Will

         The first time we’d seen each other since he cheated on me, he kissed me.
         And I let him.
         I don’t know why I let him.  I was expectedly disgusted with him.  I was furious and hurt and broken and so down that there was nothing I could do.  I was limp in his arms, devoid of any kind of will, and as far as I was concerned, he could hurt me no worse at this point than he already had.
         He didn’t know what to do with me.  He had never known  what to do with me.  We lived separate lives, me in my studio and he in his.  We came together on occasion to partake in ritual grown-up activities: drinking wine, attending the nutcracker, having sex...making love..?  Well, one or the other.  We followed the rules and went through the motions, not because we wanted to, but because we didn’t really know how else it should be done.

         We met on campus.  He walked up to me nonchalantly one night in the Student Union as I sat reading about history.  I was sitting on a blue couch that had black asterisk designs on it, which reminded me of The Jetsons style animation: intersecting black lines of varying lengths with noticeable points at the ends.  I was close to the doors, so any time someone walked in to or out of the building, I was graced with a breath of new air.  My couch was against the wall, as I don’t like not knowing what’s going on behind me, so I had a full view of the other tables and people in the Union.
         Without warning he asked, “Do you like my bracelet?”  I glanced from my book to his face and then at his finger, which was pointing clearly at his other wrist.  The bracelet was neon green, like those yellow Live Strong bracelets.  “It says multivitamins.”
         At this I smiled, because things as unexpected as neon multivitamin bracelets are funny.  So are the hippy boys who wear them - slightly bearded (not because he liked a beard, but because he didn’t like shaving), longish golden brown hair, happy eyes, and an elfish smile.
         I’d never taken vitamins before, unless Flintstones count, and maybe this utterly random, totally off the wall guy on the couch beside me was about to change things for me.  Maybe he was going to give me a dose of something I’d been missing out on, something that would strengthen me.  Little did I know.
         A week later I spent the night in his room on campus.  It was a single dorm room, not unlike my own, but it was covered in art.  It was almost all his art: geometric shapes in different colors with realistic people in various places around the shapes.  The people were all staring into space, as if they were attempting to finally grasp Inner Peace.  There was not a single place on his white cement block walls where I could actually see the white cement blocks.  Even his ceiling was covered in art, as well as pine cones and sticks and peacock feathers all strung up precariously by intricate lines of string.  He was constantly burning sage, a smell that I still tell him is his.  “It smells like you in here,” I say.
         “You mean sage?”
         “No.  You.”

         On July fourth, three months after we met, I visited him at his mother’s house where he lived in the summer.  Lying in his bed after a tiring hike up Grandfather Mountain, he babbled on about worldly problems.  He said that if people would just accept the negative energy in the world, there wouldn’t be any floating around.  If we just accepted it and let it go, it would disappear.  He told me that he loved me.  And that time, I finally said it back.  Three months later, he took my virginity. 
         
         He inspired me to write.  For a writer with writer’s block, that was quite a feat.  They were short accounts, but at least I was writing again:
         His eyes darted over my body. Never before have I written about eyes that dart and really meant it, but there is not a more accurate description. For some reason I wasn’t cold, and I wasn’t blushing either. Despite my nakedness, I was comfortable as his hand, armed with a pencil, scratched over the page in his book. His attention on me in the bed was equal to that of me on the page…
         …We are artists, he and I, and while he laid me out on that page, while he created his art, I wrote this story in my mind, I created my art.
I don’t know if there’s a better connection between any other people in the world; the possibilities are infinite, I suppose. He talks about our balance constantly, as if that very balance could hold up the entire universe. But I’m not sure if I believe in anything so perfect because I don’t know if I believe perfection exists at all and even if it doesn’t, can’t I be proven wrong? Who else have I inspired while being inspired myself? Especially all at once?…
It was absolutely silent. He looked at me carefully before he started, squinting so as to proportion properly; I know, because I asked. While I watched his hands I could see his eyes moving just as swiftly. His mouth was set in concentration the way I thought his eyebrows should have been. His eyes darted over my body. I don’t know where he started; sometimes my shoulders, sometimes my legs. Wherever he started, I could follow his outline of my body with his eyes, for they only moved along my skin inches at a time. A neckline, a forearm, a breast, a finger, a calf…I knew he was finished when his face softened – another expression I’ve used and never meant.
The silence was heavy, but not unbearable or scary. It was just heavy, important, natural. It was quiet. And I’m sure I didn’t stop breathing, but I also can’t remember that I still was. I think every word we said during those moments was completely insignificant. The silence was heavy with words of its own.
I don’t know what the silence said, I couldn’t tell you if you asked me. But I know what it said. It speaks in a language I don’t understand, but one that I know…"

