His soft knock on my door startled me. I was in mid conversation with Jose and for some reason assumed that Juan would be along sometime later. He was fast tonight. I am sure he left his house and called me as he was en route to my apartment. He has some sticky living situation going on at home, and if I wasn't trying to plead ignorance it wouldn't take me long to figure it out. He needed me in his life and for some reason I couldn't refuse him. We had a silent agreement to not discuss what we both knew we should.
Juan was a different kind of man, and so afraid of himself. It is going on a year. One year of the same game that neither one of us wants to call it quits on. He is a rare combination of a man who lacks honor and integrity when it comes to the women in his life, but at the same time devotes himself unselfishly to his son. Junior is everything to him and I know for a fact he is one of the reasons Juan is sacrificing himself to a woman he doesn't really want to spend the rest of his life with. I could theorize that the act of relinquishing his own happiness for the sake of his son is proof enough of his unselfish devotion, however, that is not the case. He is a scared man who is sticking to what's comfortable. He stays with a woman whose relationship with him lacks that all encompassing spark. That soul crushing passion that leaves you feeling wilted and empty when they walk out your door. He is more afraid of pain than anyone I know.
It is unique the hold he has over me. He is not classically handsome, it'd even be a stretch to call him good looking. He is average with dark brown hair, bordering on the scrawny side. He stands perfectly over me. As one person says the perfect kissing height. His blue eyes don't stand out as spectacular, which is normally the type I look for. I just can't deny the pull that draws me to him. We just click. From the moment I hear his voice and harass him playfully about the complications of his life that are completely self imposed, everything works. He takes it good-naturedly and laughs saying what a funny girl I am. Funny probably because I take him for what he is. I don't ever place expectations on him or make demands for his time. That is not how we work. I give him my thoughts and opinions on his dysfunctional life and he listens. It's almost as if he needs me for guidance. Needs me to tell him how it is. Regardless of the fact that he will never heed my advice or take what I say and put it into action, he still likes to hear it. He still needs to know he has other options out there should he ever decide to overcome his fear of loving and never being loved in return.
1 comment:
This is nicely handled--the movement from the immediate moment, to the character snapshot, to the double-snap that includes the narrator and the way she connects to the man.
If it were my piece, I'd sit and wait for the one last sentence, a perfect sentence--ironic yet tender, generous yet bitter--to occur to me....
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