If You Take Left

The roads lay bare and lonely in the dark. Lately, on nights like this, I have heard them beg for company. Through the kitchen window I watch the moon illuminate them as I make my cup of tea. I often find myself in this place, right here, wondering where they lead.

Of course, I know a left turn outside the gate of our perfectly maintained fence leads you to the supermarket. Or the cinema or the hairstylist or even if you go a little further to the place where I used to work.

However, if you take a right turn it will lead you to Jacksons parents’ house in just ten minutes. It’s an easy route. When the road splits take another right and suddenly, you’ll enter a small neighborhood. There you find a lavish blue house on the second street. It has the most perfect oak three towering in the front yard and in its sturdiest branch hangs a deck swing.

Every time we drive there Jackson reminds me how much he loved the swing as a kid and one day he wants one for our own children. If you though, for whatever reason, take a left at the fork, it will lead to the highway and then who knows where you could end up.

I detach from the view and remember my fiancés words “too much window watching isn’t healthy for you”. Not until recently did I ever consider he might be right. Sometimes Jackson knew what was good for me better than I did.

I find him, just like any other night, half stretched out on the couch watching television with half of an attempt at paying attention.

“Coffee for you, my dear.” I say, pressing a kiss to his forehead before settling beside him. In his usual manner he squeezes my hand as a thank you. He is mostly a man of few words, even around me. It never fazed me as learned to find satisfaction in the peace it brought. Tonight though, the conversations we don’t have creep on me like a lurking predator, waiting patiently for me to break under the pressure of its silence. I slouch under the weight of my secrets but bite my tongue.

“What are you watching?” I ask ignoring how blatantly obvious the answer is.

“Ah nothing. Just some program about house renovation.” He shrugs and I can’t tell if he enjoys the program or if he’s just killing time before he takes off. A habit he often falls victim to. In only an hour he’ll drive to work and leave me to fall asleep as he makes our living.

“You see that?”

“No what?” I ask abrupted in my thoughts, not having the slightest clue on what he is referring to. Even though I’ve stared at the TV for the last minutes I couldn’t give a summarization if my life depended on it. My mind is elsewhere and the visions I see yet in the future.

“They’re planning to tear all that down for a kitchen island. I know my folks always wanted one.” His voice carrying that waiting tone revealing he expects me to understand where he’s going with this.

Intuitively I have a hymn.

It’s impossible not to. We have grown up together, nourished by the same sunlight, the same rain, until we became intertwined like vines. He was to me more than an open book. We are a language only the both of us can speak.

“Well, I was thinking we could tear down the kitchen wall. It would make an open space for all this.” He continues. I can decipher from the excitement in his eyes that his mind is already set. To Jackson building or renovating our home was more than a past time hobby, it was a virtue or calling even. It might sound like he’s proposing an idea but my opinion about it is irrelevant to his ears.

“But I like the kitchen as it is.” I intervene and fail to hide the slight hint of annoyance in my voice. He pauses for a second, weighing his words to choose out the right ones to win me over.

“It would be better if it were an open space, I think. Don’t you? It would make the house feel more connected. I think it be better for our family.” I bite back the impulse to tell him there is no family. We don’t have any kids. Instead, I go quiet as he makes another point of how much easier it would be to watch over the kids while making dinner. I run my finger around the rim of the cup and swallow hard.

“What’s the rush though? It’s not like that would happen soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yeah, well I’m not pregnant or anything.”  He smiles while looking at me in amusement.

“Maybe not, but soon.”

“What do you mean soon? I don’t have a job or a career or anything.” Now my voice has an edge to it and his brows furrow at the tone.

“No but what, I thought we talked about this. Do you suddenly want to wait now?” The amusement have faded into confusion painted all over his face. “With all the night shifts I can take care of both of us. You don’t even have to work. It would be better anyways for the children with one parent staying home.”

It’s true. We talked and agreed about this. When we were fourteen and lying in each other’s arms dreaming of our future together, and a thousand times since. Back then it felt like the whole world was waiting for us. I thought it would be just so easy to reach out and take it. Make it ours.

Now those conversations feel like they belong to someone else, and I can’t bring myself to answer him.

Desperate for silence again I turn to look at him- really look at him and his beautiful face. He has quite soft features and gentle eyes. There’s a scar on his jaw; one I like to kiss a lot.

My eyes land on his lips and my body remembers their intoxicating embrace. I can’t help myself and I lean forward. I kiss him like all the air in the room has run out.

Then I pull back slightly, afraid it was too sudden, too aggressive, but he follows. He kisses me back and I can taste the relief on his tongue. Tension we hadn’t acknowledge releases.

We haven’t kissed like this in a long time. For the last weeks I’ve been distant, and Jackson wasn’t late to pick up on it. He noticed every little thing about me no matter how trivial. Yet, somehow, he failed to see the big picture.

