I Told You, Eli Oxley

Chapter Nineteen

I had never felt this way before. Confident, yet nervous as hell. Looking forward to making up (and maybe making out [just being real]) with her, yet undeserving of her.

She had to have heard my rackety engine and squealing breaks as I parked on the street in front of her triplex, but I sat there for a few minutes rehearsing. Part of me wished I had just emailed her so I could take my time with my response, coming up with the perfect way to articulate my feelings. But I knew this was a conversation that had to be had in person.

That didn't stop me, though, from writing everything down to help me organize my thoughts and to figure out exactly what I wanted to say to her.

I sat and scanned my leaky and smudged ball-point thoughts, rapidly mouthing each line until I felt confident enough for what was ahead.

On her porch, I stood wiping my sweaty palms on my shorts. The sun, still in summer mode in October, burned the back of my neck. My heart and lungs pressed up against the inside of my chest, pleading their case for more oxygen that was just too hard to win in the Tennessee humidity.

Once I finally rang, it was only a moment before an older version of Al stepped into the doorway. Several wrinkles lined her forehead and dark circles drooped under her eyes. She wasn't wearing any makeup, her hair was disheveled and her shirt and shorts were a bit ragged. Despite her appearance, though, her eyes were nothing but warm and inviting as always. Al's mother, Renea.

I heard the shower running when Renea let me in, and a quick flash of a naked Al underneath a stream of hot water snapped in my mind. I immediately checked that.

"You want some tea?" Renea said. "I mixed up a pitcher this morning, so it should be cold by now."

"No thanks. My blood sugar level is high enough right now; I don't think I can handle your sugar with tea," I said.

"Your loss," she said. "Sorry, Eli, that I can't be more of a hospitable host right now. I need to take care of some stuff. You're free to hang out in the living room or in Al's room if you like."

I remembered what Al had written about her mom struggling with her MS. "Is there anything I can do for you?" I said.

"Oh, Eli. Aren't you just the sweetest? No, I'll be fine."

I heard the shower shut off as I paced Al's room trying again to rehearse my lines. I kept getting distracted, however (as I always was every time I went over there), by her room's decor – she had propped all of her paintings on the floor lining the bedroom walls, but backwards, so that my field of vision was invaded with wooden frames supporting the backs of a dozen or more canvases. I had encouraged her a thousand times to turn them around, to be proud and display her work.

"Look, smears of color are creeping around their edges," I would say. "The paintings themselves are begging to be set free."

"Exactly," was always her response. I still, to this day, don't understand what she meant by it.

There was one painting she had hung. It was a beach scene with the ocean waves suspended mid-crash on the bottom left side of the canvas. A beach-front hotel dominated the upper left side of the painting. But what stood out the most to me was a wooden cross on top of a small hill of sand more to the forefront of the painting. It was so detailed. I could see individual splinters in the wood. The most distinctive part, however, was the tiny writing on the cross – you would have to be right up on the painting to notice it. The writings were actually carvings of people's names and dates of when they were there, initials of lovers with hearts in the middle and RIPs of lost loved ones. Given the dates and the rotting condition of the wood, it looked like the cross had been there for a really long time. A few feet next to the cross stood a trash can filled to the brim, with some garbage scattered around its base.

I asked what her inspiration was when she first hung it, and why she only hung this particular one, but she changed the subject with a non-existent transition. I never asked her again.

"So?" Al said, seated Indian-style on her twin bed. She wore a dark green camisole and short pajama shorts.

My mouth dried up and I found it difficult to speak. Difficult to focus on her face and not the freckles tracing a mystery of constellations up her legs.

"I like you," I said. "Like-like you. Since we first met. I had no idea you liked me back. I'm not sure why, now, but I felt like you just wanted to be friends. Maybe I was just too chicken to pursue you, so my sub-conscience made up that lie."

She picked and pulled at loops of loose fabric strings from her bed covers. "Okay," she said.

"So . . . I don't know what has gotten into me lately, but I've been a little more braver with you."

"So I've noticed."

"I wasn't thinking when I kissed you, but I definitely don't regret it," I said.

"And I don't regret kissing you back."

"But I had no idea you felt that way. I was waiting, like a total tool-bag, for you to tell me how you felt about it. I was even getting frustrated with you."

"You kissed me. How can you possibly think that it was my responsibility to bring it up?"

"I . . . I don't know. It's just what I thought, and I'm sorry."

"Okay, I forgive you for being an idiotic coward. What else?" she said.

"I'm also sorry for being so self-centered. You are completely right – I've only been worried about myself lately. It's a lot that I'm going through, but it never even crossed my mind that you might have your own problems."

"Do you realize that you're just repeating everything I said in my email?" she said.

Crap. She was right. Everything I wrote and rehearsed was just her own words Jeopary-ized in the form of a pitiful apology. It then occurred to me to just ad lib. If I cared about her as much as I thought I did, I didn't need a script.

"Shit, Al. What I've been doing sucks for you. But you've got to know that I'm not like that – that I do care for you. I just haven't shown you lately. I kissed you and avoided the subject – I mean, who does that? Then, within my avoidance, I've just been talking about myself. And you've been patient with me. You've supported me even when you needed your own support. We don't have many friends – hell, we don't have any other friends. So it's just you and me. But it's really been you lately. Alone. I've left you emotionally friendless."

"Yeah," she said.

"It won't be like that anymore. I want to know everything that's been going on with you, and I don't want to care about anything that's going on with me. You are the only thing that's going on with me. I want you – to be with you, as friends or more or whatever, I don't care, so long as I have you. And I want you to have me – all of me. All of my attention, all of this passion for you that consumes me every day that I somehow find ways to shut up. I don't want to hold anything back."

"Yeah?" she said in tone that hinted at her softening heart.

One of the biggest regrets of my life so far is that, even though I meant every word I said, I said them before I was ready to live up to them. I gave myself and her a hope for a new relationship that was wholly unrealistic.