Burnt Matches

Out of the blue he came to see me at work in his green truck. We sat there during my lunch break talking. I know we talked about everything, but I cannot remember a word he said. Because I loved him so much, I hated him right now. He left town years ago only to return and surprise me and treat me like he had never left. I almost bought into it. I wanted to buy into it. That potential sale made me want to punch him that much more. On the day he left he promised he would always love me. Sure, that would sound like the typical guy thing to do, to offer empty promises in hopes of securing a conquest, except he never made me feel like those typical guys do. He had a genuine sense to his words. Although, he did not always think before he spoke, he always spoke the truth. Sitting here in his truck, listening without hearing, rekindled my love like it was never absent. I could not show him that. My fists turned to lips and to kisses in my mind with such fluidity they were the same affection. I invited him for drinks at my home when I got out of work. He said he would come. Instantly, I regretted this decision of mine.

Throughout the early dinner crowd at Red Lobster my smile was plastic. The tank of live shellfish awaiting their doomed fate made my heart bleed. Every plate of Maine’s finest I carried past their glass cage was a premonition of things to come. I could no more help to turn sideways as I passed, guarding them from harsh reality, than I could help not comparing myself to them. The real me fretted our reunion through the end of the shift.

I encouraged him to stay the night. We did not have nearly enough to drink for it to be warranted. Maybe he worked his magic charm to make me think it was all my idea. There was a time when a girl at his work put together the ingredients for a love spell. She gave it to him, not telling what it was for. He took it apart, researched the contents, determined the purpose, and put it back together. I made him give it to me instead. I remember throwing it out the window. Lusting women surrounded my man every time I went into that hippie shop. I took it because I did not want anyone else to possess him. I did not want anyone to possess him, not even me. He did not want to possess me either. We just were. He always explained relationships as being in a room with another. Most of the time one or the other or both locked the door. He was very claustrophobic. Our door was never locked. While we were together we made the choice not to go out into the hallway. We flirted with the knob and even opened it to look around and see what the neighbors were up to. Neither of us stepped out of the threshold. Maybe I kept that packet of dried rosebuds and a red candle before deciding what to do with it. Maybe I slept with it under my pillow, his pillow, the one he gave me a long time ago that I still sleep with today. Maybe the spell worked on me. His desire was there in the bed that night, blurred through my own; however, we never so much as kissed. We cuddled in tense thoughtlessness. His hand touched my breasts. Intentionally or not I cannot know. He would always molest me in his sleep when we were together. Some things never change. Remembering flooded me. I woke him up. I threw him out.

“You can’t be here. I can’t do this.”

He was bleary and confused, but he left. I could not go through all of it again. He was too wild. He could never settle into a place. He would never be happy. He would never be with me. He would leave again and the hurt would follow. I never wanted to feel that pain. A good friend of his took me in his arms less than a week after he left. That makes it sound sweet even though it was not. It was vengeful sex for both of us, leaving us both unsatisfied and wanting. That friend and I never spoke again. Months later another mutual friend, who was my roommate at the time, took advantage of my heavy intoxication. The next morning we woke up naked together. I asked what happened. How did we get here? He said I called him a different name, your name. I moved out. The guilt of taking his close acquaintances to my bed in substitute of him rode heavy on my mind. It was not on purpose. It must have been some subconscious Freudian neurosis.

My phone would ring for weeks after the sleepover where I asked him to leave. That name would be on the caller ID. I would not answer. One night when I thought I was strong enough to resist I answered and he weakened me again. I told him I had met another guy, another ex-boyfriend, who would be there for me, and that he should please stop calling. He did. I wished he would have fought for me. He should have refused and demanded that we get together so he could prove his devotion. He did not. He was too respectful of my own demands. Every night he made me a Swiss cheese and ranch dressing sandwich with dill pickles before bed, the best snack ever. He gave me my space. I gave him the license to love again. Eventually, I found someone I thought I could marry. I did under duress. One night another mutual friend, one that I never slept with thank you very much, invited me to the bar to meet with him after years of silence. He had a girlfriend that he was bringing. They had been dating longer than we ever did. She was a nice girl. At that time I still loved my husband and my daughter was brand new. Needless to say, I made no attempt to claw her eyes out.

