Red poppies and purple phlox, this weary world is awash in late spring color. Today these colors are muted. No sun this afternoon, it has hidden itself away today. Soft grey clouds provide the normally angry red orb some needed cover. Hidden or not, the old sol’s heat is clearly still reaching this world. The temperature is quite warm for late spring. A rain threatens, but probably it will not come. Whether you call it sweat or perspiration, just a few paces outside in the warm humid air will bring moisture to your skin. Nora has always loved this weather. She was one of those who sleep nude with just a sheet over her. She comes alive with the spring. Chris on the other hand does not. He wanted a comforter over him year-round.
Currently Chris and Nora stand on a worn sidewalk. This sidewalk is a winding snake of discolored rectangles crumbling at the corners. This particular path continues for a quarter mile until a weed choked lot swallows the route. Behind the couple is a barn shaped house with a big bay window. A casual glance shows the premises to be quite dark inside even now in midafternoon. As the awkward couple continue to stand there her hand in his, the air conditioner kicks on. With the place so dark and with the air conditioner cranking, the house will be as chill as one might ever need it to be.
With a face totally empty of emotion Nora looks at Chris. She wonders why they are still here; she wonders why are they holding hands? To Nora’s mind Chris needs to be gone now. Her mind is nothing short of troubled. Two years ago, she had enough energy inside her to say might as well when she met the glib talking, big smiled Chris at Sara’s party. But what the fuck and why not fade. Time has a way of wearing down giddy unrealistic possibilities and of highlighting the harsh compromises one has been forced to make to keep a relationship alive. Knowing someone has a problem keeping his dick in his pants accelerates the reality awareness process. Nora waits for Chris to start talking his shit. If he speaks there will be is no novelty to what he will say. Surprisingly the trite words she is expecting to fall from his mouth do not come.
Chris shakes the hair out of his eyes and looks at Nora. Standing there on the walk outside her home he is seeing her through eyes as clear as he ever has had since he was eighteen. By all accounts any connection between the two of them should have been completely and totally over six months ago when Nora found out about Kelli. Chris’s first lesson learned here? Don’t give out you Gmail password to your girlfriend for any reason. Girlfriends are crafty and they will snoop through and scour your e-mail. Nora had quickly pulled away from the relationship after she figured out his betrayal. Nothing Chris did seemed to salve her hurt. As he left Nora his parting words were, “Call me when you can. I am so sorry. Tell me what to do. We can figure it out.” As the old song said, “If the phone don’t ring, it’s her.”
Was she only another woman Chris could simply abuse? Was he ever in love with her, whatever the fuck love meant to him? Was she just a new and novel bit of flesh for him? These and fifteen other thoughts ran through Nora’s mind as she looked at Chris. Nora remembered Chris with drooping shoulders and hands at his side claiming he was sorry when she confronted him about the e-mails. Nora ran through it and Chris’s appeals seemed too practiced, too pat. She had to go and she did.
Why the hell hadn’t she just batted his hand away when he offered it to her as he opened her car door? Now it was just awkward, too damned awkward. “God I am hoping he doesn’t think this means anything,” was running repeatedly through her mind. This thought, in that quick time that exists only in your brain, was instantly becoming Nora’s mantra. But pulling away right now might trigger something worse, like tears and blubbering. The last go around had just been so totally emotionally wrenching.
Chris hadn’t dated, and more importantly, he hadn’t slept with anyone since they had parted. Kelli was done before Nora had surveilled his e-mail. More importantly, he hadn’t had a drink in three months. Drinking and weed made Chris stupid, real stupid, fucking Kelli stupid. Since Nora and Chris had separated, Chris had at most three beers. And those were within a month of the breakup. Within a week of Nora’s throwing the last of Chris’s clothes out on the porch, he had set his one hitter aside. Chris hadn’t been sober for this long in a decade. As his mind cleared from the long-term use of intoxicants, he realized that in the breakup with Nora he had lost something special, maybe real love.
