He looks at me from across the room in a way where I know— He’s fucked up. He’s smiling. Walking through the people, turning my body sideways. When I reach the boy, I grab him by the shoulders. Smiling back, shaking my head, asking him—

“What now?” laughing. 

“Not here,” he says. 

I place my right hand on the side of his neck. 

“Come on then,” nodding my chin towards the door. 

My hand holds his wrist, guiding him along. We make our way to the door, to the stairs, to the back. Having a stranger unlock it for some reason even though I still remember how. We bicker about a decision he’s made regarding the both of us, like always. Never letting the other complete the thought. Taking drags of what we’ve lit, when our hands aren’t busy gesturing, our feet pacing in our identical shoes. It was a stupid problem, I think we just like to talk to each other like this. Quipping remarks off  into the unfinished air. 

My friend says we bicker like we’ve known each other for sixty years.

“The both of you, you argue like an old married couple some days”

I responded “Three years is a long time.”

“Why don’t you try again?” 

“No it’s not like that anymore. Besides, I wouldn’t want it to be.”

I pick up a turtleneck to fold. It’s Sunday and I’m doing my laundry. 

I don’t know if I ever really wanted to be that way. I just knew I always wanted to have you there, and here.

Leaning my body against the railing, I put my hand not holding on either temple. I look up and laugh. 

Sometimes I find myself asking ‘How did we get here?’ Especially in the now, in this household.

You yell my name at me just then, bringing me back, and suddenly it’s your birthday. I’m nineteen, sitting there on the dirty-floored, matted down carpet of your room in the far corner against the closet wall, and you yell my name with just enough time for my eyes to look up. 

Later tonight, someone will take a photo of the both of us. You’ll sling your arm around my neck. I’ll lean my head onto your shoulder for the shot. 

_____________________________

Three years ago, you were wearing the same white shirt and black pants as you are now when I first saw you at The Alamo. 

Three years ago, we would knock “goodnight” to each other through your floorboard; my ceiling. Copying my patterns.

Two years ago, you would move in. 

One year ago, I would get mad at you for leaving me out at night. One year ago, I wouldn’t wait till you were intown again.

One year ago, I thought still ‘I love you’.

Seven months ago, you would walk in on me crying and not know what to say. Everyone else had just left me in this house with you. My sobs, I had tried to make them less vocal but you had still heard. ‘I’m going to kill them for this, leaving me here, but god damn is this funny.’  You were never good at dealing with a friend’s sadness. You would just stare sympathetically from the door, leaning against the frame. I knew this though so it didn’t hurt. It was oddly comforting. ‘You cared.’

Three months ago, I would realize I never did.

“You did though at nineteen, love him?” she asks. 

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I ever was supposed to. I think we were meant to have what we have now. He saw that back then and I couldn’t, or didn’t want to.” I’m always running late, always lingering on the old. My hands are always pulling at my promised partners. 

“How can you tell?” 

“I haven’t loved anyone yet.” I pause, ruminating on that sentence.  I felt lighter, untethered.

 ‘Where had that come from?’ If you were to listen in on most days of my talks of boys you would assume I have loved and I have, but I haven’t in the way I was asked just then. I have never loved in the way where you let yourself fall asleep unguarded over the years of aging. 

“The act of falling asleep next to someone is the most intimate of acts one can commit.” The July Journals, page 67. 

One month ago, you would move out and I would move in. 

One week ago, I would borrow your corduroy jacket. It’s fall again. That’s your season, and I am thinking of the yellow leaves on the street near my steps. The maple seeds and the way they fall spinning. My neighbor’s child would call them helicopters. The geese of our summers, and how one morning I will wake up, the birds agone. 

Yesterday, I would call and you would wait on my front steps your feet kicking the yellow leaves like you do every Sunday these days. You would say on the first call “I’m busy, I’m cooking my eggs, I can’t.” but then I would get a call back. My phone ringing less than three minutes later, I would pick up the call, without looking, and say 

“Hello?” 

“Have you left the apartment yet? If you have already I can,”  he trails off.

_________________________

Later tonight, someone will take a photo of the both of us, and I’ll realize that giving up on you, gave me you. We will get the photo back. You will say it’s one of your favorite photos from this calendar year, and I will smile to myself. 

___________________________

On Monday, I will be walking home listening to jazz carrying a carton of twelve large brown eggs. You call my name, I don’t hear. So you step out into the pathway as I cross the street. I’m startled and almost drop my eggs into the yellow leaves. I stop my listening to talk in the middle of the street. I smile at the thought of running into a friend. 

“No not yet,”  I had cut you off then on the Sunday phone. I am always running late.