Muscle Memory

🎄💃💔CHAPTER EIGHT💔🕺🎄

He gently pressed buzzer and waited for response. He waited for minutes, just standing there on the balcony waiting. He was about to try again, but there she was in an oversized sweater, bare foot. She gave a wry smile and stepped to the side, he took that as an invitation to walk in, still not sure about how to begin what promised to be a very uncomfortable conversation.

Adele’s ‘one and only’ played softly from the sound system, in the vast living room. A shelf loomed to the by the minibar holding potteries and numerous souvenirs. A little gold plated Buddha glinted on the top shelf next to the glazed vase holding flowers in ikebana arrangement.

Today, he found himself staring at objects in the room that still to reminded him of how much a stranger he still was here, the reason he’d wanted them to move in together had Dr Alex Queen not declined on both cultural and taking-things-slow grounds; why he couldn’t bring himself to spend the night here if he could help it. The upturned portrait on the glistening glass table next to the remote control gave him an idea of what Queen had been up to, it saddened him.

“you didn’t show for work today,” he found the voice to state the obvious. She had called in sick. “and your phone had been off.”

“can I get you anything?” she asked, her voice strained. The formality of it hurts.

“can we just talk?” she was looking at the direction of the refrigerator one could see from the opened door to the kitchen. She slowly retreated to where a recent dent had been on the sofa by the side of the table, at arm’s reach from the portrait.

“turns out I had so many off days laid off, pretending to be sick so I could take a breather couldn’t hurt.” she said.

“just as I always say.” he replied with a smile, and for a moment there was normalcy, then the tension came back to the air. Their eyes met across the table. She twiddled her thumbs, then raised her hand as if to bit her nail only to stop shot and support her chin with it. She stared now with that perfect deadpan only few in Dave’s life have been closest to touching. Dave sighed. “I should have told you_”

She shook her head, “you don’t have to. Besides…” her voice trailed off, she shook head as if in regret, “there’s something I need to tell you.” She sighed then looked towards the white screen shielding the room from the direct sun rays and glowing like LED, swipe those aside and you’ll want to live in a loft the rest of your life, the view from here—wonderful. This was not the reality in those eyes. “…I am_”

“I want to. I want to tell you everything.” He hastily said, after waiting for the import of her words to perfectly settle. Couldn’t bear to let her say anything else without hearing him out, he had automatically inserted his words, stopping hers. The resignedness in her voice was yet to strike him as odd, all he could think about was what he had to say, and how to say it right. “I knew Grace from a long while ago before I went to study abroad. We were just teenagers… I should have told you everything, I just didn’t… I’m sorry.” He wondered if she made sense of anything he was saying because his own mind could hardly keep up with his ramblings. Moments later, He couldn’t remember all he kept saying trying to explain everything as honestly as he could. “I should have told you everything.” He kept saying when he ran out of words.

Queen was quiet. She stood up, excused herself, walked to the kitchen, came back empty handed. She walked over to where he sat, and sat cross legged on the sofa facing him. She stared inquisitively, “and now what?” she twirled her hair with one hand, laid back in a gesture that was probably supposed to mean she couldn’t care less, but her eyes betrayed her.

The question probably took him longer to process that he should have. Now what? Do you want to figure everything out, then we could continue? Are you already in love with Grace again, or have been in love with her the whole time? Do you need time to figure things out? Do you want us to figure it out together? Is there still space for us? Now what? “I just wanted to tell you everything thing.” It was the truth plain and simple.