Slipping Through My Fingers

Part One

We met in New York City the day before I turned twenty-one. I wasn’t looking for love. After all, I had just broken up with my girlfriend of five years, and this was my first taste of real freedom. As the blonde’s eyes met mine, I realized that, whether I was looking for love or not, it had found me.

You might be rolling your eyes at me. That would certainly have been my reaction at the words “love at first sight”. Yet there was no other way to describe the feeling that blossomed in my chest at the sight of her.

Warning: what I say next may cause you to roll your eyes even further, but it’s the truth. Just like in the movies, my surroundings disappeared, and she filled my vision. I half expected a spotlight to shine down on her.

I had thought her beauty was the most surprising thing I had ever seen, but it would appear I was wrong. The most surprising thing was the fact that she was staring right back at me, with an expression of wonder on her face that no doubt matched my own.

Like magnets, we moved towards each other, keeping our eyes locked. The crowd was the Red Sea, separating as we plunged through it, knowing that we were a force to be reckoned with. When we finally came face to face, she was breathless. “Want to get out of here?” her voice was husky, and it stirred something in me. I would have followed her anywhere, even to my death. I told her so, not sure where the confidence had come from.

We skipped the small talk, and in those few hours, I knew more about her than I knew about Annie, the girl I thought I had loved. Her name was Scarlet, and she had just finished high school in London. America was her big adventure before she started the next chapter in her life. Her parents were rich, but she would rather they be poor and care about her.

“Your turn,” she said, licking the ice cream I had bought her. It was all I could afford. I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to be seductive or not, but I had a feeling that Scarlet was the type of girl who demanded men’s attention without trying. Certainly, heads turned wherever we walked, and I could all but read their thoughts – ­What’s a girl like her doing with a guy like him?

I knew that’s what they were thinking, because it was what I was thinking. Already, I could feel the jealousy rising in my chest, the fierce possessiveness. I knew that if another man ever touched her, I would lose my mind.

“My name is Eddie,” I said, flushing. It was such a boring name in comparison to hers.

That was what I thought, at least, until she purred, “Eddie,” and I couldn’t control myself. No one had ever said my name like that, like it meant something. I crushed my lips to hers, swearing that nothing could feel better than this, until her lips parted and she let out a moan as she sunk into the kiss and kissed me back.

We spent the night together, which wasn’t a first for me, but it was the first time it had meant something. It was the first time I cried. I hadn’t planned on the evening going in that direction when she had invited me to her hotel room. I had fantasized about it, of course, but I fancied myself a gentleman, and I usually waited until at least the third date before I made a move.

I had gone to the bathroom to freshen myself up, and when I came out, she was spread out on the bed, not a single thread covering her glorious body. She blew me a kiss, and as I reached up to catch it, I knew that I was ruined. Even if I only had one night with her, she would haunt me for the rest of them.

By some stroke of luck, I didn’t have only one night with her. She had two weeks before she had to go, and she seemed perfectly content spending most of her time in my little apartment instead of sightseeing.

By day three, I took a chance. “Move in here until you need to go back. What’s the use of paying for your hotel room if you spend all your time here, anyway?”

I tried to read her expression. What if she thought I was too forward? My worries were eased when she exclaimed, “Oh, Eddie!” and threw her arms around me. I wondered if my body would ever stop reacting so intensely when it came to her.

We had nearly no rules. We slept through the day and made love through the night. We ate chocolate mousse for breakfast and cereal for dinner. The only rule that we had was an unspoken one: we don’t talk about the future.

It was an easy rule to follow. We were young and in love, high on hormones and drunk on kisses. Why spoil our fun with questions we couldn’t answer? As the days passed, I became aware of an underlying fear in the back of my brain. What next? What would happen when her two weeks were up? I couldn’t live without her. If I woke up before her, waiting for her to join me was agonizing.

It was our last night together, and I knew that it was now or never. “Don’t go,” I said. She laughed, and the sound was a bullet straight to my heart.

“Oh, Eddie,” she said. It was all she seemed to say. “I can’t stay, my love. I have a life back in London. I have friends. I have an apartment. I have university to attend,”

“So?” I was desperate. “You can make a life here. You can make friends, get an apartment and study, here, with me,”

Her eyes flashed, and I recoiled inwardly. She hadn’t gotten mad much in the past two weeks, but on the few occasions that she did, it was like a wildfire had erupted.

“Why should I be the one to uproot my life?” she demanded. “Why don’t you come to London with me?”

“I will! If you ask me, I will spend all of my money on going to London to be with you. I told you that first night, I would follow you anywhere. To the ends of the earth. Through hell and back.”

“Oh, Eddie,” she said, and her voice was sad this time as she stroked my hair out of my face so that she could gaze into my eyes. “Did you really think this would last forever?” she didn’t say the words in a hurtful way, but that didn’t stop my body from reacting.

I started shaking, trying but failing to keep my tears at bay. How could I tell her that that was exactly what I had thought, without sounding like a fool?

