Sweet Adaline

Chapter Fourteen

It just wasn't my place to demand anything of her. Not after all she'd done for me, all that I'd witnessed and all that I didn't yet know but would. She'd given up more this night, than most do after decades of confidence. She splayed herself out, trusting my judgment. Believing in something inside me that I still couldn't see. Something I wouldn't believe myself, if she tried to explain.
It's that voice in our head that we disregard more often that we should, that promises what we might not ever understand. That whisper we take for granted. The one so familiar, we don't bother to question its intention. The one that so often we follow with blind disregard for our own personal safety, but never even notice it spoke.
That was the voice that was speaking so clearly to her. Hers was a rare ego. One that led her out of the darkness, rather than in. No way could I understand, as at the time, my will was as dark as abysmal night, and she placed herself in my palm.
As we came to a halt at the light, she inhaled in soft reliance, a pliable faith that piloted her into confidence, steered to speak.
"When I moved here," she spoke carefully, pausing, "It was hard." She meant it so deeply, to speak even those few words were like moving stone past her lips. "I was... completely empty." Her gaze drifted out, beyond the margin between us, "I missed him."
"Foster." I said, affirming.
"Yeah." She replied. She looked at me in that lost innocence she would on occasion let past her hard elusive facade. "That year was really hard. Really hard. He left and I didn't have anyone any more. I didn't make much of an effort to collect any more half-ass friends."
I told myself to keep my mouth shut, but just couldn't. "Didn't he write?" I asked
She was stifled. "Yeah. But we were far away... he never visited. He never came back. Not that it was ever going to work. It's like that though." She said and looked at me, wounded by the memory of him. She inhaled deeply. I knew what she meant, about love's fickle game.
I was tempted to assure her that she didn't have to go on, but she did. She needed to go of her secret, that she was in love once and lost as well. The words had built up against the walls inside her, never freed. Never uttered.
"Well, anyway, I was really messed up about... I guess about everything. Once he quit writing, I just had me to deal with it, no one to help, and mom came crashing down on me. No doubt Jack did his share." She looked at me quAngiezically, as if trying to pry something from me I would not otherwise give away. I was still in her headlights as they unfurled before me, hypnotic. Her look was diving into me, leaving me as exposed to her as she was to me. But I did not yet know what she searched me for. Not yet.
She shrugged her shoulders without directed thought. She had exhausted her thoughts. "Maybe I even love him." She said quietly, as if internally.
I pulled into the drive-thru and ordered up a feast of fried appetAngieers and more orange juice.
"Everyone will tell you, you're young. What they mean is that, you will feel love stronger now than ever again. They won't realAngiee it, but that's what they mean. It's gonna feel unbearable, but eventually you'll start getting numb. That's what getting old is. Things wearing out. You kiss every day for years, and it becomes as special as a handshake. You fuck once a day for a few months or years, and it loses that exotic drug. It's more like a stiff drink than a fix." She was following me, I could tell.
"And when they tell you, it just feels like love," I went on, "it's because they remember feeling something so vibrant when they were seventeen, and maybe they sold themselves to it too, and have since found that love's much easier to manage, to handle, when there's a lot less to feel." I paid at the window, took our bags and rumbling down the dilapidated side road to my empty apartment.
"Are you saying..." She was at a loss for a clear answer from me. Maybe this was my solution to the question about love. I was pretty sure I had one, but wasn't sure of the words to use on it.
"If you think you feel love, then feel love. Just do it, because more than a thing switched on by chemistry or fate, or whatever else, love is a thing you do. It's an ability. An exercise that requires agility of the heart. And the older you get, the less agile you are. So don't quietly let it go to waste. Use it. Love! I promise, loving Brian cannot make your love for Foster any less precious." There, I thought. Certainly not as eloquent as she, but I said it. Then my mind came back to Foster. To the young man I'd met on that stone plateau, and what he'd said to me about survival and about love. I thought about the destiny that brought him to me, and how that same destiny brought her to me. (Or was it me to her?) And what was it that kept these two apart?? It splintered like fiberglass in my mind.
I don't know. I just don't think I can agree with that, Ash. I mean," she paused, hardened by her own resistance, "If it's just as easy as that, what keeps us from loving who ever we want? Or just stopping when ever? If it's just as easy as a choice, why can't we stop it? Just choose not to?" She asked more distraught than I'd have imagined she'd be. The idea that she had the ability to quell the torment inside her, insulted her.
How could I tell her how close he'd been to her? To even mention him, so real in the world she knew and no longer just a monument in memory and a voice in dreams, would be cruel. How could I?
"Maybe it's more like that subconscious grip we keep on life, that refuses us our own escape." I said.
"Well, if it's like that, then it's more like a curse. And if I have a choice, I'll refuse it. I'll fight it because if I don't, I won't survive it again." She replied, defiantly.
"No one survives love," I said, as he said to me. "You shed the person you thought you were, and evolve. Love is a kind of cocoon that swallows you both and melds you, making two entirely new individuals from the people you were at first. Nobody survives it. But if you can embrace it..." I looked at her profile, staring distantly. We were already at my home, idling in the muddy lot by my door. Conflicted, she munched on fries from the bag. "Then maybe we can live again." I knew it sounded hokey.
I thought of him, the two of us roaming. Two strangers in a strange land, in the forest and desert combined. In a place so dry and harsh, everything struggles to survive. Life is so driven that it creates its own destiny. Everything fights. We had grown apart from that will, estranged from the same earth. Still, the will fought to keep me. It settled me, knowing I was still a part of the struggle.
She looked to me. Under our shroud of night, tears escaped their reservoirs. "That makes more sense than I want it to." She said.
She subtly shook off the trance. "Are you ready to go in?" Adaline asked, taking survey of my composure.
"I'm not tired." I answered, not really even answering.
"Then lets go in, because I am tired and I'm sure as fuck not leaving you alone out here." I sat for a moment longer, before following her inside. She was already in my room, stripping a sheet from my bed, for a blanket. It was the last week of July, with nights so hot I sweat uncovered.
"You can have the bed if you want" I offered.
"No. That's alright. I'll take your couch." She replied contently. I can't say that I blamed her. At least she could endure the ratty old couch.
"Good night then", I said, and retreated to my room with my meal.
"Ash." she called after me.
"Yeah?"
"Don't hurt yourself," she said, "You matter to me."
"Yes" I said. My voice was weak from it. "Good night." I stopped before closing the door. "Adaline?" I said to her as the living room light flickered off.
"Yes Ash?"
"Please, just tell me before you go. Please, just so I know." I asked, surprising myself with my insecurity.
"I won't leave, Ash. Not until it's time for me to." she replied in the darkness of the room. A wave of relief rushed over me, striking me with exhaustion. I ate what I could, but sleep never took me faster. And as all the lights were extinguished, a figure in the night stood witness, a hundred or so yards from the door.