An Infinity Safe From the Rain

I loved you like a child the first time.

I remember you, in a sweater vest and khakis, shaking your head at me from across the cafeteria. Seventeen was such a young and stupid age to be. I miss it sometimes, but never for too long.

I knew myself better at that age, I think. I was a jock, tall and muscular. My friends used to laugh at me in the hallways for not having a girlfriend. You’d smile at me from your locker.

You were a square. You were so smart, man. It would blow me away sometimes, the way you’d look at someone and know what they were thinking. I remember how I made it my mission to learn every single thing about you, how I’d hang off of every detail of the stories you told me. You did that a lot, I’d lay with my head in your lap and you’d run your fingers through my hair and talk about people and their lives. I believed each one of them like they were real. You never told me otherwise. 

It was a different time then. I still remember how I showed up to prom with a nasty feeling in my gut, scared to face the girl I’d asked to go with me. I walked up the walkway and there you were, standing outside the door like a ghost, grinning at me. 

Two boys couldn’t dance with each other at prom, much less take each other as dates, so you said, “Screw it.” And you whisked me to the diner a block away and we sat together on the same side of the booth and talked all night. I remember how you kissed me in your car, how warm it was, and how giddy I felt. 

And then I saw the flashing lights.

We stood there together in the humid night air. It was hot as we clutched each other, sticky in our rented tuxedos as we watched the smoke billow from the school building. “My sister…” you said numbly, “I almost went too.” And then you sat down on the curb with your face in your hands and you whispered, “We should go look for her. They said...they didn’t say anything! I don’t know who died, who died? Let’s go.” And you stood up and grabbed my hand and led me closer to the fire. I felt funny with your hand in mine when everybody else was there, but nobody looked at us. 

Sirens blared. Paramedics wheeled people out on stretchers, somebody screamed. I don’t think you heard any of it though. You were humming You Are My Sunshine, and then you whispered, “Heather…” and screamed.

You didn’t cry at the funeral. 

You wore the same tux that you wore to prom and you looked at me as they lowered your sister into the ground. I tried to smile at you, but it came out all wobbly and my eyes stung. 

If you hadn’t taken me to the diner that night, I might’ve died. I wonder how you knew. You always seemed to know things that I didn’t, it scared me sometimes. You saved my life, but I’m not sure if you even meant to.

I didn’t hear from you for a while after the funeral. I drove by your house a few times and knocked on your door once, but no one answered it. I was lonely, you were gone and my friends weren’t talking to me. 

When you finally called, you said one word. “Sorry,” and then you hung up. 10 minutes later you were knocking on my front door. We sat in the car for a few minutes before you started driving. Your car always smelled like cigarettes even though you didn’t smoke. The scent was stronger than usual that day, strong enough that it hung to my clothes and when I got home my mom asked me where I had been. 

You took me to the park, and we sat on a bench together with our shoulders touching. “Rich…” you said and I clung to the way you said my name. Rich, how you sounded it out like it was foreign. And the next thing you said tore me apart: “We shouldn’t be together anymore.”

“Oh.” Was all I said. A flock of pigeons landed in front of us and I shooed them away. You looked wounded.

“I’m sorry,” you said and I shook my head. 

“Can we still be friends?” I asked after a few moments. “Can we be that at least?”

“I think it’d be better if we weren’t anything,” you said. “I don’t hate you, you know. I don’t want us to be enemies. I just...I think we should be nothing, Rich. Richard.”

I remember how I tried to be quiet while I cried even though you were there next to me and could see. You didn’t cry, but you never cried. I don’t cry, you’d said before, even as a baby I never cried. I was a good kid, never cried.

You stayed there for a long time and I wanted you to leave. Eventually, I gave up on trying to hide my tears. I could feel you jump when my first sob hit the air and then you went still. I didn’t cry for long, but it was just enough to make me want to run and hide.

A man walked by us and stood still for a moment, taking in the sight. Two kids sat neatly on a bench, one looking right back at him and the other crying his eyes out. I bet he’d have never guessed we were lovers. Eventually, he walked away and you leaned back against the bench. “He scuffs his feet every five steps,” you said. “Drives me crazy.”

I just nodded. I was done crying by then but my eyes were puffy. I felt so ugly under your eyes at that moment. I’d like to say I didn’t care but that’s not true.

