Page 50 of Slanting Towards the Sea

FORTY-SIX

WHEN VLAHO LEAVES, THE absence that stays behind pulls me into its vacuum. It feels as though everything inside me is shattered, has been shattered for a long time, only now it’s been acknowledged. And what’s seen can’t be ignored anymore.

For the longest time, I was arranging my life around the fact I still loved him, a truth I couldn’t confront but couldn’t exactly avoid either.

So I relegated it to the corners of my mind until it became a background hum that played while I ate, slept, worked, even while I was falling in love with someone else.

But now it’s materialized into something tangible, something requiring attention.

Because what is spoken cannot be unspoken.

I love Vlaho. Vlaho loves me. Vlaho is also married to someone else.

Even if their marriage is platonic, in many ways it’s more real than many of those “normal” marriages that had once been rooted in love, and then turned apathetic.

He is the father of two small children who need him, who need the stability of their family like we once needed the stability in ours.

And I have a man in my life who makes me laugh, and lifts me up, and lightens me.

Gambling that away on the off chance that things might work out with Vlaho despite all that stands against and between us is both precarious and plain foolish.

And yet, and yet! All I can think about when I close my eyes is Vlaho’s skin against mine, his fingertips raining over me like tears slipping down sleek cheeks.

The way he sees me, the way I am around him, my deepest, truest self, with impossibly big feelings, so enormous they scare me, so enormous they’re all I want.

I fall asleep, and this is the dream I have.

I’m with Asier taking a nighttime swim. A million plankton and stars fire all around us.

I’m peaceful, the way the sea is calm. Asier looks sated, smiling, but as I approach him, his face morphs into Vlaho’s.

A twinge of excitement, I’m a child receiving a gift.

I reach out to him, to cup his face with my hands, seawater spilling between my fingers.

Vlaho angles his body away from me. I try to walk around him.

I wade through the water, it weighs a ton, but I can never reach him.

I’m calling out to him. I can feel, clearly, my mouth forming the two syllables of his name.

His name, which sounds like the drum of my heartbeat.

But nothing comes out. There is a gap in my throat.

A black hole, endless, gravity pulling. Panic surges.

Vlaho’s head morphs into a mirror. The same ornamented mirror my mother bought on the day she took me to the hospital all those years ago.

I finally get to it, look into it. What it reflects back is nothing.

Only an absence, and behind it, the wall of stars.