Love, Death & Second-hand Furniture | Complete

The Blanket

Suddenly, Bryan started remembering things. Things from before. It was gradual – at first, more about his degree, and school, and friends; how he lived. Then, as if going backward, about his family, where he grew up (Brooklyn), where he took his first girl, where he got into his first fight. As if remembering that one thing opened up the floodgates, dislodged something blocking his memory.

I never knew he didn't remember. He never mentioned it, as if not remembering didn't leave him with a gaping hole where his life should be, but instead the bliss of ignorance. Now that the bubble had burst, I couldn't believe I never realised that he wasn't whole. He still didn't talk about how it happened – but now, I realised, I could simply be for that same reason. He could simply not know.

There was a change in him, when sometimes he would stare into the distance, stare at the walls, eyes unseeing and blurred. In those moments, he looked so lost, so vulnerable, searching for something just out of his grasp. I thought it was about it – and seeing him, like that, it broke my heart. I missed him. He was just there, I could reach out and feel that electricity which invariably came with us getting close, but I missed him as if he was gone. He felt gone, and the air became cold, and wrong, and stale in a whole new way. In those moments, I was living by myself again, and it was a cold realisation that this thing we had, it might not last forever.

And I should have left it just at that. I shouldn't have prodded, or asked. I wanted to help. My intentions were good, but it was never truer than now, that those paved the way to hell.

It was an early morning, when again he sat just staring at the tv but it was clear he was not registering it. The apartment had been growing progressively colder for some time. I turned the heating up and wrapped myself in a blanket, but that did little to improve things. I sat next to him.

"What are you thinking about?"

He shook himself and looked at me, as if still half in a trance. He didn't seem in a rush to answer.

I wrapped the blanket closer around myself. Bryan reached out and played with the edge of it. I could feel him tugging at the corner and in a moment of impulse threw half of it over him. It was a soft blanket, some sort of polyester blend which one could never wash or it would be nasty after. It draped over his legs as of he were fully there.

Bryan stayed quiet and watched me intently. Tentatively, I reached out and touched the blanket over his leg – softly, like one touches a new born kitten, or the first coating of snow. The electricity was still there, but now I could feel him. Through the material of the blanket, there was his body, the tension of muscle, the firmness of his thigh.

When I looked to his face, it was streaked with tears.