Even this was years ago. My daughter is about to start Kindergarten. Her father and I have separate rooms for the past four of our six years of marriage. I have a job that I love and that some people would consider a career, which is not waiting on tables. I have friends that care for me. Having just battled a detrimental bout of pneumonia, those friends took me out for a ladies night at a local bar. We talked about old times to the point of tears. I talked about him. After last call they rolled me to my own room, where I found his cell number and sent a text. Most of me hoped to God he had changed it as I punched the send button with a kiss. He had moved on again, still searching for whatever it was that he might find somewhere else. At least I was not the reason for it this time. Some other girl would be, no doubt. He called me back in the morning and my breath stopped. The alcohol had left me with a bed ridden sickness of my own volition. I was sober. I could not blame what I might tell him on drunken stupidity.

I did not answer on the first set of rings. I called him back as soon as straight thought coalesced. We talked for two hours. We made confessions. He told me that he still loved me. He said he would always love me. I loved him too. We hung up.

We step through life smiling and laughing until one day we wake up and we are adult. The good times of youth are sad memories from a rose colored day without the cares of the present. Former worries from then hang in the past, nearly forgotten or at least muted when compared to those of the present. We loved and cried and everything seemed new because it was. Emotions were spent until we were desensitized and jaded toward them. Contact, a decade past your intimacy, reminds you that they were your first true love, as opposed to the others that came and went without much consideration. You tell them and might as well be explaining that they were the first to break your heart. They are happy even though they find themselves in a loveless marriage with a kid, openly admitted as the best thing they have ever done. Simultaneously, you both wonder what it would have been like if . . . 

But the ifs have the rest of that decade of life that would have to be traded for infinitely clueless possibilities of turnout. It could have been better or worse. It could be nearly the same. You could still be on the phone with them from a thousand miles away wondering about another if. Or you could be on the phone with someone else wondering the same thing while the original subject was at home with different kids. You could have separate rooms and fought fruitlessly to make it work for the sake of a child just entering Kindergarten until one day you realized there was no light at the end of this tunnel. You resigned to live it day by day for the next decade when they graduate highschool and you can divorce without much damage to their upbringing.

All of that is mystery. That mystery adds to the magical glow of our time together so long ago. I always thought that he was the one I was meant for, my match. Matches burn. The flames consume the entire stick until it scalds your fingers. I kept holding onto it, leaving me scarred from his love. The nerve damage is so deep that I feel it when cool water passes over the old wounds, when I put on or take off my clothes, while I am eating nice dinners and the silverware rubs against it, every sandwich I have with ranch dressing. My daughter rubs her finger against it while we are holding hands and asks, “Mommy, what happened?” It does not hurt then.

It hurts the most right now when I talk on the phone or type on my keyboard. He has entered my life again. I invited him in like so many years before. I want to tell him to leave, but he is already so far away. Our phone calls sap the minutes of the day in hard memories. Our emails are worse. They are short and filled with more emotion than any voice could speak through a receiver that linger in my thoughts hours after reading and rereading them. I have told him all of this. I thought it was what I needed. He says it is not him I should be telling. He says it should be my husband. He says he does not know how he feels. He would have to see me, to be with me, although not “be with” me in the Biblical way. Just be with my company. It is the little things like this that make me love him all over again. He wants me to be honest. I am. I try to be. It is hard.

That mutual friend that invited us to the bar for the second reunion knows all of this in part. He does not know the magnitude. He is too close of friends with my husband and he holds secrets with a weak seal. One night that friend told me you would have given it another go if it were not for a husband and child. Is that true? That screwed me up. I never knew. And here you are again, making me confront my own feelings. My lips pucker into fists again. My hands are clenched into kisses. My arms, opened wide, fold in front of my chest, where the raw skin of my fingers touches the heart. Here they are reunited. Here they have been for every boyfriend since you, guarding it. Here they are for my husband. Only my child can wreck those barriers effortlessly. She does this because she came from within. There will always be that special place for her there that nothing can ever take away. There will always be that care for her well being and proper development into an equally beautiful adult. These are other reasons this is very hard. These are the reasons I was initially married. These are the reasons I have stayed married. She is the reason. She, alone, causes my sacrifice. She is enough.