“Yes, you’re right.” I agree and smile sweetly enough to make me sick. Tonight though, I bet he thinks he has me all figured out again. I’m his girlfriend once again and no longer a stranger in his house. I’m finally working like I used to; present, listening and loving. It’s a strange thing having someone know you completely and then also see right through you. If I was undecided before, my mind was now set in stone.

“I really do love you.” He whispers with a voice like a gentle summer breeze, and it tears up a storm inside of me. Delicate butterflies come alive like every other time I hear him say those words. Only tonight, their wings are sharp as well.

I can’t demand myself to answer and in a loving desperation I lay my head on his chest. Gentle fingers stroke through my hair and as the minutes go by, my pulse slows. His heartbeat thumps into my ears and it sounds like a symphony. A song with sedative effects and I hope to fall asleep only to wake up and realize this is all but a bad dream.

As we lay like this, memories start playing in my head. I am reminded of every other time he has proven himself to be this calmness in my life, The times I thought surely the world had just ended. All the nights I had laid in his arms and his body had been a fortress for the scared little girl I had become. My tears usually soaked his clothes, but he never even noticed.

In the storms that shook my life he was and has always been my safe harbor. Though as the quote goes, a ship might be safe in harbor but it’s not what it’s built for.

A part of me wants to stay this way forever, the seconds stretching out into eternity and his body wrapped around mine. Though I have made my choice. Eventually, though it feels impossible, the clock strikes nine and I helplessly watch him get up. We have run out of time in more than one way. He whispers goodnight and gives me a farewell kiss. I do everything in my power to make it memorable. Before he is out the door I wrap my arms around him tightly in a big hug.

“I really do love you.” I say and hope he will always remember it as the truth. From the kitchen window I watch his car start up and lights flooding the night. I see him drive out and watch the headlights disappear far into the dark. Even as they are gone, I continue to stay for a long time, staring in the direction they faded like I could still resemble them there. As if an echo of them could somehow exist. I whisper once again that I truly do love him and then I tear myself from the sights. As my fiancé says, too much window watching isn’t healthy for me.

I walk past the calendar and see the 19^th marked out. It says date night across it and the air in the room thins out. Something comes over me and I detach the calendar from the wall. I scroll through the months noticing how they are cramped with notes and reminders. Every little detail of our lives planned out and well thought through. It has been this way ever since we were mere children. Together, we seemed so perfect that no one could dream of us being anything less than soulmates.

We were high school sweethearts constantly told happily ever after was promised.

Our whole life became laid out in front of us, and even though I was no fortune teller I could read our future like it was spelled in the stars. The predicaments felt grand and exciting until time turned them into suffocation. Once a fairytale had become a prison and suddenly, I was twenty-one constantly staring out the window waiting to feel alive.

Numb I let the calendar fall to the floor and then my body starts moving. I walk around mindlessly until I find myself unexpectedly at the photo wall, almost as if I have been summoned here.

Across the wall I recognize our smiling faces. In the silence I can hear our laughter echo. Jackson has such a wonderful laugh. It’s warm and carefree, feeling like a big blanket wrapped around you.

For a long time to come I doubt anyone will hear that sound again. A cold hand creases my chest together and it aches terribly. I will truly break this man’s heart, and the knowledge makes me die a little inside.

What I’m about to do is unfair. My cheeks heat up by the mere thought of it and I’m ashamed but even more so mortified the feeling isn’t enough to discourage me. I can’t even warn him.

His words have the habit of putting me under his spell and I wouldn’t be able to follow through with my intentions if he begged me not to. My breath hitches in my throat.

I want to continue lingering around in the house, but the walls seem to be caving in, and the rooms feel claustrophobic. It feels surreal as I wrap my coat around me and head out.

The air outside is crisp and the night endless but I waste no time. I step inside the car and the leather seats are cold, making me shiver slightly.

Without hesitation I turn the key and once again headlights shower the landscape. It’s beautiful. Deserted and dramatic with the mountains rising in the horizon. In the silence I whisper out a prayer for Jackson. Please God make him one day see the truth. We’ll always be a part of each other, but we do not fit each other any longer like the puzzle pieces we once were. The past belongs to us, but the future doesn’t. Time had moved only me, and he was so in love with who I used to be that he would never wake up to fall in love with who I had become.

I let the car roll out of our property. Far away from the home I know and the man I love with my whole heart. As I drive, the road gets blurry behind the tears dwelling in my eyes and I barely know where I’m at. Suddenly I find myself at a crossroad like many times before. If I take a right, I will end up at Jacksons parents’ house. A house so beautiful with the most perfect oak tree in the front yard. Out of habit I feel my body wants to steer the wheel in their direction, but I don’t. Instead, I inhale sharply to gather courage and then I watch myself make a left turn.