Reflection

I run by the tracks next to the river in the evening when most people are heading home from work or getting ready to eat dinner with their families. Apart from the sound of the cars whooshing by on the overpass above, it's relatively quiet and I rarely see anyone on the trail at all. I don't want to see anyone. I don't want to hear anyone. I just want to feel the breeze on my sweaty skin and meditate to the cadence of my trainers dancing along the dirty, rocky beaten path along the dark river while the sun goes down. I want to breathe the dust kicked up by my shoes and forget who I am. Where I've been. Where I'm going. I want to live in the reflection of the trees in the water and float far away into the black, silent void beneath it. I want to disappear.

Last summer, Nat and I would come here together. She wasn't much of a runner, so we would walk, sometimes sit by the river, and talk about our day. She didn't like her job, so she mainly complained about her boss or other people at work who had made her shit list. I tried to play devil's advocate sometimes and show empathy for people I didn't know in situations I wasn't a party to, but in her defense, they really did sound like assholes. I didn't have much to say usually because I'd been working from home alone as an independent technical writer for years, so my days consisted of writing what amounted to overblown toaster instruction manuals while eating stale cheese balls and listening to random podcasts about things most other people aren't interested in. So, I listened to her vent and chimed in every once in a while to throw some hate on her coworkers so she knew I was on her side. We'd joke around and laugh until the sun was almost gone, and then go our separate ways to eat our separate dinners in our separate homes.

Nat and I had been friends for about two years, but I fell in love with her the first moment she walked into the coffee shop where I was a regular and she asked the guy at the counter if they had nachos. She immediately followed up this query with, "If you DO, can you PLEASE just put them IN me." I laughed to myself while noticing that she seemed to be completely unaware of how a statement like that might sound in a public place. Only a beat or so later did she realize what she'd said, and this laugh came out of her like music from a jack-in-the-box before she exclaimed, "Oh my god! I am so sorry! But, seriously, do you have nachos?" I was working on a project on my laptop and sipping cold black coffee in the corner, pulled to peer at her in my periphery as she removed her bike helmet and various cycling accessories from her pockets before sitting on the counter and taking up the space of the stool next to her with what I can only describe as 'stuff' cyclists carry with them on bike rides. Still sweaty from her ride, I could see salt peppering her reddened cheeks almost like glitter, and building up around her greyish blue eyes.

I forgot what I was working on and attempted to regain my focus when she walked over to me and asked, "Hey dude, is there any way you could help me with this?"

She was holding a small pack that looked to have a stuck zipper. "I've been trying to get the dang thing unstuck and my fingers are too raw now, but my card and keys are in there, and I need to be able to pay for my food."

I cleared my throat and said, "Sure," then fiddled with the thing until it came loose. Some of her hair was stuck in it and, for a split-second, I wondered how she got hair stuck in a pack that was designed to go around a person's waist. I handed the pack back to her and said, "There was just some hair in it."

"Gross," she replied, then smiled before following up with a quick, "Thanks!"

"Sure," I peeped as she walked back to the counter amidst all of her 'stuff.'

I went back to my work and my cold coffee that was almost all gone and found my eyes and ears drifting back to her. There was no way I was going to be able to get back to what I was doing, so I gulped down what was left in my cup, packed up my things, and headed toward the counter to pay my bill. She was eating nachos messily like a little kid with an obscene amount of sour cream, a small drop of it seeping from the corner of her lips. She didn't know I was looking and I didn't want to embarrass her, so I didn't say anything. She didn't seem like the type who'd really care what anyone else thought about her anyway. There was a kind of freedom in the way she carried herself clumsily and gracefully at the same time. I paid my bill and put my card back in my wallet, then headed for the door when she said, "Hey, thanks for helping me with the zipper thing! I'm Natalie, by the way. 'Nat' if you're not a serial killer." She lit up with a toothy smile and gave me a thumbs-up. I introduced myself and said, "Sure" one more time as if I spoke limited English and 'sure' was one of the only 10 words I knew. I quickly tried redeeming myself by saying, "Later, dude" as I left the shop and made my way to my car to drive home to my fiancee, Marie, who was waiting with dinner and the latest episode of whatever reality show we were following at the time.

