Between "Linger"ing and "Point Easy"

The night at Linger felt like a trick the universe pulled just for us.

It was your birthday. A storm had just blown itself out over Denver, leaving behind a restless sky. The rain ended abruptly, and the city opened its windows in celebration—literally. At Linger, they pushed the glass walls wide, so the restaurant became half indoors, half outdoors, as if no one could decide where joy lived that night.

We sat in the balmy air, rainbow arcing over our shoulders, clouds performing like they wanted applause. I looked at you across the table, at those impossible eyes.

Your eyes are their own climate system. Icy centers with a bullseye of blue so sharp it’s almost unnatural. Baby blue—the color of the handful of pretty moments from my childhood. The color of velvet afternoons when I believed, for a breath, that safety might be real. They hypnotize me in ways I don’t admit out loud, because sometimes I wonder if your gaze is a door or a trap.

That night, you laughed—unguarded—and kissed me with that rare abandon that makes the whole world go quiet. For a few hours, it was easy to pretend we could stay there forever, the storm behind us, the rainbow overhead. To just...linger.

But love never lets me stay suspended for long.

Because I know what it means to love in seismic proportions. I’ve known ferocious love that cracked open the earth and left me buried in it. I’ve known the kind of devotion that turns into a noose. Love I've had to saw myself free from with dull knives, lungs burning, rising from the bottom on the last breath I had saved. That kind of survival changes you. You don’t forget the violence of being broken open, even when you long to risk it again.

So when I look at you—at the calm, almost careless ease of your philosophy—I feel both drawn and warned.

Another dinner at a restaurant aptly called "Point Easy." The name itself is an irony so sharp it borders on prophecy. Point easy. Don’t fight. Don’t force. Don’t build impossible castles out of fragile nights.

That’s when I asked you a question. Something about meaning, about life, about what it means to really live. And you answered, with that pensive expression of yours: “You can’t take it with you.”

I wanted you to mean what I mean—that life demands ferocity, that love should be claimed, defended, chased down when it slips through your hands. That’s the gospel I carry, born of loss.

But you meant it differently. You meant: enjoy yourself. Linger in the taste of the wine, in the warmth of the night air, in the curve of my mouth when you kiss me. Don’t worry about forever. Don’t sprint into the future. Don’t make it heavier than it is. Point easy.

And I have to admit, there’s something intoxicating about that. I pass by so many pairs of eager eyes—strangers who might want me—and none of them hold the impossible blue of yours. None of them feel like a periwinkle blanket wrapped around my heart. None of them make me wish the whole world would look away so I could keep this one fragile connection safe.

Still, I know what we are.

We’re children balancing on a fallen tree in the forest. Arms out, pretending it’s permanent, pretending the game can last. But night always falls, and the air cools, and eventually you have to step off the log.

You’ll move to Nebraska, maybe. I’ll stay here, perhaps.

The rainbow fades. The restaurant closes its windows.

And no matter how tightly I hold your eyes in mine, I guess I can’t take this with me either.