Meaningless

ii.

Coffee mugs clink in the background.

She still isn't talking.

Anyone else might think we were a bored couple on a date. She sips her drink, toys with her cake, wipes the corner of her lightly colored lips with a napkin in a practiced movement, still not talking, still waiting, maybe.

"So," I say. My voice breaks the mingling of soft voices drifting around us. "You're going."

"Yeah."

It burns my tongue. The coffee. "It's far. Different. You think you'd like it there?"

"Always wanted to live somewhere busy. Where I can't hear a million cicadas at night."

"You'll hear traffic. Might be even worse."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

She nibbles on a bit of her cake. I feel her gaze falling over me. I can't meet it.

Whenever I look into her eyes, I am afraid. She sees me. Smiles at me, lips moving in slow motion, bangs slowly falling over an eye.

But maybe she isn't seeing me. Not anymore.

---

I first met her at a bar near campus. My roommate told me that some of his friends were planning on drinking together and told me I should tag along with him if I wanted to meet some cute girls. Nervous as I was, I told him I didn't think it was a good idea. He dragged me along anyway.

I ended up sitting next to her, at the end of the table, listening to the conversations floating around us. She seemed disinterested in meaningless small talk while I was too flustered to join in. She rested her chin on her right palm, elbows propped on the table, her other hand holding her phone, tapping away with her thumb. She had blonde streaks running through her hair, fake eyelashes, light pink lipstick, dark eyeliner. A pleasant heart shaped face, a thin smile, and eyes like dark stones shimmering underneath a sunlit pond. They drew me in, reflecting light like something from a different world. I must have stared at her a little too much because at one point she mumbled something like, "Aren't you gonna talk to me, for Christ's sake," and I almost spilled my drink while sputtering a hello. Later, I said goodbye to her and made a huge deal of getting her phone number only to find out that we had the same ride back to our rooms. My face burned red but she had laughed and laughed and told me I was cute.

I noticed her everywhere afterwards. She walked by me in the hallways on the way to classes. She sat across from me in the library, twirling her pencil, tapping the eraser on her lips. She was in the school garden, lying in the flower petals. Staring at me with those eyes.

I knew it wasn't really her. But her existence remained, painted like a daydream in my head.

I asked her on a date, a coffee shop just down the street from campus, and we talked until the sunset burned the sky. Then she was gone.

Sitting there holding a cup of cold coffee, I realized it.

Told myself, don't think, don't fall. But I did. And it grew and expanded, this state of being I'd never felt so intensely before, this emotion. Maybe not love just yet, perhaps just an unqualified attraction. Still, it was warm. Thick.

Like the heavy air just after rain.