I don't remember what show Marie and I were watching that night. I remember Natalie's smile. It was too bright to forget and I didn't. I can still see it sometimes when I close my eyes, but I have to open them immediately or I'll be blinded by it and reminded of how the light of that smile was extinguished. I have a lot of trouble sleeping these days.

How Nat and I became friends was fairly normal, almost insignificant. In fact, I can't really recall exactly the first time we hung out or what our first conversation was after that initial 'zipper situation' at the shop. We felt a sense of comfort with each other as if we were just old friends reconnecting. Frequently, we were almost completely unaware of the world around us, lost in conversation about anything and everything. Her laugh was beyond infectious. It was jarring at times, a little too loud, awkward, but a melody would ring through it as if it were a new genre of music that I wanted to play over and over again. She laughed at all of my jokes, most of them awful, and she would tell me when they were awful while still singing that giggle that rang happiness in my ears. She, on the other hand, had a biting wit, but with a silly spin and an arsenal of dick jokes ready to fire away when appropriate. She often said things I was already thinking but was too self-conscious to say. It was a little scary to the point that I wondered if she might be an actual mind-reader or psychic or something crazy like that, so I found myself editing my own thoughts at times. I wanted to tell her everything all the time, but I didn't want her to know the truth. I couldn't tell her the truth.

Marie and I set our wedding date about a year into my friendship with Natalie. I never told Nat much about Marie, but not because I was trying to hide anything, I just didn't think to mention her. I never talked with Marie about Nat either for the same reason. It was like living in alternate universes simultaneously. When I was with Marie, I was 100% present with Marie. She was my world. She was strong, independent, smart, everything a man could possibly want in a life partner, and I felt damn lucky that she chose a loser like me. I had a lot to live up to. A standard to uphold, and a desire to be the kind of man I always wanted to be, respected, and admired.

When I was with Nat, I was 100% present with her too, but it was a little different. It was like Nat was me and I was Nat. We were 'us' and it was almost like being alone and not alone at the same time. A 'safe space' for us to be completely open and honest and true to ourselves at all times, every flaw and wound bleeding for us to nurture and heal. Sanctuary.

So, when Marie and I got busy with wedding plans and household responsibilities, time would go by when Nat and I wouldn't see each other or talk much. We would exchange occasional texts with funny memes, maybe talk on the phone late at night when we couldn't sleep to see which of us could bore the other one to sleep faster, babbling fluffy nothingness into our ears and minds. And most of that time, even though we weren't physically connected or speaking much, I always felt like she was with me anyway. She was always with me. She WAS me and I WAS her. We were one entity. So, when she started to get upset with me for not returning texts or calls, I got upset with her for being so needy and obnoxious like some overbearing girlfriend trying to control my life. I had a life. I had friends. I had a fiancee, a house, responsibilities, a reputation to maintain, and here she was complaining because I didn't answer a stupid question about whatever random shit she was thinking about in the middle of the night, or because I didn't acknowledge a post she made on social media. She refused to trust that I was always there and that she was always there with me. It made me want to strangle every annoying little cry for help out of her fragile little body. She was fine if she would just pay attention and understand that we were always together anyway, so we didn't need to be in contact all the time.

About a month before the wedding, Marie had to go out of town to attend to her bridal duties with her mom and her cousins. Apart from the bachelor party, I really didn't have anything else to do and I finally got to have some time to myself. So, I called Nat. Being alone with her was more beneficial to me than being actually alone, and I missed her. I needed to hear her laugh and for her smile to light up a dark place I had gotten myself into. I would never complain about Marie or even the wedding plans or anything like that. My job was the same, so there wasn't anything specifically going on that was stressing me out, but I started to descend into this overwhelming pit of despair, for lack of a less cliche phrase, that was inexplicable. I needed to go within myself, and the best way to do that, to breathe and immerse myself in these emotions so I could find my way back to the light again, was to be with Nat. We were 'us,' after all, and I knew everything would get better if I could just be with her for a little while. So, we met for a beer and it was like no time had passed. We were in our own world just like every time. I was 100% present with her and she was with me and no one else was around.

Sanctuary.

