderness. Curiosity. Desire.
Her nose was roundish and slightly broad, her lips were half-open, and her hair tie had fallen out, letting her brown hair spread and tangle. She was like that too, I thought, tangled up inside. Complicated. She had cried when I told her that, but they weren’t tears of sorrow. And I thought I was starting to understand why. Probably I was the first person who’d ever thought Ginger wasn’t as simple as she seemed at first sight. That she wasn’t just the girl with an eternal smile who always tried hard to make everyone else happy. To the contrary, she was someone who swallowed her fears. Who let her wishes pile up. Who struggled to see herself when she looked in the mirror.
And I adored her. Tangled up as she was.
But she had to take her road, and I had to take mine.
I moved slowly, trying not to wake her, but in vain. As soon as I was a few inches away, she blinked and opened her eyes, almost panicked.
“What time is it?” She sounded like a mewling cat.
“It’s eight. You can stay a few more minutes.”
I got all the way up and smiled as I saw her curl into a ball. I turned on the coffeepot and got into the shower. When I came out with a towel around my waist, she was sitting up in bed, hair a mess, looking at my bare torso. Fuck. Fuck. I wanted her. Bad. I took a deep breath, thinking if only she hadn’t just broken up with that dumbass, if only she wasn’t about to hop a plane to another country, if only we had met at another moment, another place, another time…
“The coffee’s almost ready. You want a shower?”
“Do I have time?”
I nodded.
“Okay then.”
“You have clothes in that bag?”
“Just underwear. And crackers.”
“Always thinking ahead, I see.”
I opened the small closet where I kept all my clothes, grabbed my smallest sweatshirt, and tossed it to her. She looked doubtful.
“I can’t give it back to you.”
“I already figured that.”
“Okay. Thanks, Rhys.”
She disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the pipes banging as she turned on the hot water. I wished I was in there with her. I wished…I don’t know…that I could lick her skin. Kiss her. Know what she tasted like. I shook my head. That was crazy talk.
I buttoned my jeans and walked barefoot to the kitchen. I poured two coffees with milk and dug out a chocolate croissant left over from the day before in case she wanted to eat something before leaving. She emerged from the shower a little later in the same jeans as yesterday and my sweatshirt.
“I don’t think I thanked you for everything…”
“You did,” I cut her off. “Coffee?”
She looked at me cheerfully and nodded. The silence was comfortable as we ate breakfast together, and even later, when we got on the bus. I decided to go with her to the airport. Surrounded by people coming and going, by loud voices over the PA, up to the security checkpoint, I began to realize how real this was. I was there, saying goodbye to a girl I’d just met…and I had a knot in my throat, and I didn’t want to think about it.
I handed her backpack to her, and she slung it over her shoulder.
She had a hard time looking up from the floor. “I guess this is goodbye.”
“Yeah.” I sure as hell didn’t want it to be though.
Our eyes stared into each other’s so long that the rest of the world seemed to become a blur. I tried to sharpen my idea of her. She was a normal girl. Just a normal girl, I tried to tell myself to convince myself she wasn’t the most beautiful, funniest, craziest girl I’d ever met, the most…I don’t know, just the most , period. It’s not that we’d done anything crazy special together. I hadn’t had incredible sex with her; she wasn’t some guru who’d introduced me to a new religion that had brought me inner peace. But I didn’t care. For me, she was different from the first moment I looked at her, and that was enough. I couldn’t help but notice how my heart was pounding rhythmically like a song crying out to be written.
Fuck it. Fuck it all.
I wanted to kiss her. I was going to kiss her.
“Rhys…” she whispered. Barely.
“What?” I swallowed.
“Thanks for last night.”
“Stop saying that.”
“It’s what I feel.”
“Goddammit, Ginger.”
“I need to go.”
“I wish you didn’t.”
“Yeah.” She waited a moment. “It’s been fun.”
“Fun,” I repeated, ill at ease.
Fuck that. It had been real. Authentic.
I was tense, but I didn’t know what to say.
And then it was like words weren’t needed, because she stood on her tiptoes, hugged me like an old friend saying goodbye, and kissed me softly on the cheek before pulling away brusquely.
“Bye, Rhys.”
“Take care.”
She nodded, turned, and walked into security. I probably should have turned around then and walked off until I vanished into the crowd. But I didn’t. I stayed there, hands in my pockets, contemplating her matted hair—I hadn’t had a decent brush to offer her that morning. My sweatshirt was wrinkled and hanging loose over her back.
Ginger had already laid her backpack on the conveyor belt when she turned back toward me. She seemed surprised that I was still there. And then I knew it. I knew she was going to do something crazy. I almost smiled as she started shouting at the other passengers asking if anyone had a pen.
I struggled not to laugh.
People watched her squeeze out back through the line, dodging those waiting and running toward me with a pen in her hand. She was so nervous…so gorgeous.
“I know you must think I’m nuts, but I don’t know… I don’t know, Rhys, just…if you ever get bored or you’re looking out that window of yours into the sky and you can’t figure out anything else to do, write me.”
As she babbled those words, she grabbed my hand and wrote out a series of letters I soon figured out was her email. Again, I wanted to kiss her, but instead, I just stared. She walked off again and vanished from my line of sight, crossing through the scanner and into the airport.
I don’t know how many times I’ve asked myself what would have happened if I’d kissed her that day. What would our lives have been like? Would anything have changed? Yes, but that yes was filled with unknowns that would never stop pursuing me. Or her. Two roads came together, hers and mine, and even if they weren’t meant to run side by side there in Paris, where we were then, they were still the beginning of a far longer path: a detour to the moon.