Adam & CJ: Sip That Ginger Tea

Part 11: Return of the Ginger

*four years later*

It's been...long enough. 

Enough for the days to go back to being just a measure of time, and not of opportunity. Where the street signs and colors are just that, colors. Not links to memories, not passages into a daydream. It's been, what now? A few years I think. And yet every once in a while I find myself doing a double-take at what could've still been.

I do double-takes at that one customer at Monte Carlo who comes every Wednesday. I noticed his red flowing locks, and then I looked closer. His hue was too crimson, his jawline wasn't strong enough. He wasn't my lost love. Karma likes to tease me when I need it the least. Those soft red posers like to find me at the store, the mall, the library. Lucifer himself must have sent these demons, these reminders of what I don't have, who isn't in my arms, who should've been, was SUPPOSED to have been my everything.

Once every few days, no, weeks now, memories of our love hit me like a train. If it had just fucking worked, if I just had the fucking chance to tell him everything. If he had known that my heart couldn't beat without his heart being near, maybe this all would've been different.

I...I get like this sometimes. I can't help but look back on what could've been. When he comes to haunt me at the early hours of the night, I can't help but shiver. His laugh, like butter, melting into my pancake of a heart. His smile, oh how his smile lines encircled that glorious grin. At night, once again, he comes to haunt me. The blue-white light of the moon will hit the empty space on my bed and I can't help but wonder what color it would create against the crown of his head. The silence cuts through me like a steel blade, his short innocent breaths are what shielded me from the impending attack. And soon enough, the emptiness consumed me. 

Here I am, longing for a man with no face anymore, who stained my lips with his presence and my heart with his love. I can't miss him because...well...for all I know he was never there in the first place. He haunts me, he's a ghost, he was the love of my life but that life is lost and I don't know if I was ever in love. 

Were we just kids...?

Was he even there that day...?

The years are moving by and I have to ask myself if this ghost deserves my detection, are my hopes all in vain? 

I decided to take a moment and let the thoughts consume my room and I caved into desire. 

I reach under my bed, that accursed place, where my most vulnerable self lies. The black Nike shoe box slides smoothly out from under, covered in dust from who knows how long ago. My hand left a palm-shaped mark in the dust and the memories come back, my hand fit perfectly together with his. The shoe box was heavy and I knew all about what was inside.

A well worn black hoodie made an entrance into my eager hands. I knew what it felt like to hold it up against my chest with a warm presence inside. I knew what it felt like to hear a heartbeat right here next to the zipper. I knew all too well what it felt like with the jacket unzipped too...After years of fading memories and daydreams and deja vu, it all came flooding back to me. I lost control of my body and dove head-first into the lining of the jacket, the part closest to his dreamy figure. My face was covered, forehead to chin, in a familiar scent. A scent that would do crazy things to me, that would dance around my senses and make me savor every note and flavor there is to it. I inhaled and exhaled to indulge myself in his fragrance. I got so lost in a daydream that footsteps from the stairs snapped me out of my fantasy. My door creaked open. 

"Is that you, CJ?" Adam turned the doorknob with a hesitant hand.

There's that smell again, ginger tea.