The Scientist

This is the end.

I can’t look at him, can’t watch him put on his shoes or collect his phone, his wallet, his keys, so I look down at the floor. The lighting is all wrong for this, it’s soft and warm and romantic. It’s lighting for a bottle of wine, for long and deep conversation, for a comforting embrace, a shared laugh, a slow kiss, an urgent touch, a magnetic pull. But instead, it’s casting softly over a goodbye, as tears slide down my cheeks while Chris Martin cruelly serenades us from my Bluetooth speaker.

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry

You don't know how lovely you are

I had to find you, tell you I need you

Tell you I set you apart

Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions

Oh, let's go back to the start

Our second August. I’m wearing a red t-shirt, the one he loves to remind me that I once wore inside out. We’ve opened a second bottle of wine as we weave in and out of one conversation and another, off on a tangent, circling back again, the hours effortlessly falling away until we suddenly stumble into a place of grief. He asks me to play songs that make him sad. I understand this, this need to sit in the pain, to let it ebb and flow, to stoke it at certain times and extinguish it at others. I play his songs. I caress his hand, rub his back. And when the wave knocks him over, I sit on his lap, facing him, and wrap my arms around him as tightly as I can.

“I’m in it with you,” I say silently with my body.

“I know,” I say softly with my mouth.

My head pounds, from wine, from tears, from reality as they all wrap around my temples and squeeze like a vice. He’s standing before me. I look at his shoulder, I look at his arm, I look anywhere but his eyes. I have nothing left to say, nothing that won’t slice me with its finality. Not I’ll miss you. Not I’ll be thinking of you. Not I love you. Certainly not goodbye.

Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me

Oh, and I rush to the start

Running in circles, chasing our tails

Coming back as we are

It’s February at home, but it feels like a mid-June night in Florida. We sit at an outdoor bar along the beach, the warm air swirling sweetly around us, white twinkle lights strung above our heads. I turn to look at him and he’s smiling, his eyes bright, the black of the ocean indistinguishable from the black of the night sky behind him. He leans towards me, grinning, staring intently at me for a moment, my stomach flip-flopping from the warmth he’s giving off as he says, “This is the best night of my life.” My brain reminds me that he’s drunk, but my heart whispers, “You know…he might be in love with you.” I order another drink to wash away the panic I feel as I realize I might love him, too. A few hours later, when that drink comes back up and he holds my hair and rubs my back and calls me sweetie, I know. He does love me. And I love him right back.

I wrap my arms around him one last time. He holds me tightly as I bury my face into his neck and breathe him in, his skin ever intoxicating. I feel his body pressed against me, and my own responds like the strike of a match, blissfully unaware of what is happening. My skin aches for the feel of his, as it always does, my desire for him a constant. My tears fall faster, my breath catching in my throat.

Nobody said it was easy

It's such a shame for us to part

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be so hard

Oh, take me back to the start

It’s cold for early April. I scan the bar, hoping I’ll recognize him from his pictures. He stands and gives me a hug. He’s attractive, he’s charming, and he knows it. He wants to be sure I do, too. And so I think, dismissively, “I’ve met this guy a hundred times before.” But I’m wrong. He talks about his sons, he talks about losing his parents, we talk in generalities about the deterioration of our respective marriages.  He talks about things the way I do, he cares about things that I do, he feels things like I do. And when he touches my arm, and then, later, my knee, the electricity radiates off of us. We linger in the parking lot, under the soft glow of the streetlamp. We can’t stop kissing.

I pull away, brushing aside tears only to have more fall, eyes cast downward.

“I can’t watch you go,“ I say, and with that I turn away from him, leaving him by the door. I walk down the hall to my bedroom, embarrassed by the sound of my own crying. I stretch across the foot of the bed, curling into a ball, tears streaming sideways into my ear, into my hair.

Nobody said it was easy

Oh it's such a shame for us to part

He's telling me to look at him, his face just inches above mine, his breath warm and sweet, and when I do I know nothing in the world could ever be better than being naked with him in my bed when he is looking through me and I am looking back; it’s after midnight and we are singing, loudly: Thunder Road, In Your Eyes, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant; he is taking my face in his hands and telling me, his voice thick with emotion, “DO NOT give up on us"; he’s sitting beside me at a crowded bar, suddenly leaning in to kiss me; he is slipping his hand into mine as we make our way through the crowd; we are sitting in the window watching a thunderstorm; we are drinking coffee on my couch; we are clearing dinner from the table; we are waiting for the check; we are talking; we are kissing; we are yelling; we are laughing; we are fucking; we are crying; we are falling...

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be so hard

I'm going back to the start

I hear the door close.

And that is the end.