strange musings of a distracted spunk

He held my hand, loose but warm. His enthusiasm caused him to pump it up and down as though we were swinging along as we walked, though we were only standing in the back of a restaurant. Something felt different about that moment. As though our world was about to shift, again.

Just the night before, he had accompanied me to an event in our shared hometown. Where we wandered among vendors, performances, and hundreds of people, wailing kids, and smeared faces of cotton candy and funnel cakes. We had friends there, and were just putting in an obligatory appearance. Yet I was excited; there would be fireworks. The first time in our history of friendship and more that there had ever been the fireworks of the exploding kind, and not just the ones that jumped when his lips had touched mine. I wanted to stay, sit on the dewy grass on an early summer evening and watch everything I had felt for him light the sky like a visual stage of our tumultuous relationship.

As we walked into the park, I teased him. “You know there’s no one more awesome than me,” I said. He nodded sagely. “Yeah. You are the coolest girl I know.” Half teasing, half wistful, his words were the lyrics of the song I had been waiting to understand. After three years of tense friendship, a week of romance, and another year of tense friendship, I was reassured to know that I was his number one girl. His hand swung close near mine, but we never touched. My heart didn’t leap, but it was then, in that moment, that I knew something was there still.

We stood in the restaurant the next day, me in a strapless dress, and him in maybe a blue checked shirt, or a green one. His eyes were bluer than I recalled seeing them, and even with my family and friends surrounding me, all I could think of was, “He’s holding my hand.” In the past, we would only hold hands when one of us wanted to pull the other somewhere. Or when I was tipsy and about to fall over. We had said goodbye to the days of romance when he said he couldn’t do it, not now. That he regretted kissing me, being with me, after we spent five hours exploring each other, mouths, cheeks, shoulders, more our first night together.

But that day, when the sun was bright and shining, and I was already in a great mood, surrounded by my closest friends and family, he held my hand, vigorously, excitedly. I teased him about how the past year had been hard on our friendship, but we were better than ever. He blushed, turned red, ran to sit with my friends from college, all of whom he had befriended when he visited during a particularly eventful weekend.

I felt as though light would stream from every pore, like Beast at the end of the film when Belle revives him with a tear and a kiss. I had wanted for so long a signal to say he was still there. He was still in that moment. That he never regretted kissing me, being with me, that he cared about me as more than a friend. That him holding my hand in front of everyone was a sign of more to come.

But like the night before, when he suddenly turned sick before the fireworks and I could only turn behind me to watch them splinter the night sky as we drove back to his house, I wasn’t meant to see those fireworks. I wasn’t meant to watch spinning Catherine wheels of delirious delight. I’d see the occasional spark, a brief rush of “Can we do this again?” before a tree would block the view. Had I been able to watch our story, it would have showed spikes, up and down, holding onto the smallest detail for more. Why is it that we cling so tightly to the actions we construe as signs?

Our story wasn’t written in the skies that night or any night. Our story ended with an angry text message, leaving behind a blank sky and a broken me.