Our Night in Love

I wish I could turn back the clock. I wish I could stop time and go back to that moment when...

Beneath the full moon that hangs over Boston we twirl. Two lovers whose reflection glistens off the smooth waters that capture our devotion in mirrored bliss. We stand here atop this bridge at Boston Common Park, my hands around your waist as our stares are cast longingly into each other's eyes. Your eyes, those beautiful eyes into which I want only to gaze forever, melt my heart and offer me a joy unrivaled by any other pleasure I shall ever know. In this moment I realize my heart's true desire and ask the question that has for three long years been coming:

"Ornela, I love you...I am in love with you. Will you be my girlfriend?"

You say nothing, but though your lips remain silent their answer is jubilantly given once they press firmly upon my own. We are completely lost in each other, and there is no place I would rather be.

We retreat to your home, to your bedroom where soon our passion has taken us to bliss hitherto unknown. This is the night, the first for both of us.

I stroke your body softly, pressing bare skin upon skin. Your chin trembles, though from fear or anticipation I know not.

"Are you ready?" I ask.

You nod, and as I press my body onto yours a last gasp of innocence signifies your transformation into womanhood as our bodies become one. 

That is how our last night together three years ago in Boston should have gone Ornela. I think about the moment on that bridge at Boston Common Park when I should have asked you to be mine...I think about it every day. We should have made love for the first time that night, but instead I foolishly discarded our love. It is my life's single greatest regret, and one that I do not believe I will ever recover from. I am so sorry for what has happened, and I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

This journal has become a doorway into my feelings for you. In our five days together last week, there were a thousand things I wanted to say to you that either time or the situation did not allow. So I will say them here instead. I will say everything that is on my heart and let you decide if you wish to hear my words or not. Perhaps one day you will let me look into your eyes again and tell you how much I love you. Perhaps one day you will give us a chance to have the life together that we always should have had.

I will wait, and I will hope.

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Ornela, I will be in Boston next week. If you would like to see me, please let me know.

Indifference

"Not only did you lose her love, but now you have even garnered her hate," Martiro mused.

"Hate I can endure," Pan said, "for when a woman hates you she is reminded of you. Hate and love may be at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, but they differ no less in intensity. To hate someone means that he is never far from your mind. Don't you know Martiro, hate is not the opposite of love. Indifference is."

I wrote these words six months ago. They are taken from my debut novel Moon Rabbit and reveal the book's climatic exchange between the hero (Martiro) and the villain (Pan) as they discuss what it means to love a woman. During the writing of this particular scene, I was at a very low point in my life because the woman I am in love with had just told me that she no longer had any feelings for me. Devastated by her revelation, I poured all of my pain into my writing with the hope that someday she would read my words and her love for me would be rekindled. Such a thing seems so absurd, but if love makes fools out of even the wisest men, what hope did I have? 

As Pan and Martiro discuss the nature of unrequited love, Pan concludes that it is better for a woman to hate him than forget him, as hatred at least conjures his memory within his beloved's mind. He summarizes his position by asserting that "Hate is not the opposite of love. Indifference is." When I wrote this particular scene, I wondered if Pan's observations were really true. Is indifference truly the opposite of love? To those who are wielding such a powerful weapon it probably does not seem so, but for someone who finds that all of his words to the woman he loves fall only on deaf ears, being ignored is one of the most heartbreaking feelings in the world.

Ornela, you said something very strange to me during our time together last week. I told you how deeply it hurt me when you ignored all of my letters and you replied in frustration:

"Do you know how difficult it was not to respond to you?"

These words struck me as odd because it never occurred to me that restraining yourself from writing me was in any way a struggle. It never seemed that it should be because I thought that you no longer had any feelings for me. But as I thought more about what you said and why you would have to resist the urge to speak with me, a very disturbing suspicion began to form in my mind. I wondered if you really did love me all this time but feared that by getting closer to me you would only end up eventually hurting me. I wondered if the reason you have been withdrawing from me is not because you don't love me, but because you are trying to protect me from getting hurt. 

I do not know if my suspicions are true or merely wild speculation, but I am only trying to make sense out of a very confusing and painful chapter of my life right now. Simply writing these words is therapeutic and I almost feel as if you are sitting beside me as I write, stroking my arm and toying with my hair just as you did on our last night together. I wish that you were here right now. I wish that you were here to tell me that our story is not really over. 

