Kai #2
Instead, I promised myself to email her first. Make sure that she still wanted to meet me.
A whole year had gone by, and Jay had only met her twice during this time.
Everything could have changed. She could have met someone.
She could have gotten back with someone.
Hell, she could have moved out of that place altogether.
Downtown it was, in one of those high-security buildings where you needed a passcode just to be let into the lobby and a face scan every time you wanted to enter your own apartment.
So much she valued her safety, and yet, she had written down the code on the back of the postcard for me, along with her full name and address.
Yes, to make someone feel so safe, they’d trust you with anything.
Wasn’t that a miracle? Wasn’t it a marvel that even after memory deletion my subconscious was still able to conjure the essence of her?
Wasn’t this proof that I was capable of experiencing extraordinary love, not just fondness, but passion and desire and adoration?
So I went to her, blind and faithful, just like she had commanded me to do in those dreams of mine. And if it so happened that she did not want to see me, if life had taken her to a path I was not allowed to follow, I would still be content for having tried.
In the back of the taxi, as the drab grayness of the city slipped past me, I found myself thinking, Any price. Heartbreak, despair, insanity. I don’t care what comes after this. I will pay any price to know her, if only for a moment.
My every movement, my every decision after that became pure instinct, a habit I hadn’t yet developed.
I punched the passcode into the keypad, took the elevator to the twenty-fifth floor, and strode with my heart striking in my temples down the long, floodlit hallway until I found apartment 045B and a bell to be rung with her name on it.
Anya Larsson.
I was panting, my hands shaking, so I grabbed each side of the doorframe to steady myself as I waited.
I couldn’t hear her through the door, but I could feel her somehow, approaching.
Near. Nearer. And then, as if by enchantment, she appeared right before me, not a dream, after all, but undoubtedly and excruciatingly real.
It hurt me. It cut me open. How beautiful she was, her cool, sublime quality.
The luster of her black hair under the bright hallway light.
The softness of her mouth as she let out a short, ragged exhale.
Her straight shoulders in that finely knit top, the thin strap falling down her arm.
The sheer irresistible tactility of her skin.
Unmoving, unblinking, I looked at her, and she looked at me, her intelligent, expressive eyes darting over my face once, twice, and there was nothing to be said. I knew. She knew. Everything was communicated, and all we could do now was breathe in the supreme air of our mutual understanding.
But there was pain in my chest, so wrenching that I felt my hand moving, slipping under my coat and clutching the front of my sweater.
So much longing and recognition seized my heart and soul and bones that even the possibility of having her, physically having her, didn’t seem enough to relieve the magnitude of my desire.
Then came her voice, low and sensuous, like after-rain coolness, “Hello.”
It was almost too much. The felt reality of her presence. She was so close I could reach out and touch her. I could even feel us stirring closer, leaning towards each other, both of us wanting to express everything all at once but not knowing how.
“Hello,” was all I was able to rasp. “I am… I’m…”
“I know who you are, Kai,” she said very softly.
I had never thought of my name in terms of beauty before, but I did now. How lucky I was to have this name so she could trace it with her tongue and make it sound so beautiful.
Steadily, not looking away from me, not even letting herself blink, she took a step back into her apartment as if to invite me in.
Still, I wanted to make sure. “May I…”
Again her voice echoed cool like rain, “Yes. Please, yes.”
Yes, she said, and it brought me to tears. To be given this permission, to be allowed to enter the peaceful quiet of her existence. A feeling like being borne into finer air.
I closed the door behind me and followed her into the living room, where the well-organized turnings of her life revealed themselves to me.
The apartment was all glossy marble and high ceilings, but her belongings were few and meaningful.
The book she had left face-down on the sofa.
The little white candle burning on the coffee table, smelling of vanilla.
The cup of tea next to it. Single cup, I thought and let myself breathe.
But then, as though my sheer presence in her space had disturbed her balance, she clamped a hand over her mouth and collapsed to the floor.
For a long while, I just watched her, shocked, pained, as she sobbed noiselessly into her palm.
As if she hurt too much to leave a sound.
With an indescribable pressure in my chest, I knelt on the floor next to her, wanting to hold her but not knowing if I was allowed to touch her, if she was crying out of relief or something else entirely.
Swallowing hard, I asked, “Can I hold you?”
She let out a muted gasp, and before I knew it, she was whirling around and wrapping her arms around my neck. Because to her I wasn’t a stranger, and this wasn’t a leap of faith. Because she knew me perhaps more intimately than I knew myself.
It was so easy then. To pull her between my knees, cup the back of her head, and keep her face pressed against my throat.
Everything about this moment was familiar to me.
The softness of her hair, the slight pressure of her breasts against my sternum, the scent of her skin, like a perfume you’d once worn obsessively and forgotten all about.
“You’re Anya,” I whispered against her temple.
She cried even harder then, her whole body shaking like a leaf in my arms. I held her as tightly as I could without hurting her, not letting myself breathe until she was able to, until she finally sighed in absolute, transcendent relief, “Yes. I’m Anya.”
She bent back her neck, and our eyes locked again.
Her tearful blue eyes that I somehow knew so well.
I could almost envision it now. Not only the life we’d had in there but also the life we could have here, right now.
Rediscovering each other, reshaping the terms of our intimacy, communicating each of our needs through word and touch and feeling, and then satisfying those needs more deeply and honestly than we had ever done with anyone else before.
Our bond surpassing every obstacle, every commonality.
Until we were able to relive that moment again.
I feel so safe right now. So I could finally tell her that she was, and that she would always, always be safe with me.
At last, fully confronted by the unrealized dream of this life, I brushed the hair back from her face, tracing with my thumb the soft blade of her cheekbone. “I got your postcard,” I told her.
Tremulously, she exchanged her breath with mine, so close our faces were, her fingers at my nape forbidding me from drawing back.
Then, shyly, she smiled. A small, perfect smile. “I’m glad you did,” she said. “I never got yours.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, not fully understanding her but wanting to. Wanting desperately to understand everything. “I can send you another one, if you want.”
Something shifted in her gaze, softened, and she pulled me close again, sighing, “Kai.”
Nothing had ever moved me more than this. Her voice calling to me.
“Anya,” I called back, caving into her, my forehead dropping on her clavicle, almost touching her with my mouth, almost kissing her, almost wanting to do more than that.
“I’m really scared right now,” I exhaled, and, God, I was scared.
Scared of myself. Scared of her and all the things she was making me feel by existing for a mere second in my life.
Although she would probably tell you that it was not only a second.
It was much longer and much more complex than that, my body and soul remembering things my mind couldn’t.
And that frightened me too. The unknowable parts of myself.
The unknowable parts of life. The fact that some things, most things, would never be known or understood by any of us, and that all we could do against this obliterating mystery was hold on to each other.
“I’m really scared too,” she said, pulling me closer.
Yes, hold on to each other. And, in any case, find a way to live.