Weblog entry:
- T-minus.
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This is how a farewell starts: with smiles, laughter. With good music and (mostly) cold beer, watching her dance to Guns and Roses while she drinks her Corona. In the middle of the song, she dons an orange wig, and her girlfriend howls with laughter. You do, too.
She leaves in two months.
Simply written, simply stated. Written like that, it almost feels manageable. Routine, even: August will come, your rent will be paid, another paycheck will arrive, she’ll be gone. You take another sip of your beer, and laugh as she gets her Axl Rose on across the room. It feels silly to worry about something so trivial, manageable. Something almost unimportant.
But as the night drew to a close, something larger began to wane. You’re painfully aware of that first night you really met her, after a corporate get-together. You think about watching the other coworkers mill out of the bar and back to their wives, golden retrievers, children, IRAs, mortgage payments; finally, it was the two of you, swapping drunken life stories while the bar tab grew. You think about how she was the only person you wanted to talk to when your last relationship ended, how you called her cell repeatedly at two o’clock in the morning, getting voicemail immediately each time, and how stupid you felt when, later, you realized that the sound of her voicemail greeting made everything seem okay. You remember the night the two of you hung out on her back porch, looking out over a fleet of empty school buses parked in the lot across the street, smoking cigarettes in the quiet darkness, watching the smoke plume above the two of you like so much understanding, acknowledgement. Suddenly, the now of the evening feels all too fragile; when she mentions the bus evening, and how she wants that night back, you nod. Sip from your beer.
She leaves in two months.
You hope you can do this.
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