I just wish that you would talk to me Ornela.

Our Story's First Chapter

Ornela...you were right. I wrote about my feelings for you so very long ago, long before I knew how close we would eventually become. I went back through my journal and found the entry where you said I first wrote about you. After reading my words, I can see now what I could not then...that I was in love with you from the moment we had our first date. My God, I was in love with you even then.

December 10th, 2008:

Like all good stories, this one is about a girl. A girl I met a week before I went home, a girl whose midnight hair and onyx eyes captured my gaze from the moment I saw her. And, unfortunately for me, a girl whose destiny lies in DC while mine travels the winding road back home. She tells me that she wants to see where things go, to ignore the obstacles both time and distance create and see if there is anything more than this week we had together. I tell her I’d like that too. I tell her that I like her as she brushes aside the hair draping over her eyes and smiles.

So here we go...the quintessential DC woman falls for the southern gentleman whose genteel curiosities have melted her heart. I’ve done this all before. Their names and faces run together like the muddied waters bound by the inlets of the Potomac Bay. I dated these women, too many women, and now I debate whether I am simply repeating history. There was the girl from McLean who I took to see the lions roar at the local zoo. The woman from Rosslyn who I toured through the museums as she flirtatiously squeezed my arm. The co-ed from Georgetown and the consultant from Adams Morgan who drove me wild simply because she was the only one I couldn’t chase down. I’ve dated them all and as soon as they relent I ungraciously take my leave…not because I hate the women, but because I love the chase. 

But this girl is different. She arouses not the passions of amusement or diversion, but rather fidelity and (oddly enough) commitment. Of these varied emotions, the latter has always been a ghost. Its immense demands on my independence have caused me to scoff at its supplications and relegate it to the happy abode of neglect. I have refused to be reined in by a woman for fear of losing myself. My fear is not without justification as this unhappy scenario has played itself out more than once. Still, I’d like to take a chance…just one more time. I’d like to take a chance with this girl and see where things go.

 

I met her a week before I go home to Alabama. You meet a girl, you take her out, and you see where things go. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you know after the first date that there’s something there. It’s a look in her eyes, the way she twirls her hair, the pounding of your heart. You can’t let her go, you just can’t. Even if a thousand miles and as many nights separate your souls, fate has a way of bending ever so slightly to accommodate the heart’s desire.

When I read these words that I wrote about you after our first date in 2008, I cried. You have always held a place in my heart no other woman could ever touch. More than anything in the world right now, I want to be with you in Boston. I want to look into your beautiful eyes and hear your voice, but because you have asked me not to phone or e-mail you I will not contact you. But Ornela, if these words have stirred the same feelings in your heart that they have in mine, will you please call me?

I just want to be close to you right now. There is something very special and very important going on between us and we have to follow these feelings. I know you feel it too. I know you felt it in our kiss only two days ago when we finally surrendered to our love for each other. I think you understand that what is happening between us, in this moment, is different than before and is the start of something wonderful for both of us.

I do not know if you are still reading my journal, but I know that if you are it is because you still love me and some part of you wants to spend our lives together. Do not forget your promise to me. Do not forget that our love deserves one, final chance. All I ask for is the chance to have a normal relationship with you, both of us living in Boston where we can be with each other every day, opening our hearts to one another and growing in love. If we commit to a real relationship and find that it simply is not right, then we will know that it was never meant to be. But how can we spend the rest of our lives knowing that we were so close, but never gave our love a real chance to grow into something amazing? 

Please do not withdraw from me because you are afraid of being hurt or of hurting me. You know that I will never break your heart again, and I am willing to risk being hurt a thousand times over just to find out if we are truly meant for each other, because the possibility of sharing our lives together in love is worth everything to me. Our love is worth everything to me. You are worth everything to me.

 

Six years ago in my first journal entry about you I wrote that "fate has a way of bending ever so slightly to accommodate the heart’s desire." Just yesterday I repeated in my last entry that I believe "the fates are already working to bring us back together." And now today I received some wonderful news that confirmed how prophetic those words have proven to be. Fate, it seems, has finally intervened in our story. Please call me Ornela. I have something very important that I need to tell you.

