I have a crush on a guy at the bookshop. (What it is about people we love that draws us to them?) He makes me not afraid of the future any longer. (Is it the joy of their company, quite simply? Is it the joy of the possibilities they bring us?) He has no interest in me (this is not self-deprecating), I can read it in his body language. He does not care to spend any longer with me than he needs to, he doesn’t hold my gaze, and he does not ask me any questions. What, then, gives me this warm feeling? I like how he speaks gently to the customers. Knowing people like him exist settles me.
He’s talking to me and this feeling in my chest reminds me of when I went to an old burger style restaurant where the food comes in red baskets with newspaper lining. I looked up from my food and saw a man waiting in line. He was as beautiful as I remember him being – dark hair, long limbs, large dark eyes – that movie star kind of beauty that made me suddenly understand why Elvis got so much attention.
He was laughing in a way that split his face into a large clownish grin and the sight of it made my heart leap like it was dancing. I looked away as the shine of him stings my whole body, the emotions in my chest fitting and brawling as I remembered when I first met him and he made me laugh – a dangerous thing to do – and how after that I never knew when he’d appear, how he’d weasel his way into my day. Frozen in panic, I couldn’t stop remembering how he would come home loudly, jangling the keys in the lock, and throw open the door so forcefully it would push the air up from the stairwell behind him and under the doorframes. I’d strain my ears into the stillness, my heart beating out the seconds, as I tried to hear which direction he was walking in. Please, please, please. I’d beg into the silence. Please, come to me. I’d snatch onto tiny whispers in the hallway; the sticky crack of the kitchen door, the click of his bedroom light or – worst of all – the roll of the old ball catch as he locked the bathroom door.
My strongest memory of him was that he showered for a long time and I used to puzzle hard as to why. (I shower a lot nowadays and I think he was simply washing away some of the weight of existing.) The truth lay somewhere behind his beauty. I remember how he collected women and treated them with a coldness like the blue centre of a flame. My god how I wished to be part of the cemetery he was building. I would have turned myself into a black hole, all the pieces of me falling like specs of dust into the void, and let him rebuild me into whatever form he wanted.
I told him my feelings once (not so raw like that, thank god) and he was horrified. Moments before, I’d cut my hair with the kitchen scissors. When I met him at the front door, he had rolled his eyes in a way that now makes me now wonder if that had been the final straw. I was (am) a beautiful thing but he made me feel ugly and desperate and doomed to love him. He came home drunk that evening, banging his fist against the kitchen cupboard door and shouting. The next day I begged him to stay, to still be friends. After he moved out, I’d wake up thinking I heard the sound of the front door closing and I’d make myself get up and walk into the bathroom to stare at the space where his toothbrush used to be.
The bell on the door chimes and I blink back from the daydream, my eyes raw and heart pounding. The bookstore boy has gotten up to speak with a customer. I watch him move as if in slow motion and once he’s gone I turn back to the pile of books in front of me, the red of the burger baskets still stinging like a brand behind my eyes. I blink a few more times, and it is gone.
