Skin and bones

I hadn’t seen you in a while, not since our conversation on my front stoop. I was surprised that you were there, at the party, holding onto your new lover. I watched you from across the room as you, in turn, watched her. Your hand rested on her neck in a way I had never felt you touch me and I instinctively placed my hand on my own, just there, wondering what it might be like to fall under that gaze, your eyes proclaiming me something other than skin and bones. Something you would find beautiful. You turned and caught me looking at you and smiled.

We had drawn a line ages ago. The sex was separate from our friendship, though I had realized, without warning, that I had been falling in love with you by inches. It wasn’t part of our plan, in fact it was detrimental to it. But I found myself watching you sleep after we had been together; I hoped for more than a perfunctory hug as I left in the morning; I wished that you would do more than look over my shoulder when you said goodbye, already having forgotten the feel of my naked skin whereas I would bathe in the memory of your fingers running down my stomach for days afterwards. I’d sit in my car, watching you go back inside after lazily stretching up towards the sun and say, “I do not love him,” feeling as though that perhaps by lying to myself, it would somehow become the truth.

Weeks ago, leaning over the edge of sleep, my arm draped over your torso, you whispered, “I can’t do this anymore.” You explained how the girl you had been casually dating – someone I knew about - had become something more. You were falling in love. Being with me now felt like a betrayal. I rolled away from you and stared at the ceiling. “We always knew this would eventually happen,” you said. “Please go,” I said flatly, suddenly feeling something akin to hunger pangs deep within my stomach, but you gathered me to you and said, “No. Please. Just this one more night.” The evening shadows moved across the walls and I watched them fade into dawn, cursing my weakness.

You left that morning as you always did, after making me coffee and reading the paper. I didn’t return your calls for weeks, hoping the distance would purge you from me. You came by one night unannounced and asked why I had been avoiding you, that you missed me and needed someone to talk to about your new and fragile love. “I can’t be that person for you,” I said. And then I told you everything. You squinted up at the night sky for a while, the stars shining down on you. “I wish I had known this long ago. I used to be so in love with you. But then you came up with our arrangement and I didn’t think anything between us was possible. I didn’t think you wanted it.” I leaned heavily against the door-frame and you came towards me, kissed me gently and said, “What bad timing.” I watched as you walked off of my front stoop, through my gate and into the night. You were gone.

And all I could think of was, for you I’d bleed myself dry.