He Met Her Again, Twenty Years Later

They had both been through it and basically forgotten about one another. It had been a long haul. She had lived a number of lives, in and out of sanity and always striving for an area closer to the edge. He had been over that edge a number of times, jumped off and climbed back on, pushing and pushing himself to understand what the fuck he was doing here. He never learned.

They both married well. Fell in love, really, though they would have said the same upon meeting one another when they were teenagers. He had chosen a woman who fit his literary sensibility: sad and subtle, intelligent and broken. She had chosen a man who fit her understanding of the male archetype: strong and hardworking, entitled and indolent. Their worlds didn’t fit into their picture of the future, only the moment and the pursuit of something more than what they understood to be “life.”

Then something hit. They both read more Raymond Carver. Interested in alcoholism and addiction, they wondered what caused all the sadness, why movement could be so terribly difficult, why moving was so attractive. They had passed thirty, that number that killed each of them a little, giving them more freedom, more awareness. They asked questions that only led to more holes, more emptiness. The questions lingered, too, creating more division and all these spaces neither had anything to fill.

Then they met again. It changed nothing, but the premise was spectacular, beyond anything they'd known. Beneath what was, lay what had been. She considered it constantly around him. He’d talk about his child and she’d remember his chest, eighteen years old and smooth, flat against her belly. She’d talk about her own child and he’d picture her breasts, above him in dim light. He’d discuss his job and she’d picture lips that held no age. She’d talk about her spouse and he’d shift, knowing the correct thing to say, choosing to think the opposite.

There was no choice, only memory that locked them, created this prison where they'd pace back and forth before the bars like panthers in the dark. They learned to cope. However, the attraction remained and pulled, insistent and raw. They managed it differently, as adults, allowed the energy to move through their bodies in waves, sometimes subtle, sometimes painful, always exhausting, exhilarating. Their families became close, they were able to manipulate the sensations to their advantage, touching and retouching possibility, holding and letting go, surfing. She re-read, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and repurposed it to fit her situation. He became close to her husband, learning to chat through politics with her in the room, as close as breath.

Then she moved away. His focus remained for some time. The image of her, the face that lingered like the taste of something unfathomably delicious and delicate but somehow too complex. He thought of her often, as an idea, a concept not fully realized. She considered him many evenings before bedtime, his weight against her bones. It wasn't just the weight that had been all those years ago, but the weight of that horrible possibility, the one that wouldn't let them go.

Those thoughts faded for each of them, seeping into outer edges. Occasionally there were tears, though neither she nor he recognized the connection between their choosing to meet again and the ensuing sadness. They merely forged ahead because they had to. There were other lives to consider, other feelings. And this fondness diminished until the memory became as graying hair, brittle and tentative.

Neither of them regretted seeing the other again, though both eventually wished they had not.