Beautiful Eyes

Standing across the room, Renee finds herself in a cliche, as she gazes upon The One Who Got Away. It's been a decade, but the years have been kind to him, and she cannot tear her eyes from his face. It isn't until she is jostled from behind, and a splash of coffee surges over her cup that she shakes herself from her reverie.

The coffee shop is bustling, the early morning crowd ebbing and flowing with the train schedules, commuters in a self absorbed rush, caffeine acting as their lifelines. Renee has come to this particular shop several times over the last few months, swinging in before visiting her sister (and to be honest, avoiding her boyfriend and his proposal, which has sat on the proverbial table for weeks). The city is overwhelming to her, this towering labyrinth of claustrophobia, and she often finds herself making excuses to keep her from having to rush out onto the street from the station once she arrives. Last week she found a florist who sold stems of white lillies for five dollars, and she took nearly half an hour to assemble a bouquet. But quite often, it is people watching in line at the coffee shop that she finds herself most relaxed.

She is tense today as she begins to follow Jesse through the crowd, his broad shoulders and height distinctive. She remembers how he used to lay his head on her chest in the morning, the sun beaming particles around his hair like a halo. How the muscles in his shoulders would glow and tense as she ran her fingers through his curls. Today, he is wearing a suit, it looks bespoke and he wears it impeccably, which is not to say he used to wear his tee shirts and jeans poorly back in their college days, because he was beautiful even back then, before he became the kind of man who would wear a suit on a train.

They met during her sophomore year. She'd admired him from afar, but on a rainy day in between classes, she found herself on an elevator with him and two of his friends. She was wet and bedraggled, wearing a faded university sweatshirt and cutoffs, and despite her appearance, she couldn't help but feel a surge of femininity trapped in a small space with so much maleness. She knew you should never make eye contact with someone in an elevator, but she did anyway, and with no forethought whatsoever, blurted out that she thought his eyes were the most beautiful she had ever seen. His friends were startled, and she knew without a doubt that they would laugh about this once they were out of her earshot. Maybe clap him on the back and call him Beautiful Eyes later at a party, or bat their own lashes at him as soon as she walked away. But his smile was worth the embarrassment. He thanked her and when the doors opened, they exited, and she was left feeling an enormous bubble of longing in her throat. Longing to follow him, or to say more, or to love someone with eyes like his, she couldn't quite say.

It was months before they crossed paths again. Renee was leaving the psychology building, squinting from the midday glare, and he was suddenly before her, a backlit silhouette.

"Hey, I know you," he said, joining her as she continued to walk toward her next class. "Didn't we have Physics together last semester?"

She shook her head, and awareness dawned in his eyes. He smiled that same smile, the one she would later come to believe was made just for her.

"Ah, now I remember. You are the ballsy girl who made my day in an elevator. My name is Jesse, by the way." He extended his hand, and she shuffled her books to one arm in an attempt to shake it. Without asking, he grabbed the stack from her and carried them the entire way as they spoke.

He told her how he had come from Ontario to study marketing at the university, how it took a year to adjust to homesickness. She told him about the veterinary science classes she had signed up for, after having changed her major twice. The conversation was easy and flowing, and much sooner than she would have liked, they found themselves in front of the lab doors, and her professor beginning his lecture. He handed back her books, and then pulled a pen from his pocket (and with a gleam in his beautiful eyes), commented that you never knew when you might need one, and wrote his number on her forearm, the tip of the pen tickling her and sending a small tremor down her torso and in between her legs.

Renee pauses her memory now as Jesse turns away from the crowd and begins to jog up the stairs toward the street. She is like a salmon swimming upstream, and her significantly shorter legs can't keep up with his. She finds an irrational frustration with the people around her for not clearing a path, though she isn't sure what she will say when she catches up to him. It's been a lifetime since they last spoke, but that same tremor has taken over her body, and she isn't willing to squash it down. Nor was she ever when he was around, which was quite often after that day on the quad.

