i am trying to break your heart

We had this joke, he and I. A joke from before we'd ever met each other, when we were just words on a screen. A joke about how I'd startled him and broken his tea infuser.

Things hadn't been going well for a while. He was still pretty broken up about things with his ex, and he still had a crush on a friend of his he was trying to work through. I went up to visit, for what turned out to be the last time. And I brought him a tea infuser, to end the joke.

"This was really sweet of you. But I'm afraid this is our last weekend together."

"I'm OK with that," I said, mostly because it hadn't sunk in.

After all, we still had time together. We had a whole weekend. It was easy to deny what he'd said when we were in bed later, spent and shaking.

"You know, it's cool that you're OK with it. You're really cool."

"Yeah, I know. I'm the coolest," I responded. There was no time nor place for rebuttal. There was no time to nurse my broken heart. We still had a weekend.

Later, after we separated for a while, I went to a party, where I was meeting him. I didn't know anyone else but the people I'd come with. Alexis greeted me at the door:

"You should hang on to him. He's a good boy."

I didn't bother to tell her that there was nothing left to hang on to.

Later -- much later -- he showed up with his crush. I'd had a lot to drink by this point, waiting for him to arrive, trying to mingle with strangers. Trying to explain to Matthew that we'd broken up just hours before.

"You aren't allowed to be jealous of Meg, because she and I aren't boinking," he said. Was I allowed to be jealous because she had his heart and I never would?

"I'm sorry I had to end things just when we were falling in love."

We walked back to his place from downtown. It was long, and we were drunk. I had to pee. We passed the Black Angel; touched her for luck. I had no idea if we were going in the right direction. I had to trust him to lead me home.

An hour or so after we fell asleep, I woke, brain spinning from my drink. I ran downstairs to the working bathroom, and threw up for what seemed like hours. The simplest explanation was that I was drunksick and vomiting up the toxins inside me. But it seemed as though I was also throwing up my hurt, my anger, my frustration over all the past four months, flushing it away so that it couldn't touch me until later.

Our last time together was slow, langorous. It seemed to last six hours or more. When I finally stood up, my head was pounding and my stomach burned like fire. I couldn't shake the clouds in my head. I could barely move without feeling nauseated. But I'd managed to love him the best way I could for the very last time, despite my hangover.

I didn't cry until much much later. I was too numb for that for a very long time.

Tonight, nearly ten years later, he said:

"I finally got over breaking your heart."

"Yeah, you did."

"Eventually. I was apologetic for a couple years."

"Apologetic to me?"

"Yes. I remember apologizing every six months or so."

"Yes, I remember."

"It's OK. I got over breaking your heart."

"So did I, fortunately."

"I'm glad too...You're more fun now that you're not all worked up over me."

"You're totally pressing your luck, there, bucko."

"Goodnight."

And somehow I never brought up the tea infuser. And it's been almost ten years. And it can still make me cry when I think about it.

Posted by lux at September 23, 2003 01:59 AM