Anyone can see that she has only tried her best, tried her best to reconcile me with him. She has tried her best to put me down, but I'm more like an unfinished book than an empty wine glass. She has to keep picking me back up, because she needs to know what happens, needs to know the ending, even though she knows it's probably going to break her heart. And like that dog-eared unfinished book, I'm always ready and patiently waiting for her to return to me.
But we are not an unfinished story. We both know the ending. We've both read this book before. We both know that the repetition ends in failure, even though it meant we'd start over. We both know that she goes back to him, and that I let her, because I know she'll be back.
It would be cliché to call it a vicious cycle. Besides, it isn't vicious, even if it hurts us both every time. I much prefer to say that we are like a much-worn, much-loved novel. We are the bittersweet story that we loved so much the first time that we read it again and again, till we knew it word for word, till we knew exactly when to laugh and smile and cry and throw the book across the room in anger and sadness. We are the story that keeps bringing you back, wishing this time for a less sad, less bitter ending, even though you know it'll never change- that it can't change, because it is very nearly literally set in stone.
We are long distance phone calls and matching rings and sudden visits even if it means long flights. We are sneaky glances and proudly held hands and ecstatic hugs and laughter. We are touchy-feely drunks and stolen kisses in private. We are sad words and even sadder goodbyes and tears shed in the darkness of an empty apartment. We are knowing looks and polite exchanges and carefully measured touches. We are permanent and temporary and constant and fallible. We are confused and sure about each other and never the same as yesterday and always the same as tomorrow.
She is laughter and smiles and the color yellow and I am shy glances and awkward fingertips and Death Cab for Cutie songs.
He is the smell of aftershave and fumbling hands and public appearances and loud chuckles.
I do not necessarily mind when she goes back to him, because I know she will soon be back in my arms. That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, but it's just what has to happen. This story has been written and read and re-read so many times I could recite it in my sleep. Of course it hurts to see his heavy hands where my soft ones have been before him, but it is how it goes.
Maybe it is unhealthy. Maybe I should let her go, let them be happy. Maybe she should let me stay angry with her. Maybe this shouldn't be 'the way it is'. Maybe I shouldn't be content with not having her to myself.
But that is not what we are. It isn't who I am. It isn't who she is. And it isn't going to change anytime soon.
I know that when my phone rings tonight it will be her. And she knows that I will breathe words of comfort and reassurance and secret love into the phone. We both know that two days from now pictures of us out shopping together will be on all the gossip websites, and that we will sip wine together in my apartment, and shed our clothes and stumble clumsily to my bedroom.
But I know that she will still be there in the morning, and that I will fix us coffee and we will watch the morning news together. I know that she will eat her favorite cereal and I will laugh at her childish desire for Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I know that we will not bother to get dressed, because we will spend the day in breathy gasps and trembling fingers and whispered 'I love you's and synchronized racing heartbeats. I know that she will fall asleep first and that I will lie awake tracing my fingertips across her ribs like words across a page. I know that she will sigh in her sleep and that my heart will skip a beat and I will wish I could keep her forever.
But I have to give her back, and we will part with an almost exact, rehearsed script, and we will nod, and wait until the other is gone to cry.
And we will wait, wait until we once again pick up that dog-eared, wrinkled bittersweet book.
And damn, if it isn't my favorite.