Hope

Beautiful. In an instant all of my fear and trepidation disappears as I see you enter the lobby and glance towards me. Three years have dulled my memory, but not your beauty as you walk closer and look at the rain soaked man before you.


"Can I have a hug?" I ask.


"Ok," you gingerly concede. And so begins our first night together, putting an end to so many lonely evenings apart.


We sit down to talk and the incredulous look on your face betrays your disbelief. You cannot believe I am here. You cannot believe that I have travelled 1,300 miles to see you, in the rain, and without even a change of clothes apart from the shirt that fits snugly over my shoulders. I tell you why I have come to see you. I talk, you listen. The look on your face changes from disbelief to distress, and then to pity. You are about to break my heart...and you know it. You talk and I listen. My head drops at your words, reality becomes apparent, and I prepare myself to return to Logan International Airport for the long flight home.


But I don't leave Boston that night. Instead you invite me into your home, a courtesy I was not expecting, though one that set the stage for the next four days of heartfelt discussions between you and I that brought us closer together than we have been in years, yet also threatened to tear us apart.


The first night we lay together in bed was simultaneously exhilarating and frightening for me. For the first time in my life I lay in bed beside a woman I am truly and completely in love with. That feeling is unrivaled by any I have thus far experienced in my life and seemed inferior only to the next intimate moments we were surely about to share together. As you lay beside me beneath the blankets, I reached out to touch your arm, but rather than inviting me closer you unexpectantly pull away. Undeterred, I hold your hand, squeeze it tightly and wait for you to do the same, but your grip remains flaccid, unmoving and cold. I stroke your hair, transfixed by your beauty and powerless to restrain myself as I lean in to kiss your cheek, a brief prelude before our lips touch. But it is not to be. You pull away quickly, turning your back to me and crossing your arms to guard yourself from my touch. My head collapses in agony. A tear that you do not see runs down my cheek before it falls and disappears into the surrounding darkness that has claimed both my dying hope and our love.


Our talks over the next few days are difficult ones for both of us. I came here hoping to reconcile and begin our relationship anew, but when you reject my advances I instead simply want an explanation. You provide one. I don't understand. And round and round we go until we are both exhausted and frustrated.


"It would have been better if you never came to see me in Boston Bobby," you say, and my head hangs in despair.


Every time I try to draw closer you withdraw until finally I can take it no more. I collapse into tears, weeping uncontrollably in an unrestrained moment of emotional pain and despair. You have never seen me like this before, for until now I have kept my emotions under control, but the scene you witness has played itself out in private many times over the past few months...a million tears shed over your rejection of me.


And then something very strange happened. Until this moment, I had not recognized you. The walls that you have built around yourself have so insulated the girl I fell in love with that even after four days I had yet to see her. But as I lay in your bed, covering my face with hands that served only to muffle my cries, the good girl that I always knew was there finally arrived. You saw that I was in real trouble, real pain, and rather than choosing to protect yourself behind your walls you instead ran to me, draped your arms over my back and comforted me. You soothed my despair until at last all fear melted away within the warm embrace of your loving arms. I felt something from you that I had not sensed in our many days together: love. From that moment until the few hours later that I still remained with you, your demeanor towards me grew warmer.


Our ride to the airport felt different to me. It felt...wonderful. As we held hands, I felt that for the first time during my entire visit to Boston you actually enjoyed receiving my affection. You squeezed my hand the way you used to all those years ago and smiled when I stroked your arm. When we arrived at the airport I handed you my final letter and wondered at your reaction, when without hesitation you reached over my shoulders and gave me the most affectionate hug I can ever remember.


In our embrace I whisper into your ear, "Kiss me Ornela." A moment later, our lips lock. A moment after that, we became the two lovers we once were, holding each other close while all the world falls away.


I look into your eyes. You are smiling. I am smiling. The most unexpected of reunions has led to this briefest moment of happiness and I want only to stay in this car and hold you forever. Something has changed between our initial late night conversation at Harvard and now...our feelings for each other have returned.


Tonight, as I lay in my bed back home, I reflect on the previous days' events and the trials we had to endure to finally enjoy our first kiss in three years. I reach out my arm into the empty space beside me, almost expecting to feel you there, and I wonder if you wish I was lying next to you too.


