Things Remain the Same

'You're the one I choose to drunk call at two-thirty in the morning. How does that make you feel?'

He doesn't say anything but I can hear him smiling widely down the phone. I soak this up for a minute and let the sober part of my brain take a mental snapshot of the moment. I want to be able to travel back to this point in time later on so I can properly examine how I feel. I note that right now it feels nice but awkward. Although we are obviously beaming at each other for a beat too long, I sense he's not entirely sure how to answer the question without incriminating either one of us. There still exists a mind field of emotion between us which we are constantly having to negotiate. One wrong step, at the wrong time, and I think both of us are aware that everything we've worked for up until this point could blow up in our faces. Still though, the fact remains that he's the one I want to drunk call at two-thirty in the morning. I feel myself glowing from the knowledge that we've now reached a point that I can call and he will answer and he will sound happy. He will sound like I've lit him up.

Two days later we go to the cinema. I'm hungover from two successive (though not entirely successful) nights of binge drinking. He actually came and rang the bell rather than beeping the car horn or texting to alert me of his presence (which is what I would have done). I open the door and immediately the dogs rush to greet him. They do this to everyone but he's the only one who turns around and starts pretending to run away like a girl whilst holding his hands above his head and squirming. This has the effect of confusing the dogs and making me laugh. Eventually we all bundle back inside and the dogs lie on their backs in front of him like the subservient whores I know them to be. He squats down to scratch their bellies and watches me while I put my coat on. I suddenly feel extremely shy. I've sort of let go of shy from my repertoire of versions of who I am. I'm the girl that last night ended up at an impromptu house party where I kinda, sorta knew one other person and yet spent all of five minutes talking to him and the rest of my time bonding with people I'd never met before. That's not the persona of a shy girl, yet he still manages to coax her out of me every now and again. Normally when I'm a combination of
- vulnerable after expressing something inadvertent the last time we spoke
- sober
- melancholy
- getting looked at like he's doing right now.

Even though at one time I knew him better than any other person on the entire planet I still find it difficult to interpret those looks. Even before our very first kiss when we were stood on a dirt track next to the creek, with the only light being twinkling stars and the moon showing where the ripples on the black water were, nuzzling each other's necks and hugging so tightly that I was worried he'd be able to feel how ill-fitting my bra was, as he took a step back and looked at me before everything changed (if only I'd have been conscious enough back then to realise exactly how much it would all change eventually) I had no real idea of what was running through his thoughts. I knew him completely and yet I never felt like I knew completely how he felt about me.

That was seven years ago but I guess although everything changed, there's still a lot that remains the same.

I shoo the dogs away as it's easier to expend energy concentrating on them rather than think of witty things to say to him. As we sit in the car my mind feels empty and I struggle to engage in normal conversation. Times like these I have no idea why he persists in agreeing to share the same space with me. I think back to how I was on the phone, I remember him laughing a lot, I certainly seemed to be erudite and funny but I start to fear this was an illusion cast upon me by the alcohol. However, he's more than ok to fill in any gaps left by my silences. Sometimes this frustrates me as I'll become more and more an audience member for his ever continuing stand-up routine that's occasionally punctuated by me saying 'do you want to hear my story or not?!' with him answering in the affirmative and then finding another joke or seven to shoehorn into the conversation (choice example: '... Sorry, you were telling me about your friend Danny. Is their surname Behr by any chance? Are they related to Yogi in any way?'). Yet I will remember to ask him about an anecdote that he starts telling at an inopportune moment as the BBFC screen comes up on the cinema screen, after the film has run its course and ends up just being about the fact that he managed to miss the last Ski Sunday.

I'm not sure what annoys me more. The fact that he won't let me talk or that he's funnier than I am.

I fear it's mostly the latter. The fact remains however, that he lights me up like no one else. Some things will always remain the same.