Stolen Time

-Do you want a drink? I bought that wine you used to love. I didn’t know if it was still your favorite. 

I nodded and looked at him while he poured two glasses. He was sitting on the lumpy mattress next to me in the treehouse we shared growing up. We had escaped here one more time. It was one of the hottest days of the summer so far and his cheeks were red from the heat. I remembered he used to always be hot while I was cold all the time. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his hair was all messy and longer than it used to be. It made him look older and tired, but when his eyes met mine, he was still the teenager that I spent all my summers with a long time ago. He wasn't the adult I hadn’t seen in years, the one who had another life, in another city, far away from the life I used to think we’d somehow share. 

We didn’t toast. I didn’t think we would have known what to toast to. We just shared a look and a faint smile and took a sip. I couldn’t stop staring at him. Maybe I was hoping I would capture his face perfectly in my memories. Maybe I was studying him to understand the adult he’d become. Maybe I was analyzing each trait of his face to see if anything had changed. 

We had moved on with our lives. We hadn’t hung out in years and had barely kept contact. The only reason we were here, together, today, was because he had been back in town to see his parents and we had ran into each other. When his eyes had met mine, it had felt like I had finally found something that used to be mine forever ago, but also like someone had plunged a knife in my chest. I couldn’t breathe at the sight of the eyes I used to get lost in. All the memories had rushed back and felt so heavy that it had felt harder to breathe.

We were not friends anymore. We were barely acquaintances. But we had understood each other once again when our eyes had met. Understood that we both needed time away from our lives and that maybe we could share that time. That time stolen from a life where we did not belong together. 

He was drinking his wine fast. I guessed it was because of the heat, or maybe deep down he was nervous to be back here with me. 

Although I had never been sure, there only seemed to be one explanation as to why I had lost him years ago. Neither of us had ever recovered from that night when we almost became something. That summer night, right here in our treehouse, we had almost started something beautiful; instead, we had ended up losing each other. After those hours we had shared when our friendship was on hold and we had chosen to not hold anything back, we had decided that we would not work. That we should stick to friendship That we could not build something worth ruining our relationship for. But how does friendship work after sharing a night like that? We had tried a few times to hang out like before, but there always seemed to be words unsaid, feelings unresolved. There was always the memory of our touch, of the words we’d said, of our synchronized heartbeats. 

And then life happened. People come and people go, right? That’s how it goes, I guess. After years of him being the best person in my life and one of the most important people I’d ever been close with, we messed up. That night, a wonderful and terrible mix of too much alcohol and too much time since we had been touched and loved had led to us seeking comfort in each other. I guess we shouldn’t have. I don’t think either of us ever knew why. Why couldn’t we work like that? Why couldn’t we build something more? Why did we agree to leave it at that one night like we knew something would go wrong if we didn’t?

-What are you thinking about? he asked with a calming look. His voice was hoarse from the heat and dehydration. I felt something deep in my stomach and the sound of what used to be my favorite voice in the whole world. 

-Not much, I answered with a smile. Just memories.

I wanted my head to stop spinning. I wanted to soak in every single second I could get with him, because I somehow knew they would be the last ones. And I knew I would never come back here after this last afternoon shared with him. 

-Do you want another glass? he asked. I nodded again. 

We had already covered all the normal talk. I knew where he lived, where he worked, whether he liked his life or not, what music he listened to these days, wich of our friends he was still in contact with, how his family was. But I didn’t know about what mattered the most. I didn’t know if he, too, had thought about me at least once every day. If he sometimes wondered about me. If he couldn’t understand how we could have gone so wrong. If he felt nostalgic when he heard certain songs, when he went certain places, when he saw certain pictures. If he had missed me half as much as I missed him. If he sometimes wished it all had been different. 

I layed down on the mattress, my empty glass next to me. I had to take a break from staring at him and drinking if I ever wanted to be able to leave the treehouse. He laid down next to me and stared at the ceiling. I could feel him next to me and hear his breathing. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in his arms, than to touch his face, than to run my hands through his hair, than to follow the lines on his hands with my finger.

God, how I had missed him. Being here was bringing it all back, all the wonderful memories, all the painful ones. If I had been told years ago that someday, he would be a stranger to me, I would not have believed it. Yet, today, I was lying right next to him, but it felt like I was galaxies away from this stranger I used to know better than myself. 

Had I been in love with him? I still didn't know to this day. I didn’t know whether it had been love, or comfort, or familiarity, or the idea of being loved by someone who knew every single part of me. Maybe it had been all of the above. 

I turned my head to look at him once again, only to find him already staring. I was terrified and I could tell he knew that. How could he not? Nobody had ever known me as well as he used to. So deep down, I knew he knew exactly how I felt in that moment. 

My head was spinning still. I hadn’t been able to stop the thoughts, the memories, the emotions yet. I could remember the way his touch felt. How soft, how kind he had always been. How good he always smelled. How he used to run his hands through my hair to calm me down when I started talking in my sleep.

I didn't want to spend the only few hours of my life where he would be mine thinking things over, so I finally threw caution to the wind and leaned towards him. I could tell he had been waiting for me to make that decision by the way he met me halfway and grabbed me immediately. When his lips softly yet intensely met mine, I finally let go of everything that had worried me for years. On the old mattress where we had sleepovers as children and slept off hangovers as teenagers, I closed my eyes and took in everything that could’ve been ours in another life.

We both knew it was too late for us. But at least we would have had our stolen time.