While paying for my Styrofoam container of mushed-together scoops of Thai entrees and sides, I thought I would drop my wallet, and it took me an unreasonably long amount of time to count and present my money to the cashier. I was shaking so hard - could he tell? - and here he was, still next to me, having already counted his money, and paid, but waiting for me anyway, holding this sanctioned, accidental moment, for a little while longer at least, before we would have to separate, and go back to rigorously not talking, and I kept staring at his smooth hands which I had always loved, and had told him so, at his long fingers, and the soft blond hairs tracing his arms, wanting to reach over and touch them, touch him, but I can’t touch him now, anymore, whenever I want to, because he’s not mine anymore, he never really was, so it would just be…weird.
At the elevator he looked awkward, and I felt awkward. I shook his hand, awkwardly, not wanting to part without some kind of physical contact, however minimal. Then I stepped into my going-up elevator, leaving him to wait for his going-down elevator.
Shaking, but safely back at my desk now, I took one bite of my Thai food mush and then emailed him, and he emailed me right back, instantly breaking our mutual No Contact agreement, that I had never really wanted to abide by anyway. I apologized - the hot food buffet food sucked, and I had confidently assured him it would be good; he didn’t blame me, or hold it against me. He made his bed, he wrote, and now he had to lie in it/eat it.
Still shaking, the thought entered my head: What am I doing? I quickly deleted both emails, ‘cause I want, one day, someday, to be happy, and to do that, I have to be free. I can’t start accumulating even more emails from him to obsess over, when I already have close to 300 emails that had been exchanged between us, waiting, in a separate, special file in my hotmail account entitled “Untitled,” waiting for me to do the thing I have not yet been able to do – delete them, and him, and move on. Towards, hopefully, happiness. With someone else. Which I was in no way ready to do.
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