#chapter Twenty-One
I’ve always believed you can’t predict love. You can’t qualify or quantify it. Can’t dissect it. Love hits you like a truck or the flu, coming up from out of nowhere to knock you to your knees.
Love burns you up alive.
Having said that, I should also be honest and say that I’ve been in love four or five times, six if you count my high school boyfriend, and we might as well, because just like the flu, love comes in many strains and just because some are milder than others, that doesn’t make it any less, does it? Seven times, seven, if you count the time with Daniel. It was short, it didn’t last, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t love, in its own way.
What I’m getting at is that I’ve been in love more than once, and every time was different. I’ve never been a woman who holds back on emotion or builds walls. When I love, I love hard, but that doesn’t make me soft.
Ian makes me soft, but that doesn’t make this love. So…what is it then? We are friends. That’s for sure. Lovers? Not yet, not quite, though I’ve thought about it a lot and I’m sure he has, too. I hope he has. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.
I tried not to love him, I really did.
After all, what were the chances? I met him in a dance club on a Saturday night. I was out celebrating Shelly’s birthday. Ian was there with some friends having a bachelor party. There were five guys, five girls, none of us seriously looking to get hooked up but ready for a good time.
We’ve been talking for about an hour, our conversation punctuated with rounds of drinks and increasingly inebriated carousing from both the birthday girl and the groom as they play a game of Never Have I Ever. The ten of us had arrived around the same time and found spots in adjoining booths. The more we drink, the more it seems natural enough for the two groups to mingle and squeeze into one booth. The flirting commences, because let’s face it, it’s always more fun when there’s flirting, even if nobody has any intentions of going further. Ian and I have ended up on the outer edge of the booth, both of us leaning against it rather than sitting. It’s easier to talk that way, and right from that first night, we’ve both figured out we like talking to each other.
But the first time he asks me to dance, I say no. “I’m with my girlfriends.”
“I’m with my friends, too.” He looks at our group. Someone’s bought a round of shots.
I look out at the dance floor, where clusters of men and women wriggle and writhe to the music from the live band. I shake my head with a smile, lifting my whiskey sour. “I have a drink.”
“When it’s finished,” Ian says.
Since I plan on nursing this drink for the rest of the night, I agree. Ten minutes later, the band switches from covering Lady Gaga to playing Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody. Ian takes my drink and puts it on the table. He takes me by the hand and leads me to the dance floor, where he pulls me into his arms as though I’m meant to be there for my entire life.
Love doesn’t lend itself to lists, but if I had to make one, that moment would be in the Top Ten Reasons I Fell In Love With Ian Douglas.
Later, when things were slipping sideways, I’d cling to that moment. Replay it over and over. The brush of his breath against my neck, making me shiver. The press of his fingers, sliding now and then from between my shoulder blades to the small of my back or my hip. Sometimes, I’d allow myself to imagine how it might’ve been if I hadn’t turned my face at the end of the night. If I’d let him kiss me then, how different it all might’ve been.
When the song ends, Ian and I look at each other, still swaying though the music has gone fast again. Colored lights paint his eyes so that I can’t tell for sure if they’re gray or blue or green. He says something I miss because of the noise, but that’s fine because it gives me an excuse to lean closer to him. For his lips to brush my ear as he speaks.
“Thanks for the dance,” Ian says. His hand has found mine and he squeezes it gently, lifting it to look at my wedding and engagement rings. Then he looks at my face.
I step out of his arms with a laugh and toss of my hair, self-conscious. Heat rises in my throat and cheeks. The warmth and pressure of his hands on me lingers even when I put distance between us, and he says nothing else as he leads me back to our group. We are separated after that, our friends taking up our attention, but I catch him looking at me more than once. Well, I guess that meant he catches me looking, too.
At the end of the night, I’m still mostly sober and herding the rest of my group like a kindergarten teacher trying to get her class in from recess. Shelly’s what she likes to call shit-hammered drunk, and the other girls, Terri and Lisa, aren’t much better. Terri, as a matter-of-fact, who’s spent the latter part of the night making out with one of the guys from the other group, is now trying to orchestrate a sort of twenty-one kiss salute for the groom.
“C’mon, ladies!” She yells at everyone who passes. “Line up, give the groom a lucky kiss!”
His face is covered with lipstick.
“What’s his fiancée going to say?” I ask Ian as we watch a bar full of drunk and giddy women line up to take their turns.
Ian laughs. I think he’s mostly sober too, but I don’t know him well enough to be sure. He rubs at his mouth, then the back of his neck as he gives his friend a bemused look.
“She won’t know. He’s going home with Steve tonight. What’s her story?” He lifts his chin toward Terri, who’s back to making out with…I think it’s Steve, actually.
“Recently divorced.” I don’t know her that well, she’s Shelly’s friend more than mine.
Together, Ian and I try to get our friends into cabs. And there in the parking lot, we stare at each other with goofy smiles on our faces that won’t go away no matter how hard I try. There isn’t time for this, we both have to get in the cabs and drive away from each other. And that’s the right thing, the best thing. It’s the only thing.
“It was nice meeting you, Ian.” I hold out my hand.
Ian presses it with his. Step by incremental step, we move toward each other. Shelly is shouting something rowdy from the back seat. Steve is begging for Terri’s number.
The whole world is Ian.
But I can’t do it. I can’t let him kiss me. The rings on my finger have begun to pinch and bind and weigh me down, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore them. At the last second, I turn my face. Ian stops a scant breath from the corner of my mouth. I feel his breath there and close my eyes for a second or two to keep the world from spinning.
“It was great meeting you, Maura.” Ian lets me go. Backs away. He gets in the front seat of his cab, but he turns to watch me from the window as it drives away. He waves.
I wave back.
Two nights later, while I’m toodling around on my Connex page, a notification pops up that I’ve been tagged in a photo taken by Terri. Ian’s been tagged, too. I stare at it for a long time, that picture I didn’t know was being taken. In it, we stand by the edge of the booth, blurry in the background, looking very serious and deep in conversation. We’d been talking about the differences between fast and slow zombies, and if they weren’t really dead but sick with a virus, could they, in fact, be truly called zombies. A moment, captured forever.
And then, dear reader, I friended him.