The Kiss
29 Jul
We stood on my front porch, facing each other in semi-darkness. It was the moment we’d both been dreading.
“I’m sure I’ll come visit you within the next two years. After all, I haven’t been to Malaysia yet, and Malaysia is right next to Singapore.”
I nodded, “I’m sure we’ll see each other.”
Now would be the time for our final hug. There was about a foot of space between us, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to close that gap. The whole night, I had been struggling, wanting to be close to him and yet keeping myself out of arms reach. And then in an instant, that distance was gone, we were embracing, clutching tightly to each other as if our lives depended on it.
“I was afraid, afraid that if I hugged you, I would never let go,” I whispered in his ear. I could feel his arms around the small of my back tighten in response.
We finally pulled apart slightly, but his hands were still on my waist and my hands around his neck. We were so close our noses were almost touching.
“There is something I wanted to say to you,” I started, in a half-whisper, “Something I shouldn’t say. But it’s now or never.” I took a pause to gather my courage, I could already feel the monologue I’d been rehearsing night after night for four years bubbling to the surface.
“I love you. I always have. I could convince myself to move on, I could take my mind off you for weeks at a time, but I’ve never been able to convince myself that you and I were not meant to be together. Deep down, I’ve always believed you were some sort of soul mate for me. I convinced myself to move on only because you were happy and I didn’t want to complicate things for you. But none of the relationships I’ve had in the last four years could come close to what we had. I wasn’t really moving on, I was just… waiting.”
I let my last word hang in the air between us before continuing.
“I never said anything because I didn’t want to make you choose. I didn’t want to know the answer. If you chose me, I would be the cause of breaking up your relationship. If you chose her,” I shuddered even at the thought, “I don’t know how I’d live with that.”
There was silence. We continued to stare at each other in the semi-darkness. Finally, his lips moved. “It’s always been you,” he said beneath his breath, so softly I couldn’t be sure of what I heard, so softly I wondered whether my ears were deceiving me.
And then he kissed me. Or I kissed him. Our lips came together in the most natural way, as if they were two pieces of a puzzle, meant to fit side-by-side. Our kisses became urgent, as if we were cheating time. Four years of suppressed emotion spilled out of me into that kiss. The moment felt like an eternity and a millisecond all at once.
And then it was over. We stepped apart, for real this time. We watched each other carefully, as if neither of us were sure what had just happened. I finally broke the silence.
“I’m going to miss you.”
“I already miss you.”
He stepped off the porch and turned once more. “Let’s not say goodbye. Let’s just say, ‘Keep in touch.’”
I nodded. ‘Goodbye’ had been on the tip of my tongue, but now I swallowed it, afraid to let myself speak at all.
He got in his car, and I waved to him from the porch. I continued to wave even after he drove out of sight.That would be his last memory of me, I thought, before letting myself back in the house.
I awoke to a loud knock. My mother had charged into my room and was waking me up. Apparently, my alarm had not gone off. I looked at the time, it was 6:13 AM.
I had been dreaming, it turned out, but my dream was surprisingly similar to what took place on my porch just under 3 hours ago. MFL and I had not kissed, and I had not delivered my ‘I love you’ monologue, but everything else had really happened.
I did not let myself dwell on my dream, instead, I jumped into the shower to wake myself up. It seemed I still wasn’t over MFL, would I ever be? I felt like a haunted woman, but what kind of exorcist could free me from my particular ghost, the ghost of my first love?
By the time I stepped out of the shower, all of these thoughts were washed from me. It was as if the dream never happened. Instead, I busied myself with some final packing.
On the way to the airport, I was feeling particularly emotional. Even though I knew I would be coming back to visit my parents and friends, I wasn’t sure I would ever move back here. I hid my face everytime my eyes watered though, I didn’t want my father to see me cry. My parents, after all, were probably already feeling sad to see to me go, if they saw how hard it was for me to say goodbye, they would tell me to call the whole thing off and stay. But I couldn’t.
My flight to Nanjing was complicated. I would first be flying to New York, then getting on a 13.5-hour flight to Beijing, and then getting on another 2-hour flight to Nanjing. It was a full 24 hours of travel time in total; add in the 12-hour time difference between China and Canada and I was fully disoriented by the time I got off the plane.
