95 Ginger
95
Ginger
I dropped the manuscript I was reading on the nightstand and took off the glasses I had started using a few months ago, especially toward the end of the day. For a few seconds, the silence in the room closed in on me. Then, for no reason, as I’d done many times before, I looked at my laptop in its case, resting against the feet of the nightstand. It would be so easy to reach out, open it, set it on my knees as I had for years, open the folder I’d forwarded all his messages to… I curled up and lay down. Sighed. Resisted temptation. I couldn’t go back. Not now, with everything hanging by a thread and me having no idea where my life was going. Not when I knew that he was still walking a straight line in the opposite direction, putting more and more distance between us. I had seen him. He was unavoidable. All I had to do was search for his name and look at all the results, photos of him at festivals, songs…
And yet still I fantasized that there was something left of that guy named Rhys who I had met one winter night in Paris and danced with by the Seine before eating cup noodles in his attic.
But that’s all it was: a fantasy.