Part Four

It was in the heat of summer that everything started to fall apart with him. We had spent more time together, driving around in his Jeep, watching kids play in the grass at night, and lying on his couch. But he started to drift away. It is hard to explain, but something in him turned off. His spark was gone. He stopped making jokes and spent most of his time alone. It was a mistake I had made. Somewhere along the line I had messed up without giving him everything he wanted. Or maybe he was just falling into his own world of sadness that had little to do with me. That was another mistake I had made. I believed his battle scars to be romantic, but I was naïve for thinking that. His sister just shook her head with her hands in the air and said, “I don’t know what to do.” I could love him and I could listen to him but that wouldn’t always make him better. Eventually he would come out of his depression. Eventually, he would sink back in. “He is like night and day,” his sister told me. All I could do was nod in agreement. Even though he was home from the war, he was still fighting one, but this time it only existed inside his head. I gave him his space. I took a step back to give him some breathing room. I had faith that he would come back to me.

He was different than anyone I had ever loved before. But I suppose I hadn’t really loved anyone before, and so he stood out among the likes and the almosts. He was different because he wasn’t much taller than me. He was different because he wasn’t in college. He was different because he was brilliant, even if he didn’t know it. He was different, but he was just like me. We both loved reading; it was one of the first things we ever talked in depth about. He absorbed everything he read, swallowing words and ideas whole. He made jokes at times that other’s deemed inappropriate and I deemed hilarious. He loved history and finding out how things were made and created and worked. We spoke the same. We hide our emotions in the same ways. He was everything I had ever thought I wanted rolled together into one man. He wasn’t mine, but he was everything.

There was always something with the girl who waited. Who is waiting. Even in those moments where I was so happy I could fall to pieces, I knew she was always waiting. Her patience was always in the back of my mind. I knew when I would have to leave come fall, she would be there for him to spend his time with. Someone he could make laugh and someone he could lie with and tell secrets to. I would be replaced as soon as the breeze turned crisp and the leaves started to fall. She just had to bide her time.

She wasn’t like me. We weren’t even in the same category. She was blonde, I was a brunette. She waited and I would move on. Sometimes, I would find myself looking at the pictures she kept of them online. I would look at their faces and see the smile he had given to me that he had also given to her. I could feel how happy they had been because it was as happy as I was, even if that happiness was fleeting.

I knew how this story would end before it had been written. I was his distraction; someone to play with, to talk to, to lie with, while deciding that the other girl was the one for him. I didn’t want to fight her for him. I knew the ending would never change, that I would be sending myself into a battle that I would ultimately lose. I could use all the firepower, all the strategy and planning I wanted, but I would lose. I might have been doing it out of spite, but I loved him, so I hung on with everything I had.

I would never recommend this way of living to anyone. It is pathetic, really, to hold out for a man who may or may not love you in the same way you do him. I didn’t give up, even though I probably should have. I was lead to believe we had a future. I was lead to believe that neither one of us wanted this to be over and so it wouldn’t be. That fall we’d both try, even though we’d both be busy with our lives apart from one another. Maybe he had every intention of putting his heart into our unfortunate circumstance. But I was different from her in that there was no guarantee that I would wait and that I would limit my social circle to the friends I already had. I was not a safe bet to him. I had already given what I had to him and a few others, what would stop me from forgetting him and moving on to someone else? I had never said those three little words, but then again, neither did he.

All these things are just speculation. I don’t know what he was afraid of, if anything. He couldn’t articulate them to me. We suffered in silence. True feelings were still the hardest part of a solider to figure out. If I became aware of his inability to communicate fears or feelings in those last few days, I pushed them to the back of my mind. He’s just pensive, quiet. It’s his way.

Those three little words could have kept me in the Central Valley. I would have made it work. Those three little words might have brought him into my life in San Francisco. It would be an adjustment, but I could make him fit. But those words weren’t ever exchanged. I packed up the car and he never stopped me.

While I was heading back to San Francisco, there was a deep sadness in me. All that hurt, all the sadness and confusion and passion stretched out before me, covering the farmlands and coastal mountains that would serve as a barrier between him and I. When I came through the tunnel on the Bay Bridge, I should have been filled with happiness or relief to be coming home to the life I had made for myself there. But there was a hole where my heart should have been, sucking any ounce of happiness I could have felt into it, drowning me in sorrow. Everything ached. Even though I should have been thrilled to see that sweeping city landscape, all I felt was that I had left everything behind. He was everything to me and I left because I wasn’t sure if he was ready to love me back. I missed him more with every mile we traveled into the heart of the city.