Three Days

I walked into the bathroom and saw his toothbrush standing in the glass by the side of the sink. I had bought it for him on the third day and left it there waiting for him. He had never used it. It mocked me with its newness, its immaculate bristles, its untouched purple handle. But I did not move it. I just left it there, alone and idle, in the glass by the side of the sink.

It had all been so fast, so bewilderingly odd, and I was still counting days. The day we met, the day we touched, the day we said goodbye. I didn’t want to think about him anymore. I wanted to forget him but it was still so fresh and my heart was consumed with him, the cogs in my head already spinning, guiding me back to those three days, returning me to that tender space which had been void and filled and lost.

London, on the Saturday we had met, had been hot, the whole month of July the warmest on record for years. Even the short burst of a rain shower had not dampened the heat which rose off the streets as the bus pushed its way through the heaving capital, the smell of the city and the rain reaching my nostrils, filling my lungs. I remember I had glanced at my phone, anxious that I was late, nervous that I was early.I didn’t know it then, but the bus was more than that, it was a golden chariot, leading me to chance, to promise.

He was a friend of a friend and we had spoken just once on the phone. One single time. A conversation that had come so effortlessly to both of us, without introduction, without preamble, that it was hard to believe we had never met before. Our dialogue had flowed with such ease, fuelled by such longing, of hope, of something different. We fixed a time, a place, a moment. I was meeting a stranger but I had no fear of the unknown.

I saw him before he saw me. And although I knew him only by the pictures I had formed in my mind, there was no mistaking him. He was seated but he looked taller than I thought he would be, thinner, leaner. His hair was black, blacker than mine, and my heart skipped a beat as I approached him. He was on the bench, in the designated chosen spot, his shoulders back, arms outstretched behind him, hands clasping the back of it, his face tipped up to the sun. I stood in front of him then, just a girl, just a woman, looking for more, no longer wanting to settle for less.

He sensed me there. He opened his eyes, shielding them from the sunlight. A sharp intake of breath as my eyes met his, drowning in them. I didn’t speak and neither did he. My skin prickled with goose-bumps and I saw him breath in, breath out, the corners of his mouth turning upwards into a smile, exposing neat teeth, white against his dark skin. He stood up, much taller than myself, as I thought he would be. We looked at each other then and something happened; I cannot explain what it was. But he opened his arms wide and I went into them. I closed my eyes and felt his hands pressing into the small of my back. I was cocooned, protected, safe in his embrace, and I felt the stinging of tears behind my eyelids. My arms reached up to the soft curling hair at the nape of his neck. I breathed in, smelling his smell, making his smell mine, holding tightly onto him. All this without a single word yet spoken between us.

When he said my name quietly into my ear I melted as I knew I would. He spoke to me naturally, at ease with me, with a faint accent, an inflection, which I could not place. I marvelled at the way his eyes wrinkled at the sides when he laughed and I swallowed his energy, his optimism, like it was contagious.

We sat at the bench for a long time, in awe of one another, without surprise at the harmony that had sprung up between us. If there were other people walking past us, and there must have been a great many, then I do not remember them.If the noise of the city had dimmed even one iota as time ticked by, I was not aware of it. Nothing mattered, only his voice in my ears, his hands in mine.One phone call, two strangers.

By the evening we had connected on every level I thought possible. It was insane, unreal, like a dream. He took me to his home and it looked like mine. We lay on his bed in his room, our jeans the same colour, wrapped around each other, both of us thin and lithe, young yet old. He read me poetry and then he dozed while I remained awake, the stars keeping me company, my excitement chasing the sleep away.

On Sunday morning, the birds were singing and I had to go. I reluctantly left, unravelling myself from him at his door, missing him already. Phone calls and messages went back and forth throughout the day, my smile drying on my teeth, making my cheeks ache. Within twenty four hours we were already talking about the country we would live in and the places we would go to.I knew the names of his family, the reason for his accent, what he liked to eat, how he conducted his day. He gave me answers I never knew I needed, answered questions without me asking them. I swallowed all his words with a huge hunger. His words came from a place deep in his heart, as if he had never given them his voice before.