“Don’t cry, my love. I only mean that what we have is so special because we know it’s temporary. If we spend forever together, the magic will fade. We’ll see each other’s flaws,”

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, to make her see that the magic would never fade, that she would eternally remain flawless in my eyes, but the realization hit me so hard it threatened to knock the breath out of me. She didn’t mean us, she meant her. The magic would fade for her. She would start seeing my flaws.

Nothing I said would be able to change that. Scarlet was a free spirit, which was one of the reasons I had fallen so hard for her. If I begged her, forced her to stay, I would be killing off a part of her.

“Will I ever see you again?” I was done trying to hide my heartbreak. My face was a study in pain.

“Not any time soon, my love. We both have lives to live, people to marry, children to raise. We can’t risk destroying that by seeing each other,”

I just nodded, tears streaming down my face. She must have taken sympathy on me, because she relented somewhat. “I’ll tell you what, in fifty years, if you still remember me, we’ll meet again,”

I could hear the excitement in her voice, and I realized that this wasn’t an epic love story for her, as it was for me. No, for Scarlet, this was an adventure, and there was nothing Scarlet loved more than an adventure.

The pain that came from knowing that our time together meant something different to her than it did for me was eased by the knowledge that she had conceded to see me again, even if it was in the future.

Her eyes were sparkling the way they did whenever I mentioned us doing something spontaneous. “Fifty years from the day we met, we’ll meet at the same bar we met the first time. Eight pm,” she held out her hand, and I shook it, hope fluttering dangerously in my chest as I did the math. In fifty years I would be in my very early seventies. If I lived to be eighty, that would mean I’d get to spend ten years with her. Ten years with Scarlet was worth fifty years without her.

She touched me with a new kind of reverence that night, and I knew that our time together had not meant nothing to her, after all. I cried again afterwards, and this time I wasn’t the only one. We held each other until sleep overtook us, our tears mingling as they dripped onto our naked bodies.

When I woke up, she was gone, and the cold space next to me told me that there was no use trying to chase her down. Her warm body had been replaced by a piece of paper, with the address where we had first met, and the words, 8 pm, 50 years from when we met, written under it. She had placed a lipstick red kiss over the words, and I pressed it to my mouth, trying to feel some semblance of what I felt when I kissed her. The paper gave me a paper cut, and I relished the pain.

Part two

My hands were shaking, and it had nothing to with the old age setting in. In fifty years, the place hadn’t changed much. There were flat screens against the walls, and new fruity drinks lined the shelves, but, all in all, it was a relief. I had been scared that the bar would have been replaced by a construction site, and I would have missed the chance I had been waiting for.

I had gotten here early, scared that I would miss her. I ordered a Scotch to calm my nerves, and then I took a piece of paper out of my wallet and smoothed it on top of the recently wiped table. After all this time, the paper was brittle, and the words were so faded I could barely make them out. Not that I needed to. They were imprinted on my brain. I had been living on a tightrope that started the last day I had ever seen Scarlet and hopefully ended today, when I saw her again.

In my thirty years of marriage, I had never cheated on my wife, never so much as looked at another woman. And yet I was unfaithful to her every single day. When I kissed her, I kept expecting the jolt that went through me when I kissed Scarlet. When our bodied moved together at night and I came undone, I imagined Scarlet underneath me.

The worst pain of my life had been losing Scarlet. The second worst was the day I realized my wife knew that my heart would always belong to another woman. It was ten years ago, and she was in the hospital. The kids said their goodbyes, and then it was my turn.

What do you say to the woman who loved you unconditionally, when you couldn’t do the same? To the woman who raised your children, who got up at two am to breastfeed them, while you were having dreams about another woman? The answer? You tell her the truth. You tell her that you love her, that she was a wonderful wife and the best mother. And then you fall apart as her final words are, “You were the love of my life, Eddie. I’m sorry I couldn’t be yours.” And you cry as the machine beeps. And you hate yourself for being in love with a woman from decades ago. And you hate yourself even more for not hating that woman.

My pity party was interrupted by my phone vibrating, alerting me to the fact that it was ten to eight. My heart raced in anticipation. As I switched the alarm off, I decided I might as well reply to all my children. They knew about tonight and what it meant to me, and of course they all wanted to accompany me, but I insisted that this was something I had to do alone.

They had prepared me for the possibility that she might not show. Of course I knew that. She could be happily married. She might be sick and unable to fly to the US. She might have forgotten about me. Or, in the worst case scenario, she might have suffered the same horrible fate as my wife.

I was halfway through answering my eldest son, when I felt a tug at my heart. I looked up, and against all odds, there she was. I would have recognized her anywhere. Her face was lined, her hair was silver instead of gold, and her back was bent, but it was her. She met my eye, and it was that first night all over again. “Scarlet!” I cried, trying to make my way to her.

Were it not for my stiff joints, I would have run across the room and swept her up. I forgot all my manners, shoving people out of the way in order to get to her. And there she was, glorious as ever. My memories had not done her justice.

“Scarlet!” I cried again when I reached her. Confusion flitted across her face.

“Sorry,” she said. “Do I know you?”