         We began to see each other less frequently, but the times that we did get together were beautiful.  We had camped in the rain, searched for hidden crystals, stolen salt and pepper shakers, and seen fireworks on more than one occasion.  Once we went for a walk Downtown and he said that we should go to one of the highest places we could find in the city.  We climbed up flight after flight of dingy parking deck stairways until we emerged on the top deck.  He insisted that we go even further, up on the little lookout station despite the board on the ladder, which blocked the metal rungs and read, “No Trespassing.”
         “Are we allowed?” I whispered, glancing around.  He smirked and shrugged his shoulders as he walked toward the ladder.
         “Watch where I put my feet,” he told me.  The first few rungs were clear, but the board over the next few was at least as long as my torso.  Luckily, I was quite limber from dance classes and I managed to swing my leg up to a makeshift foothold while he gripped my hands and helped me climb over the top rung.  It was scary to stand up, being so high with no walls around me, and I quickly ducked down to feel safer.  We laid on our backs to watch the sky as it darkened around us.  We giggled about what a bad influence he was on me.  He turned his head toward me and smiled sweetly.  I blushed, because when people look at me for too long I get uncomfortable, and he kissed the tip of my nose.

         He once told me that he wondered if we really had “that spark” and that “flames always die.”  Perhaps we were dying.  We saw each other across the campus green and merely waved; neither of us attempted to actually go say hello.  I assumed he was the typical 21 year old male, afraid of commitment.  He said that he was worried about missing out on other, possibly greater, love.  I said that had to be the stupidest reason ever to end an otherwise fine relationship.  What if we weren’t missing out on anything and we gave up this love because we thought we might be?  Weren’t we learning from each other and experiencing new things together?  We left it at that. 
         Three months later, he cheated on me.  I walked in on him.  With her.  I walked in on him, with her, and walked back out.  Neither of them had seen me.  I went over the scene in my mind.  The edges of the room were blurred and all I could see was them on that gray bed, her in that pink shirt.  They were sitting together, looking out the window, minds entirely elsewhere.  He sat behind her, his hands wrapped around her torso, reaching for her breasts.  Those hands were for my breasts.  I didn’t know what to do.  I never thought I’d have to deal with something of such magnitude.  I turned around and walked silently back into the room, and she was leaning closer to him, breathing her sultry breath on his neck, eyes closed in that way that eyes close when a body feels delicious.  Nothing in the world made a sound, not even air, and I pressed four fingers firmly into his bare shoulder.
         “Uh oh…”
         “Uh oh is right,” I mumbled as I walked back to the living room to wait for what would surely be a bumbling apology.
         I looked around his living room, a living room I’d seen a zillion times before, a living room I’d belonged in before, but one that I was a complete alien in on that day.  To my left, new paintings that had accumulated since the last time I’d seen him leaned against the walls.  In that week of my absence, he still managed to paint huge boards of careful colors; this one warm with reds and oranges, that one cool with blues and pinks.  Through the screened door I could see two quarters of a watermelon, eaten, yet fresh.  Taunting me.  As if I could have stopped them had I shown up just ten minutes earlier, while they were sharing ripe fruit.  The bright insides of the watermelon  told me that I was too late.  Juice dripped from the watermelon to the porch as my bottom lip quivered.
         The next time we saw each other was for what I considered closure.  It was so fitting that it was Memorial Day; we spent it bundled up in blankets on a couch, remembering all the little things he’d forgotten about: visiting Fern Gully on the Parkway, that time he was going to steal a tie but I insisted he pay for it, dressing fancy on those rare occasions when we went to the theatre…
         But then he turned to me, in utter seriousness, and said, “One day I’ll marry you.”  I froze inside, but my eyes hid it well.
         “No,” I said, glancing at his shoulder, “I want everything that you don’t want.”
         “That’s true…”  He pursed his lips as if he were going to come up with a solution right then and there.  “We’ll have a daughter named Jaime…”
         At this my face fell apart because I knew that he had no intentions of having children.  I don’t know if I was crying because I wanted to believe him but knew that I couldn’t, or if it was because I was seriously considering any kind of proposal from him and what that meant on his part - namely, that he loved me.  He said nothing, but drew me close and held me tight.  I shook in his arms, out of my mind.  He sought my lips and I returned his kiss softly.
         Then I broke our kiss and looked at him sadly.  I touched my tears away by pressing the pads of my fingers to the edges of my eyes.
         “Mm,” I hummed, making sure my voice wouldn’t crack and make me seem more fragile than I already appeared.  “Think about what you want.”  I placed my hands on the sides of his face, my thumbs in front of his ears and my other fingers behind them, like I was holding some sort of holy grail.  He blinked, his eyes shiny with wetness, and a frown formed on his lips, a frown not of his control.  I pressed my lips to his once more, carefully, passionately, and then turned before he could see me cry again.  I left his house without looking back as I closed his door.