Wednesday, January 10, 2018

I

began to hear the music. Something jazzy by Frank Sinatra: "Come Fly With Me."

Come Fly With Me! Come Fly—Let's Fly—Away!

I had been sleeping with head on my arm, and when I opened my eyes and lifted my head, I saw a black dress draped over my skin. The sound of the crowds rang, and the dazzling white lights floating in the air sparkled.

A man in a waiter uniform who walked past with towel and food tray swung around my chair and set down a wooden board of Tapas, a favorite Spanish cuisine of mine. I felt confused as I looked around the room, and noticed the dimly lit atmosphere of dinner tables and finely dressed dates.

In the background was a purplish-pink hue in the sunset sky. Wrapping all around the room was a continuous window, through which the gray ocean seemed a mile below us, and surrounded every which way to give the notion that the entire world was still under water.

I had no idea where I was. All I knew was that I had last been on a boat, being invaded by a terrible person. Perhaps the experience was more traumatic than I thought. And perhaps, it was giving me strange dreams.

Off to the left, a man in tux and woman in blue dress finally sat down at the table where they had been standing, and in so doing, revealed the tower standing above the horizon that had been blocked from my view. . . My eyes lit up when I saw the tower behind them, and now I recognized this restaurant where I woke up in.

The tower across the sunset was the glistening Eiffel tower! Small and very far away.

The restaurant was Le Chen, a fancy restaurant my great aunt had taken me to when I was younger before she died of ninety years old. She did pretty well for her age. She loved classic literature. I had only been to this restaurant once after my fancy dinner with her. It was about two months ago on my one-year anniversary with--

Oh, speaking of the handsome devil--

A waiter approached my table and gestured to the seat across from me. "Here you are, Monsieur," said the waiter to my lover, whose eyes glistened when they caught mine in the sunset light. He handed his tux jacket to the waiter and thanked him very much for including such a pretty girl with tonight's meal. ("She sure justifies the cost," laughed the waiter.)

Jack sat down across from me, and instantly I slipped my stockinged feet out of my uncomfortable high heels and caressed his legs with them. The dimples on his face appeared, and he said a lot with his eyes. We said nothing for a while, as the wine appeared and we shared the appetizers. This restaurant fused French, Italian and Spanish foods and definitely conquered the aura of romantic language through the lighting and the view.

One summer, my parents allowed for me to bring Jack along to our Parisian property, and I distinctly remember his favorite places being the top of the Eiffel Tower, the Nice beach, and this restaurant. Well. . . also his bedroom, which I couldn't stay away from when my parents were out with their so-called business friends.

I was having mixed feelings about this dinner. A boiling nostalgia mixed with burning hurt. I loved the memories Jack and I shared. But I was aware in this dream that the outside world featured a dead Travis and a stranded, starving Jack—while I was the girl on the boat with a rapist and a home-wrecker who would never turn the boat around without a fight from me.

Across the table, Jack poured me some more wine, then lifted his glass to his lips, and taking a pause, lifted his pinky finger with a joking smile that read—Look, darling! Aren't I so fancy with my pinky up?

I choked a laugh and a smile, and picked up my own glass to my lips and took a drink. It was dry, but I loved it because it was romantic and I got to drink it with the boy I loved most in the whole world. I could feel the warm knot in my throat forming, and Jack could tell my mind was somewhere else.

He lowered his glass, and said, changing the subject on my behalf, "I remember you saying you wanted to marry me."

I smiled and lowered my head in bashful cuteness. I nodded and said, "Yes, I did."

Jack lifted his eyes in remembrance and then laughed. "I remember on our first date—it was at your house when your parents weren't home one weekend."

I laughed and said without much breath because I was still upset, "I remember."

Jack said, "You said you had been talking to your mother about me. . ." A flattering smile spread over his entire face.

I concurred, unapologetically, "I did." (Meanwhile, the waiter came around to pour us more wine. The music switched to a smooth Norah Jones song, "Come Away With Me"—with rain sounds in the background.)

"Yeah," Jack continued, smiling with nostalgia as my heart wrenched for the boy I was losing with each passing moment I failed to turn the boat around. "I remember you telling me that you were already talking about marriage with your mom, and that your mom offered the idea of us getting married here in Paris, France."

I combed my hair back with my fingers, and felt my face knotting up, because I could no longer smile. Jack lowered his eyes to me, because I was so quiet, and looked at me with the face of a lover who knew not all was well. "What's wrong, my love?"

I merely lowered my eyes for a second, shaking my head because I was unable to find the words. . . until I lifted them back up, and felt like everyone was looking at me in the restaurant. The music had stopped. The heat from other people's cioppino's and spaghetti's froze in midair.

