Guess That Is How I Know You

Chapter XXXVII

June 19, 2018

"I don't understand why. Is it really that much to ask?" In that moment, I realized there was no turning back.

I did not make it a habit to doubt myself anymore, much less when it had to do with our relationship, but in that moment, I felt like a scared teenager once again.

Truthfully, I am not exactly sure what had succeeded to get under my skin, but I had convinced myself I was simply imagining things, even if deep down I knew I was fooling myself.

The words being thrown back and forth did not seem like much at first, yet the tone we were using was telling a different tale.

After I became conscious of what we were doing, I realized something else. We were going all out on each other in the middle of a parking lot of one of the most respected law firms in town.

"Why do you always have to be silent whenever I need you to communicate with me?" I knew I probably sounded entitled, but I no longer cared if there were people around, or if any of them knew who we were.

That entitlement my mother always used to say was so found of the young and bold, oh, the times I had reminded her not to presume.

For a split second I wondered if the few people scattered around that lot thought us to be a mother and daughter arguing. Had they completely misread the situation? Probably so.

And if so, it did not last long, I bet they realized soon enough they had been mistaken after the sarcastic laugh which succeeded my words. There is something about a laugh that can always tell someone who cares to pay attention exactly how one feels.

That particular laugh was a tired one, not the type to get a person going for so long to the point their lungs start to struggle for air, but rather the kind in which the person laughing is all too familiar with disappointment they cannot help but laugh at finding themselves once again in that same position.

That was the kind of laugh only someone in a broken relationship could muster.

Preconceptions often tend to blur the signs being displayed.

For instance, how one's body can instinctively lean closer to a loved one even when they are arguing because, after all, that is the one person they tend to look for comfort even if in that moment they are the reason for their pain.

Or how when a lover is unable to answer a question, they instead resort to caressing the inquiring lips with a gentle brush of their thumb—that is what she had done to me.

"I really wish it was all just a matter of explaining." I was half startled by the much sober voice of the older woman in front of me when she finally decided to speak back, "But even if you don't know it yet, I'm positive one day you will see I made the right call."

"Just a matter of explaining? You go quiet for ages and those are the words you choose to first speak?" That alleged entitlement again, I hated myself for being so out of control of myself, but that did not stop me, "It is just a matter of explaining and you know it. The real problem is your inability to fucking communicate with me! I'm not even sure why I keep trying to reach you anymore."

And in life, but most specific, in love, all it takes is a moment and the roles will be reversed.

Just like that, I realized although I was the younger one, I was far more experienced with broken hearts and empty promises than my older companion, for she had been the one who turned me into a pro.

"Let's communicate then! You are too young to commit and I too old to wait. I'm not even talking about waiting for you to be ready because God knows I would." My heart stopped, my stomach turned upside down, and an all too familiar sickening feeling took over me.

"My career is already stablished. I don't care what they talk about me. But you're just starting, you have no idea how this business is like. They will always think I am favoring you and every time you accomplish something they will not only think, but actually act as if I handed it out to you, you will never be able to make a name for yourself as long as we are together."

She stopped to look me dead in the eye as if too afraid of what unavoidably came next.

"I can't wait for people to change their nature. I can't wait for them to find out about us and tear you to pieces. I can't wait for you to choose me over the rest of your life, and I don't want you to, not when you have yet so much to live." Sorrow took over her face, yet I could not believe her display of emotions, not when they were so contradictory to her words.

I wondered if years after that, after being let down once again, I would look back and think I had been blessed to have had someone like her. How could I? I would never grasp how she could say that had been a difficult decision to make.

She said I had yet to learn everything she already knew in order to make sense of what had been said in that somewhat fateful afternoon at a parking lot of my soon to be workplace.

Because even if I knew how to do the work, she seemed to think I was in no way prepared to the brutality and competitiveness of all the other layers of our profession.

Remi