She had taken the customary week to call him, of course, as if her girlfriends would ever have let her come off as desperate, and when she did, he was so relaxed on the phone, that it exacerbated her butterflies till she thought she could take flight herself. Their first date was, coincidentally, at a coffee shop. It was brief and yet unharried. They laughed about their mutual love of TV and discussed their families- he with three brothers and she with just one sister. At one point, toward the end of the date, he reached across the table and brushed his long fingers over her upturned palm as she spoke, and it took enormous willpower to keep from pushing herself over their coffee cups and plates of crumbly danishes to kiss him. But, in fact, he didn't kiss her for the first time until two dates later, when she had foolishly agreed to go roller blading at the park.

Having only been on skates twice before in her life, Renee found herself on the ground more often than not, but she couldn't bring herself to quit, afraid it would end her time with him prematurely. After an hour of watching her fall repeatedly, Jesse took pity and attempted to help by standing behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist as they coasted together. She lost track of her legs as she felt him pressed against her, and they became entangled with his. They went flying, but his strong arms were still wrapped so tightly around her that her fall was cushioned. She laughed out of embarrassment and he laughed out of sheer joy, as he often did, and suddenly they were kissing, the laughter forgotten. His kisses reminded her of the swirling black light poster on her dorm wall- filled with color and magic and a never-ending abyss of promise. The date ended when he dropped her off at campus, his shift at the pizza shop imminent, but she spent the evening, and several evenings afterward, replaying the kiss like a movie reel in her head. A week later, he invited her to his apartment for a home cooked dinner, and mentioned subtly that both of his roommates had evening classes. Outfits were tried on and discarded, makeup applied and then removed. Renee found herself shaking with desire and nerves, and while it was not a new phenomenon to feel these things, it seemed larger than it ever had with anyone before.

When she arrived at his apartment at the perimeter of campus, she could smell his dinner in the hallway, and wondered if she would have to pretend to like his cooking, and how long was appropriate to wait after eating before dragging him to his bedroom. But she needed not worry about either of these things, because the moment he opened the door, she was in his arms and the door was being slammed with his foot. They kissed furiously, her back to the wall, and his leg between hers, nudging her in a way that made her eyes roll back into her head. They weren't able to make it to his bedroom, clothes were strewn across the floor as they stumbled to his couch, each kiss another seal on the fate of her heart. He buried his face in her neck and every hair stood on end across her body. His fingers were fire and ice and they deftly found her wanting and ready. Never before had she classified sex as making love, but what they did on that couch could be considered nothing less. She lost abandon and later wondered if the neighbors had been titillated or disturbed by the noises she made, but it was a passing thought, and not one she particularly cared about. They ate dinner (which was surprisingly good) wrapped in blankets on the floor. He consumed her for dessert and then they made love again, quieter and slower, while he held her arms above her head, fingers entwined with hers.

That evening, as Renee showered the soreness from her body, she ran her fingertips across every part of her skin he had kissed, licked, bitten, and she realized that she was pretty sure she was falling in love, but that it ached beautifully in her chest.

For a month, they were nearly inseparable. She often found herself daydreaming in class, picturing him and what they would do later in the day. Some nights she would sleep at his apartment, laying awake long after he was asleep, imagining a future they had avoided discussing. In the morning they would open their eyes and he would awaken her senses by furtive licks on her nipples, soft tugs on her hair, squeezes of her hips, kisses on her lips that were bruised from the night before. They would spoon in the early daylight and shower together before making eggs, and there was a heady feeling of domesticity Renee had never known she wanted before.

The end of the semester loomed and while neither of them spoke about it, it became a baby elephant in every room, growing exponentially each passing day. By the last week of school, with exams winding down, Renee was anxious and there were words loitering on her tongue. Words of love and promises of devotion, they tasted sweet and tart and she couldn't bring herself to say them. There was a world between San Diego and Ontario, and a long summer to traverse before another semester would begin. Jesse had an internship at a bank beginning immediately after he was to arrive in Canada, and Renee had a summer job in the local animal hospital. They both knew they could make plans to travel, to have a whirlwind weekend, but they also knew that the plans would more than likely take a backseat to their work, to their families and friends back home, so they instead made plans to make plans.

Renee dropped him off at the airport on a Thursday afternoon. It was impossibly sunny, as it so often was in California. As he pulled his bags from the trunk of her car, she debated telling him the words that had been lodged in her mouth for so many weeks, the utterances of love that were terrifying and yet had become clearer and clearer as time had worn on. He gathered in his arms, his scent engulfing her, and kissed her gently before backing away, and as he stepped further from her, she found the words shrinking like a pill in her mouth, becoming bitter.

