There was a storm that night. Tree branches fighting above me as I steer my small car into the narrow street. The wind screamed around me, the sound of leaves slapping against eachother everywhere above my head. If our story was a movie the audience would instantly recognise what we didn’t - the dramatic foreshadowing of things to come. The turbulent moment when stars collide to create another species, the clicking into the charged track of crash-bound train.
I notice him instantly, the red embers from his lit cigarette glowing bright against the dark blue night sky. 'Why don’t I ever meet guys like that?' I thought to myself as I push the wind-heavy door open and it carries me with it.
'Can I help you?' his voice is brought to me on the wind. I look up quickly and notice the intricate blue patterns swimming on his pale arms and his red hair, the colour of spoiled peaches. He smiles easily and I am aware that the hairs on my arms and neck are standing on end. Without thinking I hand him my precious, yellow camera case. As he lifts it his muscles respond easily to the heavy weight and I watch him cross the now darkened road. I stand for a moment, listening to the complaining wind and remark that I trusted him instantly. Would I change something? Did I know in that moment that there was no jumping the track, that I was already being pulled towards a predetermined precipice?
When he stood near me I could taste the tobacco from his cigarette in the air between us. My skin felt warm and cold at once and I could hear a quickened pulse pounding in my neck and wrists. Taking my hand he slipped a smooth white tablet into it and I put it instinctively in my mouth. The hard exterior yielding instantly to the pressure of my teeth, the shattered crackling candy coating exploding into a burst of sugary, fake, strawberry flavour in my mouth. I look at him wide-eyed. I feel like a blind person suddenly noting the sharpness of my remaining senses.
Weeks later I make my way to baggage claim and then out to the meeting area practicing my smile. But he’s not there. And then he is. Later when I look at pictures of him I’m not sure what it was that blinded me. Like a cartoon character under the influence of a love potion all I saw was sparkling stars and floating hearts. In the car he looks directly into my eyes “We both know what this is.” He says simply and I nod.
I could linger on this part forever. The dizzying feeling of falling madly, irrationally and blindly without a thought for the fast-approaching fatal end. The surety of the others arms and the kind of laughter you hear only under tousled sheets in alternating rays of sun and moonlight. Whatever happened next, this part of the story is undisputable. It is not possible to taint it even with the light of what he did or I did or what happened between us. There were no missed clues, nothing I should have or could have seen. Everything was already written, including the necessary suspension of rationality. I couldn’t and wouldn’t change it.
Even when I knew, I could still close my eyes and curl my mind around him, his skin blending into mine, his red hair caught in my fingers, his breath against my neck. I had to look away, and remind myself, repeating what he’d done aloud to myself like a rosary, because I knew that one look at that flame could melt the fragile framework of my resistance. Like heroin one taste would take me back to a place that I couldn’t afford to go. And so it ended the way it had to, with drama and tears and shouting and then silence. But at the same time it is never over, never will be.