On the whole, my trip was extremely successful. The 13.5-hour flight across the Pacific was very comfortable by economy-class standards. The flight was only half-full, so there were empty seats next to each passenger. I had checked-in early, since I had a 5-hour wait in JFK (there is no pre-check-in for Air China, so they weren’t able to print boarding passes for me in Toronto), so I was sitting relatively forward in the plane1, and there were no screaming children around me. Anticipating jet-lag, I only allowed myself to sleep five hours on the plane, even though I was quite drowsy. When I got off the plane, I knew it would be night-time, so I’d be expected to sleep again. I passed the time by reading ‘Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows’. I’d read the whole thing in six hours the night it was released, but as I re-read it, I realized I had very little recollection of it. It took me closer to nine hours to read it this time around.
Heat and humidity hit me like a wall when I stepped off the plane in China. I was thankful for my short hair, which I’d cut only two days before leaving. I had been apprehensive all week about the haircut, because I haven’t had short-hair since I was in elementary school, when my parents cut my hair. It had essentially taken me a life-time to cultivate my long hair, not to mention the hundreds of dollars I’d dropped on it months before. But I bit the bullet and had it all cut off. Now my hair was an angled bob; it was so short I barely recognized myself in the mirror.
My aunt and uncle met me at the Nanjing airport and soon I was home, or at least home for the next week. It occurred to me in the airport that between now and September, I have no home, so I’ve decided to call all my temporary lodgings as ‘home’.
- I hate sitting behind the wings, it’s too loud. [↩]
Enjoy the adventure! We will be reading along.
I often have intense dreams like that, sometimes you have to listen to them…they are telling you something.
I’m glad your flight to Asia went well. Have fun!
I think I can guess what this dream was telling me, but this isn’t the first one, and I am still pointedly ignoring any signs for me to confess to MFL.
Oh my god, way to pull at my emotions! Not fair! Okay, not fair of your subconscious to do that to you either. Dang! Excuse me, I need to calm down over here.
Anyways. I am glad your travels went well and may they continue to do so!
Haha, yeah, imagine how I felt when I woke up! But honestly, even without the kiss, it was a pretty tense moment, that’s probably why it was replaying in my head (albeit in version 2.0) even after I went to bed.
Hi!
Sorry for the late reply. Yup, I was backpacking. I got back home early July but have been too lazy to update :p haha… slowly getting that done. I think the top places I visited were Greece, Barcelona, Amsterdam and of course Paris. Did you get to go to Greece? It’s sooo incredibly beautiful there.
I’ve heard so many great things about Greece. Unfortunately we didn’t get to go on this trip, but I definitely plan to visit in the future! I loooved Paris. Amsterdam was actually just okay for me. Perhaps it was because we were there for 5 days, by the 3rd day I already felt like I’d run out of things to do =/
I can’t stand these “signs”. They drive me up the wall! I wanna hear about Shanghai.
Yikes, that is a super intense dream.
I remember having really intense dreams for a long time after I broke up with the ex. I hated it and for a while, I questioned my judgement, but I know in the end that it wasn’t meant to be – no matter how much I wanted it at those moments.
You will find someone who deserves you! :)
Thank you for those words! I did have dreams about MFL two years ago, which definitely made me question my judgment and probably why we started speaking again in the first place… sigh.
I was SO excited you finally told MFL and he accepted you but so hesitant to believe it because of the italicized text…darn, I’m so disappointed! You should have gone for it!!
Anyway, I did/am doing the same with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. I really didn’t absorb it when I was up all night reading the first time. ^^;
Haha, you knew something was fishy right? lol
I want to re-read the entire HP series now! I’m almost so disappointed every time I finish a book because I feel like I’m being yanked back to reality.
Yeah…I love to re-read books the same way you might re-watch a movie. But then again I watch my favorite movies over and over…so maybe I’m strange ^^;
You’re not strange! I do that too! I love re-watching movies and re-reading books. If I enjoyed immersing myself in that world the first time, I’ll usually enjoy it a second and third time around too.