The summer both dragged and flew, they texted furiously for the first several weeks, and then it slowed to once every few days, until they both found themselves forgetting more than remembering to reach out. When the new semester began, Renee, now a junior, was immersed in her course load, and she heard through friends that Jesse had stayed in Ontario to continue on with his internship, which was now paying him handsomely. A thousand times, Renee picked up her phone to call, signed into Facebook to send a message, and a thousand times she talked herself out of it. Like so many girls her age, she had been convinced that if the boy really wanted her, he would have made it a point to reach out, and he never did. Her heart ached with loss, and for many months, she mended the cracks in it with any tool she could find.

Over the years, Renee learned to compartmentalize her time with Jesse. He was a beautiful tornado that had blown in and rocked her senseless for a while, but she knew she had to find a way to rebuild. She graduated from school with honors, and dated off and on. She attended vet school in New York, and met a man she later moved in with. They adopted a dog who had been left outside of her animal hospital after being hit by a car. She often thought of Jesse, and made comparisons to her boyfriend, wondering what if, including the day he proposed and she told him she needed time to think. Many nights, she would find Jesse in her fantasies, but in a transient way and then, like a ghost, he would disappear, leaving behind an unnamed ache.

It wasn't until today that she realizes how haunted she has been by his ghost, following him down the crowded sidewalk of 33rd Street, but there is suddenly a desperation clawing at her. She begins to elbow the people to either side of her, ignoring their protests as she moves closer to his retreating form.

He stops abruptly in front of a jewelry store, looking in the display window, when she catches up with him. She is breathless, and feels disheveled, but she puts her hand on his arm, a flash of memory hitting her so clearly- of holding his bicep while he entered her for the first time- that she steps back. He turns to her, his brow furrowed and says simply, "Are you ok, miss?"

She waits for his memory to catch up to hers, waits for the moment when recognition dawns and his made-for-her smile appears, but as she stands silently, and he quizzically, she realizes that the moment isn't happening. She swallows, her throat suddenly parched, as if the bitter pill she had swallowed all those years ago at the airport were still lodged in there somewhere, and she stammers," Jesse, it's me."

He raises his eyebrow, and she notices a small scar running through it that must be new. She briefly wonders if it was a skiing accident or a fist fight, and finding a bit of outrage that time could continue and scars could be attained without her permission.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" He asks, turning toward her fully now. He has filled out, the boy parts from his youth now firmly masculine, his jaw more pronounced and the tiny lines around his eyes (oh how he used to laugh, she thinks) all evidence that ten years have passed. She thinks of her own body, the curves he once relished and lavished, and how they, too, have become more grown up. Her own laugh lines are a little less obvious, but she found a single gray hair only last month, and it made her mortality undeniable for the first time. But even knowing that she hasn't changed much at all, she is stunned to find nothing in his face that suggests he knows her from the other strangers on the street. She looks into the jewelry store window, at the display he had been regarding when she caught up to him, and sees a dazzling array of rather large diamond rings. Engagement rings. She tears her eyes from the case, and to her horror realizes that they are filling with tears. A jumbled montage of memories slides through her brain, his silly jokes when she was having a tough day, the way he threw pasta at the wall to see if it was ready to pull from the stove, the line of dark hair that peppered his lower abdomen, and also his big toes. And the nostalgia and despair rise up inside her like a wave, and before she knows what she is doing, she blurts out, as she did all those years ago, "you have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen." And then she lets the crowd pull her away as she watches him suddenly startle, the recognition finally in his eyes. The distance between them is growing, she is backward but the crowd is carrying her, her legs too weak to hold her erect. She sees him try to say something, his words lost in the thick New York air, and she finds the courage to say "I loved you". He can read her lips, and she thinks he says, "I loved you too." Maybe he has said something else, maybe he hasn't even said anything at all. But as he becomes so small, she can no longer see him, she finds that the bitterness on her tongue has vanished. She has swallowed the pill, and somewhere along the line, it became candy again. She turns and finds the earth solid beneath her feet. Her phone rings, and she sees her fiancé's name on the screen, and she smiles and presses the green button.

"Hi", she says. "I can't wait to come home to you."