He loves to talk, but not all the time. He tells me that talking doesn’t mean anything unless it’s worth ruining perfect silence. Most people, he says, waste their breath on everything that means nothing. But he likes when I talk. About the people in the coffee shop, and old cities I wish I’d been to, and which constellations I like best. About anything, really. We talk until the sun rises, and then we sleep all day. And we sing loudly when our favorite songs come on the radio, and we let our hands drift out the window like soaring birds, and we live. God, we live. Like addicts, and nomads, and kids with wicked minds and screaming hearts. Half the time we don’t know what day it is, but we don’t care. Because his bed feels the same on Monday and Thursday and Saturday, too. And we eat when our stomachs grow too loud, and we press close when we can’t pay the electricity bill, and we learn that sometimes what is perfect and what is enough live oceans away from each other.
But when enough becomes too little and we don’t even have our two pennies to rub together, he performs on the street with an upturned top hat at his feet. Old, bluesy songs about wild girls and townie boys. And even though his voice is only ok, with cracks in all the important parts, people see his long hair and his big smile, and they stop to watch with enormous eyes. Look, they point: a boy who never learned how to worry playing at maturity, his face bent over a guitar, long fingers threading the strings. They stand on the streets, a cigarette break from their white collar routine, and see in him some other life. Some different path. They see themselves, a little happier, a little louder, a little more carefree. The kind ones wish him well as dollar bills float from their hands. Fives and tens and twenties from those who would do everything differently if they had another shot. One man with a fading ring tan above his left knuckle gives him a crisp hundred dollar bill, his face lost in thoughts of what might have been. Transparent. He’s like that with people: prying them open without even trying. He sees through them, and you, and even me. Especially me.
We lay in bed that night surrounded by paper that will only pay a fraction of our bills, but we laugh like we’ve won the goddamn lottery. Laugh so hard we can barely breath. I laugh until I cry, and he holds me in his hands and tells me that when he has the money, he’ll buy me a ring and make this whole shindig official. My voice raw with tears, I tell him he better.
And he has the warmest hands with callouses on all the fingertips, which I don’t think anyone else knows. Not like I know. Not like they feel them against their palm and cheek and thigh in the middle of the night. I like that I hold a million tiny fragments of him that no one else has even touched. Like he calls his sister twice a week to make sure she’s not using again, and he only watches scary movies because they make my blood flow faster, and he’s an all consuming, thousand-watt, stars in his eyes kind of person. The kind people want to be around without ever knowing why. The kind who tells you he loves you and really means it.
He only says it sometimes. When it’s just us two and the perfect silence is worth being broken. And I trace road maps across the skin of his back, and I wonder. I wonder what I did to deserve all this. The affection, and the easy smiles, and the list of kid names we like tucked away in his desk drawer. Shuffled between coins and nicotine gum. And then his breath is heavy in my hair. I never fall asleep before him because I don’t know how to stop thinking. I wonder and I wonder and I wonder how I ever thought I’d be better off on my own. And he pulls me closer. Whispers my name like a promise. All the world stands still for just this moment. And I wonder how a person- one single, broken person- can come along and make so much sense.
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