I watched the smoke from my cigarette float into the light. It was soothing. Breathing in and out, slowly, almost as if I was subconsciously trying to breathe to the beat. With every drag I feel a little calmer, a little better. I wish it would rain.
It was raining before. When I realized it was over. Again. I don't know why I try so hard every time. I know it's going to end the same way. That's a lie, and lying won't help me feel better. I love him. I always have and I always will. He's like my other half. On the outside our personalities are completely different, but we understand each other. We know how the other is going to react. Neither of us gets close to very many people. We've been hurt too many times. I push people away by being distant. He pushes people away by being harsh.
We met in high school. I had just moved to a new town, and he had moved a couple years back. I had met his friend's mom while my mom dragged me out to look at houses in the new town, and she suggested that I could come out and meet her son and his friends.
I liked him almost immediately, but he spent a good portion of the time talking about his girlfriend. I was new and didn't want to cause a bunch of drama or spend my time crushing on someone that didn't see me that way. So I moved on, I dated other people. We became friends. He went through some messy break ups in high school with two girls he dated off and on. Most people assumed since he was so abrasive that his feelings couldn't be hurt and treated him as if he didn't have any. We had so many classes together and spent so much time outside of school hanging out either at debate tournaments or with friends that I learned how to read him. I saw the look in his eyes when people said mean things to him, or about him. He covered it up pretty well. We spent a lot of bus rides to and from tournaments just sitting in the back in silence together. It was comforting to both of us.
I met up with him again a couple years after graduation. We spent the entire summer together. We would both be going to opposite ends of the country again in the fall. He stopped calling sometime in September. We saw each other again the following June and spent a good portion of the summer together again. That time the calls stopped in January. Usually they stopped because he started dating someone else. I heard from him again the following August, but by the time I was in relationship. He tried to derail it.
A few years later we both moved to Austin. He moved with a friend from college, I moved for graduate school. By this time he realized how much of an idiot he was for letting things fall apart with me. After a few months of him telling me this I agreed to date him again. It was wonderful, like it always was, but I knew it wouldn't last. He gets restless. I get restless. I got into a PhD program in another state.
It was pouring down rain. If you've never seen it pour down rain in Texas, then you don't understand what it means to pour. It's monsoon-like. The wind is blowing water every and you can't see anything else. There are whitecaps on the waves of water flowing down the streets. He locked himself in his room and watched his dvd collection all weekend. He rarely came out and when he did he refused to talk to anyone. The tornado sirens were going off and that's when I realized that he's not coming with me. He's hurt because I'm leaving, but he won't come with me.
I light up another cigarette. They've been playing 'Texas Flood' for nearly six minutes now. I know Stevie Ray Vaughn's live version is eleven minutes long, so I'm sure the guys on stage will be going for awhile, and I don't want to go back in where the song is louder. With every drag of my cigarette I become more convinced that I do still want him to call me. And that I want to talk to him. And see him. I know it'll all blow over soon and he'll move out here or I'll move back there. Somewhere over the years our friendship ceased to be only that. I can't pinpoint when that moment was, but ever since we've just needed each other.
I wish it would rain.
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