Promise Me Bobby

"I will promise to consider giving us another chance Bobby, but you have to make me a promise too."

"Anything Ornela...I will promise you anything."

"You have to promise to try to find love with someone else besides me."

"I...I promise."

Two strangers share a brisk autumn night together beneath the pillars of Atlanta's skyline. A girl and a boy, just leaving the restaurant together before walking only a few blocks to Piedmont Park. The moon shines bright and full, bathing these two souls in tempered light that illuminates a smile that only one of these two partners boasts. Her smile shines radiant and unfettered as she takes my hand, holds it within her own, and points towards that celestial watchman overhead.

"He lights our steps tonight -- the man on the moon that is. Do you think he really lives up there?"

"A man? I don't know about that. I've always heard that the moon is home to a rabbit," I flippantly reply.

She looks confused but says nothing as we continue our walk. She grabs hold of my arm and squeezes it tightly, resting her head on my shoulder as I simply turn away.

An hour later we arrive at her place and she fixes me a drink. Before she can even pour herself one I have already downed my first round and am asking for a second. She looks at me askance, her furrowed brow betraying her concern. She thinks that my proclivity to imbibe is due to a weakened conscience, a random indulgence...but nothing could be further from reality. In truth, I am very deliberate in my actions, for I drink tonight for only one reason...to forget. One drink taken quickly, then another, and soon perhaps I will forget this night's sordid affair.

We sit down together on her couch and she slides closer. Whatever reasons she may have for choosing me I cannot venture a guess, but my choice to spend the night with her comes not from any divine attributes she possesses, but rather from painful obligation...an obligation to you Ornela. She looks like the girl I knew before you. She looks just like the woman who broke my heart. Her long, blonde hair tumbles like golden waterfalls down her back, a few strands tangling with my hand as I put my arm around her. Her blue eyes are opened wide and gaze directly into my own, never blinking, never looking away. She leans closer still, placing my free hand against her waist before gliding it further down.

"I'm going to dim the lights," she says as I feel my heart begin to race.

The room is dark now, only the pale streetlight seeping through curtains to silhouette two figures whose bodies draw close. I continue toying with her hair, but in the darkness it has abandoned its golden glow and instead turns a raven black. Her skin, once unblemished porcelain in the light, has turned darker still and resembles the olive complexion of the woman whose memory fills my mind's eye even now. In this moment, when I am treated to the first tastes of intimacy since last your lips touched my own at Logan Airport, I do not see the unfamiliar face of a new lover...I see you.

I do not want to be here in this apartment with this strange woman. Everything within me is appalled at my infidelities, for I feel that I am being unfaithful to you. I feel sick...I want to stop. I turn to leave, but in a moment of willful loyalty to you, I remember your words:

Promise me Bobby -- I hold this woman's hand.

Promise me Bobby -- I look into her eyes, a mixture of brightest blue and darkest black, of the familiar and unknown.

Promise me Bobby -- She leans close, expecting our lips to touch, when from my own I unconsciously utter, "Te dua." She stops, taken by a look of confusion that overcomes her beautiful face. But before she can question my unexpected outburst, I kiss her, silencing both her objections and my own angels that fall beneath the onslaught of a thousand pitchforks.

Her tongue tastes my lips for an eternity before asking, "Do you want to spend the night?"

I look into her eyes, into the gates of both heaven and hell, and make my decision.

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Ornela, you made me make a promise that I do not know how to keep. You made me promise to try to love someone besides you, but (to inversely quote a biblical passage) where the flesh is willing, the heart is weak. I can make myself go through the motions. I can make myself spend time with another woman, get to know her heart, and even be intimate with her. But I can't make myself love her. I am in love with only one woman...and that woman is you.

This story was challenging to write, and one that I am unable to gauge your reaction from. I wrote you a story describing my intimacies with another woman, something you made me promise to do. You know me well enough to weigh the truth of my writing, a place where fact and fiction collide and where my daily experiences influence and sometimes even create entire narratives from little more than idle thoughts or dreams. Just know that I would never do (or write) anything to hurt you. If you trust me, if you believe me when I tell you that I am in love with you, then you already know when I wear my storyteller's cap, and when I remove it to speak directly to your heart.

Ornela, I am going to ask you here again, just as I did in my letter to you on Facebook on November 8th...may I please see you in Boston?