I hadn't seen them in over a year, or spoken to the mouth above them in over a year because things didn't end so pretty for the two of us. There was a point in the relationship - which by world standards was brief, and she was quick to point this out - where I fell for something I originally promised not to fall for. Soon after, we fell out and I spent the next 2-4 months dealing with the sort of things someone deals with when these things happen. It was a fine period in my life, and if one were so inclined, they could literally go back on here, back to last July until November and see the process of my driving a speeding car, seatbelt off and knives pointing out from the steering wheel, straight into a brick wall. I haven't looked back, but someday I will...and I'll thank her in a note, saying something like, thank you...you amazing bitch...thank you.
I sat down and we talked about the things we were chasing, the worlds we were occupying and the people we were fucking. Right away she said something like okay we're going to talk about that and then we're going to talk about how crazy you are. Then she smiled. From that smile on, within moments of my sitting down, everything was light and easy, the way it should be...the way it should have been but never could have been until today. We talked about my faults and hers, taking turns calling out and then defending each other, trading apologies and inabilities we both hoped to one day separately conquer. We sat there for close to 2 hours and she held me that entire time, and I never once worried about the thousand things I had to do or the thousand and one worlds I had to conquer. I was there and could have stayed there forever, honestly...that kind of girl.
When she got up to go to the bathroom, I found myself thinking back to times long ago, back to a brief stretch when we were wild about each other. I remember telling her I thought she was rarity, that she stood me up like no one I had ever experienced, that no matter what happened...even if things got bad between us...we had to fight to keep a friendly fragment of what we had intact...and not just because I thought I might always want to bed this girl. Then I remembered another conversation that went something like, when this ends it's gonna end bad, before we laughed about it and fucking dared each other to break it off...constantly. We were madly wrong and right for each other - a total floating disaster, covered in gasoline, pissing on an open flame.
One year and change later, today, we were walking to our cars on the sidewalk of Highland. She said she was sorry that I got hurt, that she cried too for the same reasons, my getting hurt, and I told her to stop. I didn't know what we were apologizing for...the shit we're made of that made us fall, then fall apart - the shit that allowed us as strangers to spit fire and laughter for two hours at some coffee shop in Hollywood - the shit that's going to carry us with grace through the remains of our lives? Fuck that. I'm sorry it took us a year to speak, sure, but I'm not sorry that I flipped out and picked a raw fight and she's not sorry that she responded by hanging me out...and we both admitted this and then laughed about it. That was us...we're still all that. If we weren't all those things, we never would have known any of this. I'll take that. I think she would too.
