City of Lights — pt. 2
Could this be the night their love goes dark?
Fiction
Could this be the night their love goes dark?
Their dinners arrived, and he ordered another beer. They began to eat in silence until she asked: “Why are you even with me then if you hate me so much?”
He shook his head: “Is that what you’ve gotten from all of this?”
“What else am I supposed to think? All you’ve done is criticize me or those close to me. You judge people. That’s what you do.”
He leaned back and took this in: “Well, I disagree with it being all I have ever done. But yes, tonight, I admit, I’ve been hypercritical.”
“Why tonight?”
“I guess my stomach being upset stirred everything up for me.”
She nodded.
They ate in silence for a few more minutes with the clank of silverware on plates louder than an approaching subway in their adopted hometown. Finally, she spoke: “You haven’t answered me.”
“What?”
“Why are you with me?”
He put his fork down and looked straight at her: “I don’t want to be without you. You can’t be surprised by any of this. I’ve always said this only works if we’re honest.” He paused for emphasis. “Do you want the truth?”
“Yes. Always.”
“Lately, I don’t know why I’m with you.”
She sighed as her eyes welled up again: “Don’t you love me?”
“Love isn’t the issue. I always end up on the ass end of things with you. You’re either shrugging your shoulders silently, saying, ‘deal with it, your problem.’ Or I’m on the receiving end of your resentment of whatever or whoever. No one works harder at anything than you, and you are the only one putting any effort into anything. When you get called on your shit or are or excluded, you shove your hands in your pocket and begin building your mountain of resentment. Yea, I do love you, more than you realize, but sometimes you have the emotional intelligence of a 17-year-old.”
She gritted her teeth: “BULLSHIT!”
His ire was growing: “More truth?”
“Don’t stop now.”
“Frankly, I think I embarrass you.”
That landed like a bomb, and she was visibly stunned: “What the fuck, Brian? Nothing could be further from the truth.”
He shrugged: “That’s my truth.”
There it was.
“Jesus. I don’t think that. At. All.”
The lump grew in his throat, so he folded his napkin and placed it on the table and excused himself to go to the bathroom.
He came back to find his plate had been cleared.
“I guess they thought you were finished.” She said.
“Well then, I guess I am.”
“On the bright side, you now have one more thing to hate me for.”
He mumbled, “I don’t hate you” and sat down.
The waiter dropped off a dessert menu, and he ordered a glass of port.
“Do you want dessert?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“You pick one, and I pick one. It’ll make up for me having your steak stolen.”
“Fucking French thieves.”
They laughed for the first time.
He picked cheesecake. She chose crème brûlée’ — neither a terrible shock to the other.
His port arrived along with the dessert forks, and before the waiter left, he ordered two coffees and two shots of Irish whiskey.
She shook her head. “You must be the only man in France who comes and drinks Irish whiskey.”
“The French do wine, not whiskey.”
She tilted her head back and forth as if to say: “Not really.” But thought better of mentioning it.
After a minute or two, she finally asked, “So what do you want to do?”
“I would like to get our dessert.”
“No. About us.”
“I know. I dunno what to do.”
“I’ve suggested talking to someone, but you won’t.”
Perhaps it was fear, but he was no fan of therapy: “Yea, well, not my thing.”
“Okay then. Do you have a suggestion?”
“Let’s wait and see. Things will correct themselves, or they won’t.”
“Do you honestly believe that?”
“Yes, I do. Do you?”
She turned away from him and again noticed the couple in the corner. “I’m not sure what to believe. I want to believe love is enough.”
“Loving someone is the easiest part. Accepting someone is a FUCK of a lot harder,” he replied.
As the desserts arrived, the lump returned to his throat: “Look, whatever is going on is just as much my fault as your fault.” He continued: “It may seem like I’m pointing the finger at you, but it’s both of us.”
“Tough to tell because you spent the night shitting all over me.”
“If that was all that you heard, then you weren’t listening. I was honest, Lily. And, yea, honesty is sometimes shitty.”
“Well, I honestly think you’re a sanctimonious prick.”
He smiled: “Props on honesty, but name-calling is hardly a healthy progression.”
He poured the whiskey into his coffee and added milk.
Silence.
She snarled one last time: “Who the FUCK do you think you are?”
He smugly retorted: “I’m the man that loves you.”
She leaned back in her chair and took a sip of coffee.
He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window.
She exhaled: “I want to be with you, but I don’t know what that means or what it looks like. I think about a life with you, but I have concerns about that. You want the truth?”
He nodded: “Always.”
“I don’t think I want this.”
“Neither do I, but I do know I want a life with you.”
“Quite the quandary.”
“Indeed.”
She asked: “Can we make it right?”
He jutted his chin to the same couple in the corner. “You see that couple in the corner?”
She turned: “Yea.”
“I suspect they’ve been together for years. And I bet it’s never been perfect. You see, you think perfect exists. You never saw anything close to perfect. So you think it can exist. I come from a different place. I understand a relationship is never gonna be perfect. All I know is I want you. I could weather the storm if I knew I had you. Do you see the difference? When it gets hard, my experience with you is that you blame, and then you run. I understand because that was your experience. That was not my experience.” He stopped for a moment to drink his coffee, “I just want to feel that you’re there. I want to know that you’ll always be there. I want us to communicate so that we both are heard. I want to be more connected to you. I believe all of that once existed but is now gone.”
“Is that honestly what you think?”
He chose not to respond to this. It was clear to him that nothing had registered.
They sat in silence as they finished their coffee and dessert. Finally, he motioned for the check, and the waiter brought it to them. Before he had a chance to grab it, she snatched it up: “I got it.”
“No, no, I got it,” he said and reached for the bill.
“Look, lemme get this. You got lunch earlier, and you can get the cab back to the hotel. We’ll have some wine there and go to bed.”
It was clear that there was no negotiating.
“Okay.”
The cab ride back to their B&B was probably faster than the hour it seemed to take.
They walked in, and he asked the clerk for a small bottle of wine to be brought up.
As she walked up the stairs, he realized that the opportunity to make love one last time in one of the world’s most romantic cities had slipped away the moment the vodka started making its way through him. He playfully slapped her butt anyway, and she turned around, smiling to swat his hand.
They sat on the veranda, looking over the city of lights, drinking wine, and talked through the week. Even after the dinner they’d just had, they both had to admit the week wasn’t all bad. As they looked out, he said: “I’m ready to go home.”
“Yea, me too,” she replied.
It grew quiet. He thought of their life together; the battles they would encounter, the ups, the downs, the distances, the silences, the laughs, the tears, the children, but mostly he just thought about his life with her. Could it happen? He smiled at her. He believed in the possibility.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he replied.
She got up: “I’m gonna go to bed. Are you coming?”
“Yea, in a few minutes.”
She kissed the top of his head as she walked by.
That night as he held her in bed, feeling her warmth, smelling her skin, he pulled the sheet back to reveal her breast. He began to wonder if two people could stay in love for a lifetime. He knew that love ebbs and flows as it changes and grows. The biggest question he had that night was the question that has plagued him his entire adult life — is it possible to love the wrong person for an entire lifetime?
He was sure she was asleep, so he gently moved her hair around her ear and whispered, “It can’t be wrong if it’s right.” He kissed her shoulder and rolled over to go to sleep.
A tear slid down her cheek onto her pillow as she sighed and closed her eyes. All she wanted was for him to touch her.
One last time.
City of Lights — pt. 1
Could this be the night their love goes dark?medium.com