Ending Notes

It's midnight. My fingertips have been itching for a melody and the piano in the den has been begging for attention. The final strokes of the keys beneath my fingers are all but inevitable when a question is posed to me by my, nearly too inquisitive, roommate. Peter.

"How do you explain a lover looking at you as though they have never met you?" I've grown accustomed to his outlandish questions. They are typically related to the universe and the construction of everything and everyone and life itself. Love is a subject he has had yet to inquire about before now. Especially that of unrequited love.

My eyes shoot daggers towards him for breaking my concentration. Those final notes have been lost to the musical labyrinth that is the mind of a pianist. I clear my throat and prepare a vague recap of my own brush with affections found to not be mutual.

“Well, I can't give you the universal experience, but I can give a recount of my own...”

Peter's head cocks to the side, one eyebrow raised, his eyes as wide as sleepiness allows, a silent invitation to go on.

"I tried to look for the light that once was behind their eyes, the one that only shone for me.” A wistful grin teases the edges of my lips.

“But, that light was coated with a thick layer of dust; it was never switched on in the first place. My mind jumped to the worst feasible conclusion; that they never really cared for me. The thought raced through my mind. Each letter a bullet, the words loaded magazines, and the period every gun firing straight at me; simultaneously. I tried and tried to think of another reason, something that would make more sense, but nothing fit. The puzzle of why they were breaking it off was being solved and the image wasn't one I had expected to appear."

"Like a surprising plot twist in a story that, in hindsight, was clued at all the way through?"

"Um, yea, pretty much exactly like that. May I continue?"

I take a moment to find the bookmark in my mental story while his tousled hair bounces up and down along with his head in a lazy nod.

"Picture this: it's a typical first date, dinner. They were smiling at all my jokes, but a true laugh never escaped. I shook it off, thinking nothing of a one-time thing. Yet, on every date that followed, I shook it off as well, believing that they were self-conscious about letting loose in front of people. And yet, they never broke out in one when we were alone either, unless it was due to a movie, or something they had said themselves. It was never because of me. I started to believe that they never genuinely smiled at me. That when they did, it was out of politeness. I looked back at all the times I hugged them and realized two key points of interest.

One: they only initiated hugs when I either asked, or, was too emotional to notice that,

two: they never embraced with their hands touching me. Their wrists were tilted up as to avoid too much intimacy."

"Okay, wow, that is just harsh. Everybody who has experienced one knows that a truly comforting embrace is one where the comforter is rubbing semicircles on the comfortee's back, or sides, or whichever part of the torso the hand happens to reach. Like this.”

Peter slides onto the bench next to me, one leg on either side, mirroring my position. Both of his arms slide around my torso. The breath from his nose ruffles my hair and begins to unknot the tensed muscles in my back. His fingertips tracing my ribs and spine conduct a symphony of released tension. I let myself soak in his warmth for the brief encounter.

"Peter, you've been a wonderful roommate these past two months, but is this really necessary right now?" Oh man, that sounded much ruder than I meant, and this is probably one of the better embraces I've been given. Darn the sleep deprivation derived from last nights triple encore show.

"Hey, I'm sor-"

"No, no I get it.” He releases his soft yet tight grip and slides back, the growing grin on his face ending in a yawn. “I'm interrupting the very vague retelling of your previous (not-so) romantic endeavour. Please continue."

My shoulders goose bump from the sudden lack of warmth... Or perhaps the incoming breeze from the cracked window adjacent to the piano.

"Anyways, it felt as though one eye was crying for everything I lost, and the other for everything I never truly had. My scarf was becoming damp around the edges, I glanced up to see a pained expression on their face that was all too familiar.

Yet, there was something hidden under their mask of sympathy; relief. Their shoulders dropped, and I realized that their muscles were always tensed around me. In that moment, the moment of seeing them so full of life and slivers of joy, I realized that they never let themselves kiss me back genuinely either. It was always a singular press, opposed to the pull and push usually experienced. A note opposed to a whole melody. They never lost themselves to experiencing it with me as I lost myself to the experience of it with them.”

I catch Peter's eye and he winks at me, or maybe he's blinking exhaustion away, I can never tell.

“The realization wasn't waves crashing into me, pushing me under the salty freshness of the ocean. It wasn't a gust of wind blowing off my hat and sweeping my feet off balance. The realization that I was never truly loved was nothing short of a tsunami. Twisting and twirling my mind, bringing me teasingly close to shore, then dunking my body down to the seaweed dancing along the ocean's bottom that wrapped around my ankles and wrists and prevented me from swimming back up to fresh air. It had the disastrous effects of a tornado. My body felt weightless as my heartstrings were spun around and around until they nearly snapped off. I was thrown down, strung up only by the fraying tendons in my shattered heart, and then they broke. I was falling, faster than possible, I was falling and still believed that they would be there to catch me. Yet, the only thing there was the ice coated cement they left behind as they strolled off once they realized that they didn't have to pretend to care anymore.”

“Delilah, you don't have to keep going.” Peter's voice is lost to me. My mind is coated with the memory and the vivid picture of that moment encases my vision.

“A bubble of laughter shattered any last hope I had. I glanced over through tear-blurred vision and saw their silhouette shaking with what could only have been genuine laughter as they leaned over and lost themselves to another silhouette's kiss."

I sniff, closing my eyes to block the onslaught of tears threatening to spill, feigning a yawn to cover the gesture.

"So, in the much shorter answer I should have initially told you, you explain a lover looking at you as though they have never met you by correlating that, no matter how connected you felt to them, they never truly gave you the opportunity to meet them. The quirks they had were not discovered through elongated conversations, but by their incessant need to discuss themselves. Especially when you were the one that needed a moment of their consideration."

Peter's eyes have gone wide with the only emotion I did not want to prompt, pity.

>---<

It was never that he was the problem, it was that I wasn't meant to be his solution. The light behind his eyes wasn't shut off, I was never the right wattage to spark the coils.

He had a face for moonlight. Features better defined by a reflection of light opposed to a direct source of it. The curve of his nose was made gentler, the edges of his grin more inviting, the dimples of his cheeks that much deeper. He was the balance of light and dark that artists aspired to replicate. The allusivity of his unique beauty was what kept drawing me back to him.

But in sun, his true darkness was revealed. His features grew shadowed, the curve of his nose took on a harsher angle, the edges of his grin became menacing, the dimples of his cheeks became deeper and seemed as though one could fall in and never land. An endless hole. The light of the sun illuminated his character. His beauty was a façade. A way to gain trust.

His indirect nature was what kept drawing me back to him. I wanted to find what made him tick; the clockwork of his mind, but I wasn't expecting to run out of time.