Post Love

I left my wife three years ago.
I write about the women that fill up the void.

Post Love Forty One

The best nights are the free, the open ended, the spontaneous nights where anything can happen. The first nights of spring where things come to life and people go outside again, there’s warmth and light and friends meeting in parks for beers and joints, sitting by water, trees and grass and rocks, park lights in the dark, there’s close friends and their friends, and everyone gets along, and more people come, and their friends, and everything is well.

My friend Mike called out my name in an excited outburst. You’ll never believe this! I looked over my shoulder and saw him standing next to one of the girls I didn’t know. Cute young brunette. Tall, preppy, nice legs. Tell him what your favorite band is. She hesitated. Then, with a thick french accent, she said the band name. I smiled. That’s his old band!

She came to sit by me, intrigued, unsure, questions in accents, answered politely in calm confidence, an old familiar feeling never acted upon then, remnants of a low level fame forgotten, knowing she’s interested before looks and personality are considered, I was in control the entire time, me and Celine, an eighteen year-old who had just moved to town a few weeks earlier. The friends I’d been talking to had gotten up and walked away for this rare occasion, and Celine told me about the boyfriend she’d left behind in Quebec. They were doing long distance. He was out of the picture. 

Just then, it started to rain. Sudden thick drops of spring got us all huddled under a giant tree, everyone running from all corners of the park like steel scraps forced to the old magnet tree, we stood there with our shoulders pulled up and our necks buried in our collars, finishing our last sips of beer and figuring out where to go next. It was 1am when  I asked her where she lived. Not too far. Want to go? I hate the rain. We’re gonna get sick. They’re going to a bar down the street. Want to go? You don’t deny alcohol with pretty girls. Her wet black hair streaked over the sides of her face, framing her blue eyes, she asked her friends what they were doing, other guys started to talk to her, I stayed close and stole back the conversation each time, making her mine, letting them know, it all came so naturally that night. All because of some songs I wrote years ago. 

Drinking got excessive quick, rounds of shots, I loosened my grip on Celine and decided to have a good time. The obsessive, controlling behaviour is not who I am. Not for long. I let go and I drank. I talked to my friends and their friends, walked around what was now just a giant colorful blur contained within four walls where faces and bodies drift in and out of vision, sentences float though your head, responses happen without second thought, drinks are always accepted, there was Celine again, do you want to go outside for a smoke? It’s raining. Oh just come. Okay, fine. We hid under an awning in the wet deserted street, perfect excuse for standing close, she smoked and we talked and we were drunk and I stood too close to her and then I told her she should kiss me. She smiled, hesitated, brought up the boyfriend. I said I didn’t want to make out, I just wanted a kiss. It had worked before. She smiled again. Okay. She leaned in and kissed me and started to let go, so I kissed her more and she pushed me away. She said something in french. I stared into her eyes with the smug confidence of success until she kissed me again. She stopped and said she wasn’t a slut. She said she just does what she wants. I ignored her statement, put my hands on her sides and pulled her closer, kissed her upper lip and then her bottom lip, then both again, I slipped my tongue into her mouth slowly until it connected with hers, just a bit, not ready to give in just yet, she teased me until I grabbed her and kissed her proper, tongues intertwined, noses exhaling, I put my hands on her ass and squeezed it. No! She pushed me back and hit me in the chest. I smiled. You went too far she said with a loud voice. There were still some moral lines left in her that she hadn’t crossed, but there was a flicker in her eye, a smile underneath her anger. Insincere apologies offered through drunken grin, we were kissing again, I squeezed her sides this time, letting her know that this was not mere kisses in the rain, letting her feel my physical being, strong and secure and not backing down, we stopped only when I remembered this was supposed to be a secret. Our friends were on the other side of the brick wall we leaned against, and last call was coming up. She said we were just kissing, that she wanted to kiss me not because of the band I was in, but because I was a great guy. She said she didn’t want anyone to know about us because she liked Sam. That was not her boyfriend’s name, but one of my friends inside the bar. I was too drunk to follow her erratic mind. Instead I leaned in and kissed her one last time. Two guys walked by with their shoulders up. Get a room! I started to laugh, feeling good, for it was always me saying that to kissing couples. I was never the one kissing in the street. I had made the switch and I would never say it again. I would only kiss in the streets. 

The other thing about those two strangers was that they brought us back to reality. They reminded us that we were kissing in public. She lit up another cigarette, the bar doors swung open, friends poured out, drunken screams and howls, Celine and I blended back into the party as if we never left, saved by strangers, an encounter that never happened to the rest of the world, our little rainy secret, I felt good inside. I wasn’t going to try more tonight. I felt good, it had been a fun little fling and that’s all it needed to be. I didn’t care that she had a boyfriend, I didn’t care that she was eighteen, I didn’t care. She was a pretty girl, she kissed me, and I went home.

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