We left each other today with a curious promise. You made me promise to try to find love in anyone but you, and I made you promise to find it only in us. It is a promise that only one of us can keep, but one that gives me hope for the future all the same.


I have hope for us Ornela. I have hope that you will ask to see me again. I have hope that the fates are already at work to bring us back together. It is hope that caused me to travel 1,300 miles just to see you. And it is hope for our future that finally brought us together as the lovers we once were in your car today. Hope is a wonderful thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.

I Have to Go See About a Girl

Ornela,

This was our day. This was the day that we were supposed to be together in Boston after three long years apart. I've thought a lot about you today. I've also thought a lot about how you said that you weren't ready to see me because you're not ready for a commitment. But that's not what we had to figure out during our time together. All we had to figure out is where our feelings for each other really are. We haven't seen each other in so long, and it would be foolish to jump into anything without first seeing if we can still make each other laugh, and make each other smile. That's something we're only going to know for sure if we see each other. How else can we know? 

Nearly four months ago you asked me back into your life. When I read your letter, all I wanted to do was get in my car and drive all the way from Atlanta to Boston to see you. But I did not do that. I did not do that because I thought that we had time to plan out a trip and coordinate our schedules, but now I see that our time was already running out. Something has happened in the past few weeks that caused you to send me that e-mail stating that everything is over, but because you will not talk to me I have no idea what has happened or even if you are alright. I am worried about you, and I have made a decision to do something that I should have done a long time ago.

I love you Ornela, and loving someone means trusting them completely. It means having faith in them...just as I have faith in you. That is why I am trusting you completely right now. On Wednesday, October 1st, I will be in Boston. I am going to spend the entire day at the Public Garden next to Boston Common Park where we strolled through the gardens on that cold January night three years ago. At 7:00 p.m., I am going to be standing on the bridge that overlooks the lake. We kissed there once, and it is the place where I should have asked you to be my girlfriend. I will be standing there, waiting for you, and trusting that you will come.  

I have faith in you Ornela. I have faith that you will come find me at the park for one simple reason...I believe that in your heart you still love me.

7:00 p.m. on Wednesday at the bridge...I will be waiting for you there.

Love,

Bobby

Last Letter

I look up and see a plane screeching across a blue sky. Somehow I know that is the one, the flight bound for Boston. Its cabin is full, save for a single empty seat, the seat I should be sitting in...smiling, as I am finally on my way to see you after three long years apart.


But I am not on that plane. Instead, I am sitting beneath an old oak tree in an abandoned cotton field outside of Atlanta, watching the soaring jet fly further and further away until finally it disappears over the horizon.


From my pocket I retrieve a pencil and a piece of paper and write you my last letter:


I am sorry Ornela. I am sorry for all the times I ignored you, for taking you for granted, and for hurting you all those years ago. I am sorry for what I said to you in Boston on our last night together and for abandoning you. I never understood how deeply I hurt you...until now. Watching the person you love walk away is the most terrible feeling in the world, and I finally understand that now...because I am watching you walk out of my life.


It hurts very much that you ended things so abruptly and are now completely ignoring me, and I don't understand why you won't let me see you to talk about how you are feeling. Without looking into my eyes, how will you ever truly know what might have been? How will you ever truly know whether or not you love me?


Six years we have known each other. Three years we dated. And for the past eight months, since my first letter arrived in a small box containing a novel written only for you, I have done everything I can to show you that I am in love with you. In your last message to me you said that our relationship was never easy, and you're right, it never was. But nothing worth having in life ever is, which is why I was willing to fight for you and move all the way across the country just to be with you. Something always kept drawing us back together...and I now realize that it was because we both fell in love with each other from the moment we met, even if we didn't know it at the time.


I've never told you this before, and honestly I'm not sure why I am telling you now, but you are the only girl I ever took down to my family's lake house in Florida. I know that experience probably meant nothing to you, but it was a very serious thing for me to do as that lake house is the most sacred place in the world to me. When I was a boy, I promised myself that I would only ever take one girl down there...and that girl would be the woman I would marry. Looking back, I realize now that I was in love with you then, but those feelings were so new I did not recognize them. That night we spent on the dock gazing up at the stars was one of the most magical moments of my life. In that moment, when all the world faded away, I wish that we had made love.