That night, the alcohol flowed endlessly. I don't know how long we were at the first place or the second place, or how much we had to drink. We ended up at a seedy dive bar that oddly had a fantastic selection of fine Scotch. On our way there, Nat was so tipsy that she held onto my arm while we walked because she was afraid she might trip. I didn't think anything of it at the time, even though later I thought it might have looked somewhat inappropriate for a practically married man to have an attractive single woman clinging to his bicep. But while it was happening, I admit it fed my ego a little. She was beautiful in a way that real people are beautiful, unconventional maybe, but only because she didn't look like some magazine model. Her hair cascaded down her back and shoulders. It always smelled like roses or honeysuckle, fresh after a thunderstorm on a hot, humid day. We met up right after work, so we were both dressed in our nicest business casual attire. To anyone else, it would have seemed that we were a couple, and I was so drunk I didn't mind. I didn't mind at all.

Nat had recently discovered she had a love for Scotch after briefly being infatuated with a friend of hers who wrote detailed reviews of various whiskeys he had tasted. He was a malignant narcissist with no interest in her beyond a few casual social interactions and passing pleasantries when their paths crossed in public, so her chapter with him was ended soon after it started. Having shared with me that she found him 'brilliant,' 'captivating' and 'devilishly handsome,' she was initially devastated when he abruptly cut her off and tossed her out like a broken toy, but she always had me like I always had her, so she was content to let him go after a series of broken-hearted messages lamenting his departure. The Scotch, however, stayed and she had developed a preference for the mustier, smoky varieties drenched in the essence of peat and oak. The kind of whiskey you can smell a mile away that sticks in your senses for long after it's danced on your tongue and slid down the back of your throat, warming your chest and giving life to your entire body for only a moment.

Caught up in a moment like that, the smell of her hair, the feel of her clinging to me as we hobbled to the bar, already far past the point of acceptable inebriation, I wanted to treat her. I wanted to celebrate her and 'us' and myself, and this night that was only ours, the only two people in existence, so I bought us each a glass of her favorite Scotch. It was quiet in that bar. There were only a couple of other people there. There was music, I think, but I can't remember hearing anything but her laughter and mine bouncing back and forth in time as we sipped our drinks and chatted somewhat sparingly because we were both just appreciating the fine whiskey and great company.

People say you don't need alcohol to have fun, and that's true, but sometimes it can really kick things up a notch.

Her eyes seemed so blue and clear, I could almost see my own eyes reflected in them, staring back at me. There was only Nat. I couldn't see beyond her. It was like she was her own universe and I was in her orbit, or maybe that I was the universe and she was in mine. I couldn't understand why she would get so upset when we were apart when we were never actually apart. We've always been together. We'll always be together.

Our glasses were empty and the time had slipped from late night to early morning. Nat didn't live far, but I didn't want her to walk home alone, so I offered to drive her, despite being far too intoxicated to be able to drive myself. As we walked out the door of the bar, I looked up at the sky, clear with stars and the brightest full moon I've ever witnessed to this day, and I looked back at her and pointed to the sky, signaling her to see what I saw. Tears started to well up in her eyes as she opened her mouth to reveal that brilliant smile that seemed to try to compete with the moon's luminescence. With a look of awe that turned to a look of competition, she commented, "You know, the moon isn't really all that bright. In fact, it has no light of its own. It reflects the light of the sun. Without the sun, the moon is just a lifeless rock in the sky." And just like that, Nat managed to outshine the light of the brightest moon I ever saw, and I understood who she was to me. What she meant to me.

I opened the door of my car and carefully guided her into the passenger seat, then smacked myself in the face a few times as I walked to the driver's side, trying to sober up enough to drive her home. I can't say I was in any better condition to drive, but her apartment was only a few blocks away and I managed to get her there safely. I pulled right up to her front door, parked, and thanked her for a fun night, leaning in for a hug. She looked at me with a polite, closed-mouth smile, mumbled in a playful upbeat sort of way, "Mmhmm, it was fun," and lingered for a moment before suddenly leaping into my lap, mounting me, her thighs pressed against mine, then put her tiny, delicate hands onto my bloated, drunken face, kissed me hard with a targeted, deliberate passion, with soft lips, wet with the taste of the smokey whiskey we'd shared, and said almost matter-of-factly, "You're marrying the wrong woman, dude! Ok, good night," then dismounted even quicker, practically ejecting herself out of the car like a scene from an old cartoon. I sat staring for a moment, dumbfounded, without a single thought in my head, then started the car, shifted into drive, and headed home. I didn't feel the effects of the alcohol anymore, and I was fine to drive.