Chris tried to call Nora a couple of times in the last six months but the conversations in the few she answered died quickly. She hung up on all of them without a good-bye. Nora never did call Chris, save the one she placed last week. Chris knew he must have hurt her really bad. Must have left her adrift in an ocean of broken dreams.
Right now, there on the sidewalk Nora wondered again why she had called Chris for a ride. She had been spending time in Europe watching the waves in a rustic seaside village for about three weeks. Nora had accepted an offer for free room from an old college friend who had an Air B&B right by the Atlantic. The bargain was Nora would have to buy the alcohol and one good meal a week in exchange for a space to be temporary free spirit in a foreign land. Drinking house wines and eating seafood on stone patios, Nora’s evenings would end with star gazing. From time to time as she sat out on the sand she would think of Chris. Fuck, she didn’t want to, she just did.
When the holiday ended, Nora flew back alone. Although she had tried before she left with numerous phone calls, and tried while on holiday using e-mails and texts, she could not come up with someone to drive the two hours to the airport to get her. Her housemate for a small fee was able to take her to the airport. Chris would, if she really needed it, pick her up. She knew was a sure thing, as sure as any natural phenomena like sunrises or sunsets. Chris was Nora’s last, last, last ditch fallback. Nora knew in her heart Chris would even take time off if he was working. In the end she made her distasteful request and Chris accepted.
When Chris got Nora’s call for a ride he immediately said yes. Chris knew that Inside over the six months since the breakup he had become a little more resigned to what they had being over. Chris thought he could handle a giving Nora a ride as a friend.
Chris had suspected the ride from the airport would be awkward. His intuition was right. Nora was jet lagged, a regular transcontinental burnt-out rolling stone. The grind of seventeen hours either in the air, or waiting bored as hell in two different airports, had sapped her humanity. To ensure the ride didn’t back to Nora’s place get too weird Chris did not turn on any of “their” playlists. He tried to ask about the trip but Nora was really too tired. He got three-word answers wrapped in sentences that then faded to silence. Chris knew from experience when she was tired, Nora would get short and cross. He quit talking. She nodded off once the car’s cabin was silent. For most of the ride she slept head against the passenger window softly snoring.
Nora awoke with a start as Chris leaned in her door offering his hand to help her exit the vehicle. She could see he had popped the hatch and had taken her carry on and under seat bags up to the house. Nora was still out of it when she took Chris’s hand to exit the vehicle. His hand did help her get out, but then he kept holding her hand as they stood beside the car on the sidewalk. Seconds passed by and she had already stuttered out her thank you and still he was holding her hand.
Cheating on Nora had been the biggest mistake of Chris’s life. In other relationships Chris just sucked it up when he was caught straying and moved on. Each relationship had its different levels of comfort, and the emotional costs of going varied. But even when Chris was the person dumped, on those rare occasions when he had done nothing wrong, he had never doubted another relationship was waiting not too far down the line. He sucked it up and moved on. But this was different.
Kelli was a dead end and a mistake. Chris didn’t know why his relationship with Nora really mattered to him, but it did. His feelings for Nora were visceral. As he held Nora’s hand as she exited the vehicle, he tried to convey his most sincere apology and his most wounded and injured self ever without words. His pain was in his eyes. His loss was visible in how he held his body. He stilled his tongue showing total contrition. Chris was as broken and begging of forgiveness in his looks as a medieval priest whipped and lying before a cross in an old mountain monastery.
Nora sensed these things. She also sensed when Chris’s hand seemed to lose its tension. With his grasp weakening Nora pulled her hand away and she thanked him again. She would not give him a good bye kiss. She would not promise a call in the future. She put the key in her door and waved him a short waist kind of flapping hand thank you and go away gesture. Nora looked at Chris just a second too long as she entered her house and they both felt it. Nora clearly saw the pain and she felt the broken pride-less spirit in Chris’s demeanor. But would it last? But did his now open, wounded and raw heart balance the scales between what he had done to her and what it seemed to be costing him? Nora pushed her luggage to the side and sat on the couch. Quickly, very quickly in that cool, cool living room she fell into a deep, deep sleep.
