The Apple of My Eye

Never Is a Promise

It was a Wednesday night in April, our last night together in the apartment. The next day, Star's flight was scheduled to leave at ten in the morning. Hours earlier, I was scheduled on a flight out of town of my own, on a business trip I could not miss, especially if you consider the financial condition I was in. I could not even dream of displeasing my employers with some last minute excuse as to why I could not make it.

Looking back now, I think it was a good thing I didn't get to see Star off at the airport. It would have been devastating. It would have left me demoralized. At the time, though, she could not believe I was doing this to her. Hadn't I done enough? Did she really have to endure her last moments in the city all alone, without a single soul to accompany her to the airport? It was an insult to her feelings, an affront to her sensibility, an abomination, is what it was. It was the last straw, too. She was beginning to doubt all the love I had declared with such intensity so many times before, the love I was still talking about like it was this undisputable, undeniable, irreversible thing. And she was wrong to doubt it, I tell you, but I don't blame her. It really was hard to swallow the streak of cruelty I was imposing on this girl on these our last days together.

I didn't mean to make those moments any worse than they already felt, and I did feel awful having to put her through all that. I was crushed by this sense of imminent loss and withdrawal, and feeling like a despicable piece of shit to top it off. After all, I knew it was all my doing, I knew it was I who hadn't been strong enough. It was on my shoulders that the weight of the expectations I couldn't fulfill rested. I doubted my own love for Star, and I tell you, there's no greater torture than that. If I loved this girl so much, why was I letting her go? If I knew I'd be miserable with her gone, why couldn't I change things around?

Our last night in the apartment was not unlike all the nights that had preceded it, except for that unwavering, irrefutable awareness that it was to be our last. Again we had cheese pizza and Coke. Again we watched a couple of funny shows. (But on the computer this time, as the TV was already gone.) Again we made crazy love all through the night, until we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore. Again we were exhausted and slept in each other's arms, breathing the same air, the way we always did, the way we'd fallen asleep on our first night together.

I set the cell phone alarm to wake me up at six that morning. I had slept two hours, tops, but I was ready to get up and go the second the thing went off. Star didn't wake up immediately, but when I left the bathroom, all showered and clothed and ready to depart, there she was, sitting up in bed, her eyes still half closed, adjusting from insufficient sleep and swollen from crying.

"Are you leaving?" She asked me. I often thought Star and I were the world's undisputed masters of redundant questions.

"I guess I kinda have to, don't I?" I said.

"I guess you do," she said. "I wish you didn't."

"Me too," I said. "But we'll be together again real soon. I promise."

"When?"

She had asked me that question a million times over the last five or six days. And I had told her, every time, that I didn't know when we would be able to share the same roof over our heads again. Maybe after the baby was born. But I had assured her that we'd see each other more than a few times until we could make that happen. Like, every month. No. More. Two or three times a month.

"I told you, Star," I said.

"I know. I just wanna hear it again."

"I'm coming to see you in a couple of weeks," I promised.

"Really?"

"Really. I wanna meet your parents. I want things between us to stay just as they are."