The wedding was three days away. Marie had taken care of most of the planning herself, and she had done such a good job with everything that we were almost bored waiting for the actual event. It was like any other Tuesday. She went to get drinks with her girlfriends and I went to one of my favorite watering holes to enjoy what would likely be my last beer as a bachelor. I was a little nervous, but Marie was the kind of woman who was so perfect that she made things easy, leaving me to focus on being the best possible version of myself. I think that was my biggest worry about the whole thing altogether. I needed to be a better man so I wouldn't let her down. A good husband. A provider. With Marie, I could do that for her and for my own highest good. With Marie, I had a bright, stable future with endless possibilities. The only drawback was that I didn't believe in myself. I knew what I had to do, but I didn't feel like I could muster the confidence to do it. Guilt from the mistakes of my past sat heavy in my gut, twisting and turning, festering. I needed to let go of that, but I didn't know how. I wanted to kill the man I used to be, the man I was, to suffocate him, chop him into pieces and throw him into the river.

I wanted to be a good man. A man Marie could depend on and adore, maybe even be respected and admired by the community. An equal, supportive partner who she could be proud to call her husband. A man worthy of her affection and devotion.

I wanted to look in the mirror and see that good man looking back at me, knowing that I had been able to erase the thing I was before I met her. The monster whose sins from the past clung to his heart and mind like an invisible toxic sludge eating away at his soul. It was time for that man to die, painfully and finally with no hope of redemption or resurrection. I would be his judge and executioner. No mercy. No regret. No guilt.

My mind drifted to Nat as I finished my second mug of hefeweizen. I wondered where she was, what she was doing, what she was thinking about. I wondered if she missed me. I hadn't seen her in some time. How long, I can't really remember. In a rare moment of spontaneity, almost absently, I sent her a text message, "You free?" Her response was quick. She's almost always glued to her phone, so I wasn't surprised. "Dude! Where have you been?"

"Want to join a bachelor for his last beer as a free man?"

I joked the way we always did, this one being particularly funny since Marie and I were together a year before Nat and I ever met. It was subtle, but I was never a 'free man,' and Nat knew that, so I could imagine her eye-roll and half giggle at me referring to myself in that way. I know she laughed, though. She always got the joke.

The first time we reunited after an extended estrangement, I apologized to her and told her that I thought she might not want to be friends anymore since I had effectively ghosted her during a period of time I needed to shut down and break away from the world. From our world. Her face dropped, her eyes an intense blue, overflowing with sincerity, and she said, "Dude, if we were the last two people on Earth, and we could go anywhere and do anything we wanted, I would still stay near you and laugh at your stupid jokes. You are my best friend." Her serious tone gave way to nonchalance and she laughed again, nervously. She always laughed. The sound of it is still a tune that plays in a locked corner in the back of my mind. Echoing relentlessly when I can't drown it out with the noise of my continued existence.

I spaced out a little, staring at my reflection in the half-empty glass of beer in front of me when I felt someone tap my shoulder to greet me. I pulled her into my chest for a friendly squeeze and hailed the beer-tender to order her a porter. Dark beers were her favorite. She liked how it seemed as if they lasted longer because you had to drink them slower since they're typically heavier and richer, decadent. I ordered another for myself and we moved to the back of the tasting room where it was quieter. It was a slow night and we had the whole back section to ourselves. We drank and opened up about what had gone on in our lives during the time I "disappeared" again. I still can't understand why she didn't get that I was never gone. That we were never apart just because we weren't talking or physically in the presence of one another. I shouldn't have had to explain it, so I never did. She knew. She had to know. We were one entity. I know she felt it too. She felt everything. She knew everything. I didn't have to tell her the truth because she was always in my thoughts, always in my head, always knowing, always laughing all the time, and as she was going on and on again whining incessantly about how I had 'ghosted' her over and over when I had MY LIFE to live, saying that she thought I didn't care about her enough and that we shouldn't be friends anymore, and how that was okay because she loved me and respected my decisions until I just exploded, interrupting her with, "Would you just shut the fuck up?!"