“You scuff your feet sometimes,” you told me. “But it doesn’t bother me as much when you do it.” And then you reached into the breast pocket of your jacket and pulled something out. You shoved it into my hand wordlessly and stood up. I watched from the bench as you stretched your back out and your shirt lifted up ever-so-slightly. You turned to face me and scratched your head. Then you walked away.

I looked at what you had given me. It was a polaroid of us on prom night. Below the picture, you had scrawled 3 hours before. I shoved it into my jacket and left it there until three years later when I went through the pockets before giving it to Goodwill. 

 I didn’t hear from you for a decade.

I took a gap year after high school, which nobody expected. I think everyone assumed I would be the type to go to college and party for 6 months straight before dropping out. That’s what kids like me did back then.

I went to college in town eventually and got a degree in communications. I hear you went to Georgetown and became a writer. That’s what everybody thought you’d do. 

The next time I saw you I was 27 and in a grocery store. I had just grabbed a basket and made my way down the first aisle when I saw you standing there. You looked the same but entirely different too. You’d let your hair grow some. Not long, but long enough that you could part it. You dressed differently too, kept the same khakis and switched from sweaters to t-shirts.

And then you turned and we locked eyes. I dropped my basket, turned around, and left.

Today’s a new day. 

I am 30, and I am sitting in your car with the windows rolled up and rain hitting the windshield. This car smells like smoke too, but you smoke now. I never took up smoking myself, but I had a nasty drinking habit for a few years in my early 20’s. 

I look at you and erase the age from your face. We are 17, sitting in this same parking lot instead of going to our prom.

We are in love. We are so so young, but we know that’s what it is. The sign of the diner illuminates your face as you save my life.

But we are 30, and someone else owns the diner and they took down the sign. 

“How did you find me?” I ask you and you look at me. You look good. Your frame has filled out and you stand tall. You look healthier than you did in high school; the years have treated you well. 

“Asked around,” you say. “My parents said you never left.”

“Nah,” I tell you. “I was waiting for something. Something to start or stop or go, I guess. I never got anything.” I feel so small when you look at me, and you feel so warm. I remember how you kissed me and it was like nobody else was there. I wonder if you would still do that, if you would still kiss me, right here outside of the diner with everybody watching. 

“I couldn’t stay,” You say. “You couldn’t have paid me to stay.” I bought one of your books, I want to tell you. I know that already. ‘You couldn’t have given me anything to get me to stay. I held the Earth in my palms and let it drip, so slowly, between my fingers. I am a ghost, floating from place to place and leaving nothing untouched. I am tired. Let me go, world. I beg of you: Let me go.’ I never finished the book, I didn’t like it.

“Why'd you come back?” I ask and you look at me, you really look at me, and I know you’re seeing me the way I used to be. You blink slowly, and I can feel each second becoming past tense. I missed you is on the tip of my tongue, but I know that in your head all you hear is sirens. 

I reach out and take your hand in mine. Slowly, like everything you do, beautifully and slowly, your fist uncurls and you intertwine your fingers with mine. “We can go somewhere else,” I whisper. 

“My mom died.” You say suddenly. “And I had to come home and help my dad.” Your grip tightens around my hand. We are so ageless, I think. I am looking at you and you are looking at me and all of this was happening 13 years ago in the same place. Inside of your car is an infinity and we are safe in it. 

But your mom is dead, and time still passes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper and you shake your head. “You scared me real bad when I saw you today,” I say. “Like I saw a ghost or something. It’s been too long.”

You must notice how I’m looking at you, but you don’t say anything. In high school, you used to talk about how we’d be when we grew up. You said I’d be tall and handsome, but I look at you and you’re so gorgeous. I could never compare. 

“You saw me, didn’t you? In the grocery store a few years back.” I nod. “I knew it was you from the way you were standing,” you continue, “All broad and confident until you saw me. And then you ran.”

The way you look at me. You can’t do that, because when you do it makes me think that maybe you feel it too. And that maybe all those books you wrote weren’t about nothing and that maybe, just maybe, your biggest regret was leaving without saying goodbye. 

“I never knew why you did the things you did.”

The silence hangs heavy for a few minutes. Our hands are still clasped together and yours is sweaty. I love you right now and I will tomorrow too. It takes all of me not to blurt it out. 

