I closed my eyes and inhaled the memory.
The car stopped and the silence was abrupt.
Suddenly, there was nothing in the world other than the unspoken words and our hands intertwined between us. We are both looking away, not saying a word, barely even breathing. Anything could break this moment, could bring reality crashing back in. The ground could disappear from beneath us, taking every emotion hanging in the air with it. It felt so real, his hand in mine, his breathing so clear next to me, my body painfully aware of his. I couldn’t seem to breathe.
I had never felt so devoid of rationality, of clarity, of the ability to think. I had never felt such intensity in what was barely a touch, barely a look. The simple thought of holding his hand had made mine twitch all day, as if, had I thought about it too hard, my hand would reach out and grab his on its own. During the car ride home, I had thought about it so loudly it felt like the words were playing out of my ears. And still he did nothing. The desire had become so strong, to do this one harmless thing that I had been actively resisting all day. I asked if he needed both hands to drive. When he said no, I simply put mine out and said “give me your hand”, and he did, and it was the most natural and electrifying thing I had ever experienced.
And now we’re here, parked in front of the house, ignoring the fact that the night has ended, we had prolonged it as long as we could and now it was time to leave.
I exhaled reality back into the air and turned to him. “I have to go”, I whispered, when I was in fact saying “I want to stay”. We locked eyes for a moment and there were more words there than our voices could speak. We hugged rather uncomfortably, still in our seats, and as we separated I felt what he was thinking and, in a panic, rushed backward, filling the space between us with doubt. I looked into his eyes for only a second before I had to look away. With my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands, I glanced out the window and back at him. “You make it so hard”, I breathed. “It’s hard for me too” was his agonizing reply. We stayed that way for a moment, the distance between us measuring in galaxies, and yet his lips and his hands and his eyes were so close it felt as though I could drown in them.
It was loud. There was not a single sound in the car, but it was unbearably loud all the same. Perhaps it was the tension, perhaps it was our heartbeats, perhaps it was our breathing making the most human silence in the world. Perhaps it didn’t matter. The war that was going on inside my head was so loud that it allowed for no other thoughts or conceptions to live there but this one. To do it, or not to do it. To bring him closer, or to push him further away.
To kiss him. Or not to kiss him.
It was so much more intense than the desire to hold his hand, it was almost blinding. I could barely even see him anymore, all I could see was my desire. In a moment of sheer determination and willpower pulled from some deep part of my subconscience, I decided. Rather than sit for more than an instant with that decision, I said “Good night”, got out of the car, unlocked the door and went into the house all in one motion. Once inside, I breathed out the most intense moments of my life. I put my fingers to my lips, as though I could lie to my body and pretend I did kiss him, that my lips had touched his and that this flood of indescribable emotions could become the responsibility of one moment, one action. Instead, it is a lack of action, the absence of a moment, of a kiss, that makes me dizzy when I think about that car, that night, that moment-that-wasn’t-a-moment again. There was so much of him in that car, it was all I could do to breathe and not drown in my own mind or get lost in the words that hung in the air between us. It was so much, and yet there is a part of me that wishes I had closed that distance between us and done what I had been craving, rather than behave as I did and walk away.
I sometimes close my eyes and delve back into that memory, that moment, and press my fingers to my lips as I think about the choice I made and the theory of the multiverse.