"I LOVE you, Natalie," I stated almost too aggressively, before lunging in to kiss her hard and deep, every urge I'd ever felt reverberating throughout my body and intertwining with hers, adrenaline coursing through my veins as if I'd been reanimated after a long, cold death. She reciprocated and matched my intensity until a brief tinge of fear crept up between us as we realized we were in a public place and I was about to be a married man. Time after time, we'd been surrounded by people but never noticed, never cared because it was 'us.' We were each other's sanctuary. But with this gesture, we had shattered the bubble we'd grown so accustomed to hiding within. Although fully clothed, we were naked and exposed to the world that had forced us together to seek solace in each other. To heal the wounds from past trauma. Rejection. Heartache.

Damage was done. Irreparable. Damage.

Rejecting the instinct to walk away, I pulled her closer to me and whispered, "We have to get out of here." For the first time since I'd known her, Nat was lost for words. She nodded, looking at me longingly as we both felt this irresistible magnetic pull ruling over us like some kind of perverted puppet master.

Did anyone see us? Was there anyone we knew nearby? Where can we go? What do we do? We. Can't. Stop.

I grabbed her hand, holding it tightly, leading her through dark streets dotted with strangers, unable to control my urge to keep kissing her in every abandoned corner of every alleyway we crossed. She followed my lead but was uncharacteristically submissive even though she couldn't help but become a slave to our mutual attraction to one another. She was mine and I was hers.

And then...I was him again. The man I was before Marie.

He was still there, alive and clawing at me from the inside, feeding off of her lust for me, her unconditional love, ready to take full advantage of her feelings and this twisted odyssey. To tear her apart slowly, being sure that she felt every measure of pain he could inflict upon her until her ridiculous musical laughter turned into screams of agony, so she could never brighten a dark corner with even the tiniest smile again.

I tried to be brave. I did try.

In an attempt to protect her, I pulled her closer and closer, tighter and tighter. Her small, white neck locked in my sweaty, oafish hands, her eyes wide and filling with tears, fading with every slowing breath and this look of the truest terror, betrayal. I held her tighter, so tight I could hear her bones crack in time with her laughter still echoing in my mind, and the music was so...

Beautiful. Electric.

I heard it louder and louder and I let go of her lifeless body and spun around to defeat him with Nat locked safely inside.

She was with me. She was always with me. I saved her from him. She'd never be disappointed again. She'd never feel abandoned by me. I would always protect her. Keep her safe.

She was me and I was her and we were 'us.'

I never left. I would never leave her.

The monster I was would never stand a chance now that Nat and I could face him together as one. To ensure defeat, we gave in to the magnetic pull between us and bashed in the head of the corpse left behind with a brick fallen from a nearby dilapidated and abandoned building, blood painting the deteriorating walls with the most glorious graffiti. We lifted the remains, our combined strength limitless, an effortless endeavor, carrying the bruised and battered pieces less than a mile away, toward the railroad tracks that followed the cold, black river.

The moon wasn't full that night, but it was bright enough to light our way as we traveled the trail to dispose of what was left of the monster. The monster that wasn't me anymore. The monster that Nat helped me eradicate once and for all.

Exhausted, I fell to my knees by the side of the river, letting the tiny, limp body slip into the water, sinking slowly under the faint reflection of the trees dancing on the surface, illuminated by the light of the sun reflecting off of the dead rock that was the moon.

The moon doesn't have its own light, you know.

It only reflects the light that it's given.

I run by the tracks next to the river when it's quiet and everyone else is occupied with their mundane daily lives so I can listen to the rhythm of my cadence with the flow of the water rushing down and down, deep and dark. So I can feel the breeze and breathe the dust kicked up by my shoes. After a thunderstorm on a hot day, I can smell roses or honeysuckle like her hair blowing in the wind and falling softly on her shoulders.

She's always with me. She knows. She is me. I am her. We are 'us.'

I go home when the sun goes down.

It's Marie's turn to cook tonight and she's promised to make my favorite. We're binging "Renovation Nightmares" on the Home and Garden channel tonight, and I can't wait to see what happens next.