I returned to him in the evening. We were drawn to each other like magnets. I massaged his feet and watched his movements. He took my face in his hands and tucked my hair behind my ears. He needed truth, he told me. He was so very tired of dishonesty. He wanted a woman who knew her own mind, her own worth. Who had not bent to the superficial standards society had set. He asked if I understood what he meant? Whether I was truthful to myself? But his words were confusing and I did not answer him. He had looked into my eyes and felt something then, even if he didn’t know it yet. I saw it.His skin was like my own yet he was dark and I was pale. I drove through a rainbow to meet him.

On Monday I discovered the taste of his mouth and he discovered mine. He placed his hands on the arch of my back and there was love in his touch. He took me for lunch, a small café on a narrow London street where we ate pizza and sipped coffee well into the afternoon. We walked back to his home, drifting in and out of shops, holding hands in the street, and I fell asleep in his bed as he organised his life, while time continued to roll by. We talked about our dreams, our failures, our hopes together. He ordered me a book and gave me old CD’s of music he thought I would love. And he was right because I did. He plied me with chocolate hearts, wrapped in red foil, and rolled us immaculate joints with expert fingers.

We looked at each other and grinned at our success, at the sheer luck of finding one another. We fell asleep in each other’s arms listening to his music, my music now, while total happiness enveloped us both. Tomorrow he would be in my home and he would see my world, lay in my bed. Two troubled souls, once separate and alone, who, quite by chance, had met one another in a city, by a bench, in a park.

On Tuesday morning, the fourth day, we had woken up to sunlight and he had told me I was beautiful. But I had laughed at his words, my hands already smoothing out my tousled hair. I batted away his compliment quickly, sheepishly, as etiquette had taught me to do. He had looked at me then, and the light shifted. He abruptly withdrew his arms from around my body, curling away from me offended, disappointed, forlorn. He had recoiled like he no longer knew me. Was I just the same as everyone else then, he had asked, his voice small, barely audible. He asked me how he could fall in love with a woman who did not accept her own beauty? Who could not accept the truth. I reached out to him then, apologizing, regretful, realising immediately my error, my blunder, but he had already turned his back on me.

I had not been honest with this man who had asked me only for honesty. I was beautiful. I knew I was beautiful. Social conventions had taught me how to use pretence. I had learned the rules of protocol and waved his compliment away, as if it held no truth. By rejecting his words of admiration for me I had diluted the certainty he so desperately needed. I could feel everything we had created slipping through my fingers like sand. Within hours I knew the spell was broken.

We did not speak to each other for five days. My heart broke a million times and my smiles were pale. Then I dipped my fingers into the unknown, into that vast expanse of Akashic Sea which had opened up between us. I contacted him and he came to me immediately.

I held his face with gentle fingers and pleaded with him to listen to me. I opened myself up to him, without constraints, without limitations. I implored him to forget my throw-away words, assuring him that I knew my own value. But I knew he could no longer see it. We grasped each other’s hands and clung on to the remnants of that thing that had been so special, so rare. He had asked me how we could go from nothing, to everything, to nothing again. You are beautiful, he told me, again and again.But honesty begins with accepting your own truth. We touched each other and we dug deep into our souls but the magic that had cushioned us had disappeared as quickly as it had manifested.

Three beautiful days. Odd, thrilling, terrifying. Exciting, peculiar, all-consuming. We had swum together in a sea of calm and we had almost made it to the other side. The serenity that we had experienced had been so immediate, so whole, it was hard to believe it even happened. Harder to believe it was now lost.

In the end he never saw me in my world, as I had seen him in his. He never laid in my bed, in my room, eating chocolate hearts from red foil wrappers. I would never read the book he ordered for me, or feel his hands pressing into the small of my back. Like a thrilling adventure in a foreign land, time would eventually dim my memories of him and I would remember him only like a faded photo. But I knew that my heart would always ache for those three days.

I threw his toothbrush away.