Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 103754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
My heart pounds in my chest.
Breathing becomes harder.
Tears flood the corners of my eyes.
And a friggin’ guitarist strolls behind me singing Mazzy Star like he’s auditioning for American Idol. I push my hair from my face and wipe under my eyes before raising my chin into the air. I shuffle to the tiled wall to lean against it, trying to catch my breath and talk myself out of whatever I think I saw. I didn’t, did I?
How do you run into someone randomly like that in a city that has a billion people always roaming around? Where am I that this could even happen? I tilt my head to glance down one direction, then the other, and see Fulton Station listed. I’m never at this station. Is he?
My heart regulates, and my breathing evens as I lean my head against the wall, wondering if I’ll ever see him again. I look down the tracks where the train disappeared, regret flooding my system. There’s not just remorse but also pain. One night with him wasn’t enough.
It was only a glimpse, but seeing him again reminds me of the sacrifices I’ve made to please people who never deserved my obedience. I used to think it was about the money I’d need to survive, but that doesn’t seem to be much of a factor anymore. What did it bring? Not happiness.
Even I know that gave me something to fall back on. But at what cost? Glancing once more down the tunnel where the train disappeared, I know the cost. Keats. The best night of my life has become a painful memory. That is when I allow myself to think about it, which isn’t often and usually forced by something that triggers it, like passing through a cloud of smoke before it dissipates or the cork of a champagne bottle being popped.
I don’t eat ramen or visit Joy’s restaurant anymore.
My dad’s apartment has been a no-go zone since Keats and I last went there.
But it’s the time that I walked in on a poetry reading that had me turning around and leaving. I never even got to read my Poet’s work. I bet he was an amazing writer. Hopefully, he still is. Though he stuck to his plan and got his finance degree. I had to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming in excitement when he crossed that graduation stage. I’ve never felt prouder, as if that was my right even though I only had less than twenty-four hours with him.
My feelings for that man developed fast and furious. I should have known I was doomed to fall for him the minute I saw him sweep his hair out of his eyes when he was focused on his phone. That playboy hair with the soft wave that ran through it so casually that I know he didn’t style it. He just knew how to wear it like that attitude of his—a little feral and equally calming. I’d never met anyone like him before. He was who he was.
No pretenses.
No forced expressions.
No small talk that didn’t feel like it was meant for more.
The arrival of the next train pulls me out of memory lane. I press a fingertip to the inside corner of my eye to keep the tear from falling. “Don’t be silly, Sosie.”
The doors open, and I sit in the same seat I saw him in on the other train. Instead of distracting myself with my phone, I stare out the window and exhale, unable to organize the messy state that meeting him has left me in. I shouldn’t still care about him, but I can’t help myself.
He looked good and is probably happy. I’d be shocked if he hasn’t had some other girl fall madly in love with him.
Lucky girl.
I don’t have any claim to jealousy regarding him, though I feel it, but I do still have a hole in my chest that he temporarily filled. I once read it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. I’m not so sure I agree with Lord Tennyson anymore.
More than two years later, the pain of losing Keats hasn’t dampened. It’s only morphed into something else—loneliness, discontentment . . . I don’t even know. I still struggle to find one word that encapsulates the emotion of having the universe open its arms, only to have a door slammed in your face the next day. The high of the hope and the low of the loss.
“Sorry I’m late.” I drop my leather messenger bag onto the wooden bench and slide into the booth across from my friend.
“It’s okay,” Marcy says, looping her fingers around the stem of her martini glass. “Hope you don’t mind. I already ordered a cosmo.”
I smile as my friend, who’s become a bigger part of my life over the past year, sips the pink drink. We hit it off in our Classical English Literature 3 class last spring and now have a standing date every Wednesday at a different restaurant. She’s been the addition to my life that I needed. She’s not in my family’s social circle or looking for a bad boy, which used to be my tendency to spite my parents. She’s started making me see people in a new way, steering my views away from the extremes. It’s not one or the other anymore. It just is. I’ve found comfort lolling through the middle of the two. Maybe I’m a little numb as well, but that beats the heartbreak I barely survived two years prior.