And I confessed:

"I miss you." The knot in my throat slipped. I put my hands on the table as they started trembling and Jack slid his fingers onto mine in a soft action.

"I miss you, too--" he began quietly. . .

Before I shook my head and interrupted-- "You're not going to make it." The tears were swimming over my vision. I couldn't see but I knew everyone was watching me. "You're not going to make it, and it'll be all my fault."

Jack leaned in to place both his hands on mine, and said, "I know."

I closed my eyes, his confirmation was total hell to me, because now all the hope was lost. The tears pushed out of my eyes and ran down my cheeks, and I said, "I'm so sorry, Jack. I'm so, so sorry."

Jack's fingers lightly massaged my hands (his hands were bigger than mine), and he shushed me lovingly, saying in the completely quiet restaurant now, "It's not your fault."

But I disagreed. "It is. It really, really is."

I heard Jack's chair screech across the floor as he leaned forward and touched my face so I would listen to him carefully. "It's not. Your fault."

I opened my eyes again, and his beautiful loving face was too much for my breaking heart and I merely cried again, trying to suppress my emotions but failing miserably. I would lose him. I would lose the boy I loved most in this entire world.

I opened my eyes back up to him and said, "I want to turn the boat around and save you."

But Jack shook his head. "Don't." This simple instruction surprised me.

I stuttered. "W-what?"

Jack bent in and kissed my salty lips. Face-to-face, he said with the warm smell of the wine that together we shared, "Go with the bastards. Don't come back for me. You go home with them. You tell your parents and all our friends everything that happened, how Craig and George deserted me, deserted Travis, and Brett—and they'll get what's coming to them."

But I cried. "No!" I sniffled because the tears had swum onto my nose, and I said, "I don't care if they get what's coming to them. I don't care about revenge. I just want to be with you!"

I could hear some sympathetic sounds from the company around us, and Jack pulled forward to give me another kiss, this one deep, this one truly plunging into the nature of what made first love first love.

Forehead to forehead, he said seriously into my eyes, "That is so sweet of you, my love. But as much as I want to be with you as well--"

I slapped the table with my hand and said angrily-- "I don't just want to be with you! I want to get married to you! Here! In Paris!"

Some more sounds from the crowd shook around the room and Jack tried to kiss me to hush me but I pushed on with all the heartache that was killing me inside-- "I want to live with you! In a house! I want to sleep next to you every night! I want to grow old with you!" And I closed my eyes for the next one that really hurt me most, "I want. . . I want to have babies with you. I want to do everything any two people do together. I want to travel with you. Experience art with you." I cried and he managed to kiss me, before the energy was out of me, and I could only whisper in a coarse voice. . . "I don't want to lose you. . ."

He stood up and circled around the table to embrace me in his soft shirt. I lost myself in his real touch. My head was spinning. The crowd was cooing.

Jack said, through his chest, "You'll never lose me. As long as you keep me in your heart."

(--I heard a strange sound. . . like a brute moan in the distance, behind the windows, across the sea--)

Jack said, "Just go with them, and be safe."

(--I heard the strange sound again. . . it was like a fog horn. It echoed like in a seashell around my ears--)

I said, "But I want to save you. I want to do whatever it takes to get back to you. And save us both."

(--The sound was clear now. . . I opened my eyes out of Jack's chest, and pulled my head from his embrace to look around. . . the whole room was staring, but no one seemed to hear the horn sound like I did. . .)

Jack said, "Do what you must." He didn't seem confident that it was a good idea. "But if you do find a way back to me, and you find that I am dead—because Travis already is, I assure you—promise me that you will go back home. That you will live your life to the fullest. And you will never end your life for a teenage romance--"

(The horn sound in the distance finally boomed enough that the room shook and the crowd of people turned their backs on us to shout, "It's a wave! Another tsunami! To the roof, everyone, to the roof!"

Tables were knocked over as all the people stampeded, and I turned with Jack face-to-face one last time, as the crowd moved around us like a rushing water.

I said to Jack, like a promise, "I know what love is, Jack. I'm coming back for you. And I'll kill anyone who tries to stop me. . ."

Jack looked down at me (he was so much taller), and said, holding my hand, "Do what you must. . . but remember what I said. . . if I am dead. . . go home."

You'renot dead, I wanted to scream. But the horn sound reverberated the whole placelike an Earthquake, and as the people rushed past and I heard the sounds of alifting wave growl, the lights went out in a high-pitched Crack! and the horn sound blasted me awake.