KINNPORSCHE: TimeTayTem Story

Chapter 5: The Beginning That Hasn't Begun

Tem

I couldn’t sleep even though it was 4:30 in the morning. Raindrops fell on the windowpane before they slowly plummeted falling into a large, brittle, glass-made bucket. The water level in the bucket rose slowly but inconsistently. It had fascinated me for the past hour.

I wished my sad was a cool, day drinker covered in beautiful glitter and dried tears crumbling off his cheek wasting away with strangers who acted like his best friends. Instead, my sad lay in another man’s bed wide awake early morning trying to drown the memories of his love.

Time and I were both naked and the sheet we had used as a cover was tangled around our feet. He looked like a baby in his sleep, his mouth half open, his cheek flushed, his hair darkening the pillow, and half hiding his damp round forehead.  Very unlike the shell of a man that barely moved about during the day.

My mind felt cemented in place; gripped tightly by guilt’s embrace. I knew he shouldn’t have been in my arms. It was unlikely there was a version of this that was not going to tear me apart. But I just wanted to hold him. He was the perfect combination of reckless, stubborn, and affectionate. One of those people who, quick to laugh, are slow to anger; so that their anger, when it comes, seems to leap from some unsuspected crevice like a fire destroying a forest. With time, I had come to enjoy and appreciate every side of him.

Being with Time sometimes felt like love and other time it didn’t. I was unsure. Maybe he was the love I had waited for all my life. Maybe he was not love, maybe he was what kept me from it. But with every step I took, it became harder for me to turn back. I didn’t know how not to hold on to him and I didn’t trust myself not to stay and love him on occasion.

I slipped out of bed and went into the living room, using that moment of silence to be reflective. Lately, my dangerous levels of introspection were leading me back to Tae. It had been nine months now since we both last saw him as he dragged his pink suitcase out of my apartment. I wondered, at that moment, was he happy?

Time woke up to find me in the kitchen making breakfast. I don’t know how it happened, but gradually I spent more and more time in his house until it felt like I had moved in with him. I didn’t know if he still paid for my condo. I had not been to visit the place in a month’s time.

“Good morning.” Yawning as he stretched and rubbed on his stomach, he planted a kiss on my cheek before moving to pour himself a cup of water. “Slept well?”

“Mmhh.”

He sat across from me, opened his computer, and scrolled through the morning news. Occasionally, he mentioned something absurd that he had read that angered him, but I did not care enough about it to pay attention.

“Eggs?” I asked. “Would you like some?”

He glanced at me for a few seconds and nodded before going back to his morning reading.

“What are you doing today?” I asked.

“I have a few meetings that span across my day and later I am meeting Kinn at the shooting range. You?”

“I have to get to school to drop off some documents for my graduation and then I’ll come home and apply for a few jobs.”

“Do you need my help getting a job?” he asked, not looking at me. “There are vacancies in the family business that I can fix you in.”

“No. Thank you, I can manage.”

We had breakfast in silence at a corner table in the dining room. The floor-to-ceiling windows were wide enough and had it been a sunny day, the light from the sun would have bathed our table in an iridescent purple sheen. But we were amid a dreary gloom that somehow seemed to match our moods for the last nine months. I wondered, was it sunny where Tae was?