In my letters I have poured out my heart and told you that I love you a hundred times over. And I could write you a thousand more letters, each more heartfelt than the last, but there is nothing I can say that you do not already know. You know how I feel about you. You know that I love you. I am giving you all that I am. Ornela, if my love is not enough, then I have nothing left to give. If you no longer want me in your life...I will go away.


I will never forget you Ornela. You showed me how to trust again and let me love you as deeply as any man has ever loved a woman. You gave me the most precious of gifts: hope and love...and for that I will always love you. When all the drama is stripped away, we are just a boy and a girl who fell in love...and maybe someday fate will bring us back together.


Love,
Bobby


p.s. This was always my favorite picture. Whenever I felt sad or lonely, I would always take a few moments to look at it and remember that you loved me. I've looked at this photo a thousand times, always seeing your smiling face...a smile that reminds me that I once made you happy.

 

Flowers and Thorns

When I was a man much younger than I am today, I once happened upon the rarest of sights, a beautiful red and black Poppy flower growing alone within an open field. But this was no ordinary field you see; this field stretched from our nation's Capitol all the way to President Lincoln's footstool, with a pillar erected to Washington somewhere in between.


Amidst the endless expanse of the National Mall, a single Poppy flower grew wild and free, its black and red petals illuminated by the sun to reveal a beauty unrivaled by even the monuments surrounding it. On a cold December day in 2008, I plucked this flower for myself and marveled at its beauty. I held it close, became intoxicated by its pleasant aroma, and quickly developed a genuine love for this blossoming flower whose simple presence lifted my spirits.


But as time went on, a terrible thing happened. I became complacent. I became inattentive. I neglected this beautiful Poppy flower, never watering it or letting it blossom in the sun, until it slowly wasted away. Its red and black petals, once as vibrant in color as a soaring eagle silhouetted against the blood red sky of the Albanian flag, now drooped and longed for the attention that I cruelly withheld. The flower begged for only a single drop of water, that it may be revitalized and reclaim a semblance of its former beauty, but I in my indifference I would not oblige. I let the flower die, and with it a future that could have been so very bright.


Years passed. From time to time I would think of the Poppy flower, how its beauty once brightened my day and made me smile. At first I paid these thoughts little regard, but as time passed these memories began to occupy more and more of my waking moments until the day arrived when I finally realized the error of my ways. Like a bolt from the heavens the realization hit me. All at once everything became clear. I loved the Poppy flower, this most beautiful creature in my life that had given me such happiness. I loved her...yet now it was too late.


I rushed home to find the forgotten Poppy flower than I had discarded so long ago. In desperation I tore through my house until at last I found a broken pot filled with dried dirt and the withered stem of a once beautiful creation. Its glorious red and black petals had long since fallen away and in their place remained only wisps of leaves that were as brittle as onion skin. I held the flower close, mourning over its loss at my hands as tears flowed from my eyes and watered the soil. For days I cried until at last every last tear had been wrung from its ducts and turned the dried potting soil into mud.


Whether it was from the resilience of the Poppy flower to remain alive or some magic contained within the love of my fallen tears I do not know, but as I looked into the flower pot I saw the tiny flower begin to grow. First a single green sprout began to emerge, followed by a few tiny leaves. Next the stem grew higher and higher until finally a kaleidoscope of red and black petals burst forth into the sunlight and filled my eyes with a beauty such as I had never seen. My Poppy flower had arisen from its grave, even more beautiful than before, its new life granted by the unconditional love I had bestowed upon it.


But as I reached out my hand to touch its beautiful petals, my finger was pricked by a thorn that jutted sharply from its stem. Blood poured from the open wound and dripped onto the flower's petals so that I could not tell whether its red color stemmed from its natural beauty or my pain. In horror I watched as the Poppy grew thorn after thorn to protect itself from my touch, preventing me from drawing closer lest I feel its pain again. Within a few moments, the beautiful red and black petals disappeared behind a veil of thorns, never again allowing me to see their beauty or touch their soft skin.


I wept when the beautiful flower turned away from me. I wept when you turned away from me Ornela. Please do not go down this path you are on. Please do not shut me out of your life. Do you not understand how close we are to something wonderful? I made a promise to you that I would never hurt you again, and it is a promise I will never break. Please pull back your thorns and stop hurting me. I love you Ornela.