Twice the Rebound

Your face tells me I've screwed it up, the moment it comes out of my mouth.

"My treat?"

An innocent offer to start things off at the local coffee shop. You half-smile, you emit a strange titter of a laugh. You don't want it to feel like a date, and I don't blame you.

You were my first kiss. 1998, underneath the stairs at the collegiate theatre, a gentle lip-press of passion that I coyly requested permission for. No one saw us. I wouldn't have cared if they had.

You don't want today, 2019, to feel like a date, and yet a part of you does.

You remember that I'd complimented you so long ago on your stunning beauty, looking into your eyes despite us barely knowing each other, via fleeting moments of explorative attraction, forged from Glee Club, from a common interest in fireworks chemistry.

Chemistry is what we could have had, on a whole new level, but you'd confessed that you "used" me.

I'd sent that angry email.

You're a forgiving person, you said on Facebook.

So here we sit. I look into your eyes one more time and realize that they seem empty.

You pay for your own drink. You had paid your own dues, too, from a divorce finalized just two days prior, you say. I'd never meet the man, I realize, but I don't say a word.

You've paid your respects to my attempts at conversation, so you yammer away self-centeredly and forget that this was once a two-way street.

Do I look like the same fool that fell for you long ago?

You remember when we cuddled in the couch at the memorial union. Hands clasped, two souls awash in loneliness, yearning for something deeper.

Do I look like the fool you'd just broken up with back then?

Some people never change. The mirror image speaks for itself.

I had splayed casually onto your bed with you in your dorm room. There I lay, sheltered "me," over-protected "me," oblivious to the meaning of the rainbow imagery you'd splashed across the walls.

You taught me about being bi.

I owe Catholicism no favors. What a joke.

"I guess I'm just.... attracted to butch women and sensitive guys..."

Sensitivity is something you could have used more of.

As you prod your biscuits and gravy with a fork, I look again at your grandly angular cheekbones, the soft roundness of your eyes, and want to poke out my own, for having been blind.

Why had I wanted you so badly?

You'd paid me attention. You'd rubbed my considerable belly like I was a pet in need of soothing. The potential crackled like magnetic energy.

Vapid words spill out of your mouth now, a cacophony of meaninglessness about music apps and missed opportunities and second majors. So much time has passed by, yet there is so little to truly catch up on.

So why did you decide to see me?

Is there closure in this for you, after what I'd said? Is there redemption of a different sort, a reclaiming of some shred of dignity, having broken a tryst where we both pretended it meant more than it did?

I sip my tea. I didn't get a meal.

My hands ache to have something to manipulate, yearning to pantomime along with those long, dainty fingers of yours.

Anxiety takes hold, and I pick at a fingernail out of habit.

I do the remembering this time: one month after we were done in college, we happened to get on the same bus on a bone-chilling Tuesday, and our eyes met one more time. I said a cold "Hello."

And that was that.

I asked you to come here. I made an offer. I'm not getting much out of it.

You don't want it to feel like a date, and yet you do.