The rising sun makes your face glow, highlighting the curves of your cheekbones and the now-forming lines under your eyes. 

“Why didn’t we work?” I ask suddenly, and you jump. You look at me with wide eyes and pull your hand back. I welcome the cold with the threat of tears and I feel so young. “What did I do wrong?” I ask you, quieter this time. 

“You didn’t do anything.” You sniff, but you don’t cry. Because you don’t cry. “You reminded me too much of everything that happened.”

“Do I still?” I am sitting in your car in the rain and I am staring at you. 

“Yes.” You say and I feel my heart breaking. A tear runs hot and salty down my face and I hurriedly wipe it off. 

This isn’t happening. I am not in the park again, but I hear your words and feel the chilly morning air. 

“But it doesn’t hurt so bad anymore.” You say quickly. “I’m sorry.”

You start to shake and it scares me. With glassy eyes, you look at me and say, “I missed you.”

We are not kids anymore, but we missed each other like kids do, with bandaids on our fingers and the wind in our hair. Instead, we are ghosts and you saved my life 13 years ago and then broke my heart.

We are both crying in your car at age 30, and I feel like I’ve done something wrong because you don’t cry. You never, ever cry and then you kiss me. 

I am 30 years old outside of a diner kissing you, and I am thinking This. This is where we were supposed to be that night. You were supposed to save me, and you did it. Thank you, thank you.

It is like that night, but this time there are no sirens. There is me, and there is you and I still love you.

It is not like that night, because we are both crying. 

Last week, I drove past the lot that the school used to sit on. There was nothing. 

No statue, no bench, nothing but that old oak tree that sat on the edge of the field, just along the property line dividing the school from the Dirt Cheap and that greasy waffle house along the ramp entrance to the highway. 

I parked my car and got out, slowly making my way over to the oak tree.

 I stood there staring at it for a while. Right there in the middle, just a few inches above my head, someone had stapled a yellowed newspaper clipping.

 1 DEAD AND 32 INJURED IN FIRE AT LAKEVIEW HIGH SCHOOL read the headline and my breath caught in my throat. I could still hear the sirens. 

Last Friday night, a fire broke out at Lakeview High School leaving 1 student dead and 32 hospitalized for severe burns and smoke inhalation. The students had been attending their senior prom when a chaperone was said to have smelled smoke in the gym. Fire marshal Jonathan Wilcox said early Saturday morning that it appeared the fire was caused by faulty wiring in the building...

I stopped reading and looked down. On the ground at the base of the tree were three cigarette butts and a pile of ashes. I got back in my car.

I drove for hours until my vision started to blur and I wondered what the hell I was doing. The sign along the road said that I was in a different state.

I felt dizzy watching as different trucks pulled in and out of the same rest stop and nobody said anything to each other. I spent the night in a hotel and then drove back home early the next morning.

I parked outside of my house and sat there with my forehead against the steering wheel until my neighbor, Mike, came and knocked on the window. “How’s it going, pal?” he asked me, smelling of smoke and peppermint. “You hangin’ in there?” 

I gave him a weak smile and rolled the window the rest of the way down. “Livin’ the dream.” 

He looked at me funny and then opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. “At least it’ll be summer soon.” He said and started to walk away but I called out to him. He turned. 

“You ever been outside of the city?” I asked him and he nodded. “I left for the first time yesterday,” I said.

“How was it?” He asked, bending down to pick up his newspaper.

“It was nothing.” I said, “There wasn’t anything there for me. It was the funniest thing because everybody was doin’ the same stuff they do here, but I didn’t know any of them. They didn’t even act like they knew each other.”

Mike held his newspaper in his left hand and hit it against his right one a few times. “It’s like that, Dick.” He said finally. “The second you get a chance you try to leave, thinkin’ somewhere else is better because you don’t know it. But it never is.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Because when you get home you see that everything is still going and businesses have new customers. Seasons change, Dick. Say, I heard someone was lookin’ for you.” And he left it at that.

I think he was right. Time passes and people change. 

That is why you came and found me. That’s why you don’t try to pull away when I run my fingers through your hair. I ask you if you’re leaving. 

“No,” you say. “No, I’m not leaving. I’ve seen the world and I don’t want to see any more of it, Richard. I just want you.” 

“I want you too,” I say. 

We look at each other. Neither of us runs away this time.