Gone Boy

Orange, reds, and yellows seeped through the office windows and filled the room up. While memories of your tangerine shirt still linger on and I imagine your scent is here if I had any sense of smell. And I wonder if I fell asleep after a long day at the office.

I stepped off the plane and into the office the way one does in a dream. Or maybe jet lag blurs the lines of time. In my mind's eye, I can still see the changing colors of Casa Batlló with its artistically curving windows becoming green-blue orange, red, yellow, and pink.

While my mind is thinking of the places I left behind, you were there saying “good job.” I found myself suddenly standing in front of the snacks I was refilling. The spell of being somewhere else was broken and there was a funny looking ginger in front of me. I behaved like a newly awakened child and you were gone.

A week later I find myself glazed over at my desk. I am numbed out with boredom and looking for ways to create relevancy at the office. I have found a task to pour myself into. Then I look up and find “good job” guy walking by in a quest-like state.

I am not poetic so I don’t say, “good sir may I help your mission to find what it is you are seeking.” Instead I say “can I help you?” He replies with “I was looking for cereal.”

I know I can order cereal but that uses up a lot of milk and I don’t have the budget for that level of consumption. I move on from his need and head to lunch. My boyfriend wants to get sweet greens.

It seems like fate or the universe or something larger than life. Because the same parking lot of Sweet Greens lands me right in front of Trader Joe’s. When I walk inside, the first display I see is strawberry cereal in a pink box. I cannot help but buy it.

Back at the office I go to find him and where he sits has no nameplate in the usual green-blue. I wonder if I had imagined him yet I am pretty sure others had seen him too. So I ask about the person who sits over there. His name is Chris which is a very common name at this office. This lead me to ask for his last name.

I only messaged a photo of the cereal box. There was an immediate response the following day. I offered to split the box. I left a bag of cereal for him on my yellow desk. Then life became magical as he asked me questions about my life in a way that surprised and delighted me.

He wrote: “where have you been?” I replied “all your life?” Then I listed countries and states while he shared those details of his life. We messaged music, hikes, and random jokes. I was getting into that state of this too much fun. I was waiting for some kind of penalty because it was dangerously delightful. I almost felt deliriously happy.

The messages were firing off at speeds that almost felt irresponsible. The weekends were met with silence from me because it was a work phone and the phone stayed at work.

He however had the work phone with him all of the time. He took me on his vacation and shared his thoughts. He read my jokes.

Before I left for vacation, I set him up with a scavenger hunt because I was not taking the work phone. His clues were filled with inside jokes and references between us. I didn’t actually realize how intimate it felt until later because I was busy enjoying the jokes. “Where can you be found laying like a cat or a dog?”

Shortly after getting back I was met with silence. There was no sight of him at the office. I wondered if he had quit without telling me. Had I created something that felt like harassment instead of unabashed joy?

He tells me everything is fine and he just has to sort himself out. And I am lost but hanging onto the memories until they no longer sustain me. Now I am reaching out to create with the expansive emptiness I feel in the silence.

I thought the bigger and brighter I became the more he would be drawn to my lightness. I created and had three videos featured at a conference. I was traveling to my favorite places nearly every month sometimes for long weekends and expanding my artistic reach. I tried new mediums and explored new kinds of design through canva in videos, cards, and other elements.

Curiously enough I started to design mazes. Maybe it was him saying he needed to hermit his way out of the maze. Or maybe it was my confusion over what was happening. I did one that when you looked at the walls they wrote “I am here and” when turned it upside down it said “you are there.” The woman at the left hand start was at the opposite side of the man at the bottom right corner, trying to encapsulate the confusing ways we navigate relationships.

Then he reappeared and said what had made him disappear, which was a divorce and not wanting to drag me in. I was relieved to know the answer and shared that he should process that and I wouldn’t want to date him at this time.

We discussed future plans and ended up having a meal outside of work that felt like heaven. I could have sworn every molecule in both of us was bouncing around with joy. The second meal however was different for me. I wondered if it was all an empty lie. He was communicating less and less. I found myself doubting that we would become more than friends.

The feeling of the lie started to wrap around me tightly while I told myself he needed space. He was burrowing in his cave as men do. He resurfaced enough times like a submarine that needed air. I chose to get my air in Florence, Italy. A long awaited trip. He knew I was leaving and he was interviewing for a new job.

When I came back to find his stuff was gone, the book he had given to me had also disappeared leaving the question of his actual existence. The books from the scavenger hunt back at my desk like it never happened. The office was empty and cold. I felt like the whole experience was a thin web of beauty that was swept away. I wondered for days and months if any of it happened at all.

I texted him you took the book? There was never a reply and I guess it was too good for me to imagine it lasting. It is startling to wake up and find no evidence of someone you once knew and loved.