He ran into her when the evening was oblivion, a cascade of pinks and yellows and blues melting and the parking lot was dirt-brown yellow and his car was dirty so he was embarrassed when he neared his and saw her exiting hers.
An odd fact light-bulbed in his mind, something he had read and something he remembered...honey never spoils...to this day, we could eat 3000-year old honey. In that moment, when she fell into his gaze like a rough-tumbling star clawing its way across a Texas sky, he realized that she would never diminish, could never diminish either. She was the honey, the sweet drip in his mind, the sweet slide of color against glass...and he noticed her hair...he noticed her mascara...he noticed the orange shirt beneath the black sweater...as he was thinking of honey and its everlasting gobstopper goodness and he noticed....
The next piece fell like a tile in his mind, like a building that had been caught in about a 6.7 earthquake, chalky white tiles spilling from a ceiling onto an industrial floor...a snippet of a song from a singer they both had loved...a young guy, who finally made big with his "Come on Get Higher" hit...but in an earlier stage he was a struggling musician who had poignant lyrics and a driving chord-riff...in his song "Detroit Waves" he had a sentence that suddenly scrolled through his mind...like those news scrolls across the bottom of the TV screen while watching Fox news...
"I'll, still, say your name to fall asleep"
Some cars came into the parking lot, their headlights spiraling briefly across him and her and he noticed that the distance between them was actually a lot closer than he thought. Another thought: Objects in the Mirror are Much Closer than They Appear. He remembered riding in cars with her under such blankets of evenings...he remembered when her thigh was alongside his, when he felt just brief warmth at those connected points...like small heating pads...like the way you feel when you put your hand in a coat. The textures coat your fingers and embrace it, hooding it, collapsing around it, comforting. Protecting. He didn't necessarily feel a sexual tension but rather a proper one...a fit. A comfort in the way you held hands on a beach.
And damn if a Linkin Park lyric didn't cross his mind. She moved easy, but knowing she was caught. Like she couldn't alter an approach, like the way a tumbling star gave way to gravity and heat and succumbed to the simple natural fact that this was going down in flames...and it might hurt upon landing.
And as he watched her proximity he knew he was in radar contact. She knew. She saw. She was in motion and he happened upon her. An interesting take, since she had likely never expected him here. Never wanted him, never hoped, but things like Karma and Tai Chi and a whole host of cosmic forces put them in this big ass planet into a place no bigger than a parking lot.
He was never a fan of Transformers and even lesser of a fan of Shia Labeouf...but he made his money and he did his thing. But a song from the soundtrack was a great song to work out to and it was his latest favorite...especially a part that was in the New Divide track:
"so give me reason, to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean. Let the thoughts cross the distance in your eyes, give me reason to fill this hole..." She ambled near him, her eyes up but her head down. There was an inevitability.
And he turned.
And it may have been one of the hardest things he had ever chosen. Not like diving into a bullet or thrusting himself into a train...but rather, something much more benign but in his chest-plate it was one of the more challenging and piercing moments of his evening...at least thus far.
He altered his angle and he walked into a direction where she would not collide with him, and thus he could continue his walk and she could continue hers...uninterrupted and undisturbed. No protocols to observe, no head gestures, no nods or winks or even a raised eyebrow.
He walked into an evening that was collapsing upon itself, the clouds wrecking his view, and there were no thighs touching or hands clasping and there were no knowing nudges of "hey, I know you" and as he looked at the horizon it seemed even further than he had hoped and she was even further than beyond that.
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