Jordan's POV:
I laugh at myself as I drive home from work. It's the new year. I don't feel any different, I don't feel any better. While all these people are driving home at 4 in the morning from great parties, simple get-togethers, or intimate gatherings, my night was spent differently.
I'm driving home. From the morgue. On new year's morning. I didn't count down the minutes, the seconds, or watch the ball drop. I didn't kiss someone special when the clock stroke twelve. Instead, I was in my office catching up on paperwork. I missed the turn of the calendar, but not for the first year.
I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone
It's true; that the only road I've walked is a lonely one. A couple of times I had thought that my life would take me down a side street and lead me into someone's arms. But those times have passed. Twice. Twice I have fallen in love. Once, I was too late to do anything and he moved away, three years ago. The tall, blue-eyed man that I thought, for a fleeting second, I would spend the rest of my life with, regressed back to the Midwest. Minnesota, exactly seven states from Boston.
I fell hard, when I finally did, but it was too late. His new job in St. Paul already proved perfect for him, slower paced, more in-depth, and closer to the lifestyle that he had grown up with. He wouldn't return to Boston without a return trip ticket, and after a few months he had started dating his future fiancé. The invitation came in the mail last week. I threw it away and erased his phone number out of my phone book. Apparently broken dreams make for a place in the H section of one's social life.
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone
The second time I fell in love proved a different story. Woodrow had been in Minnesota for about a year when I finally let Lily set me up with a guy that she knew. A doctor. Tall, blond, and brown eyes. Outspoken, quiet, and willing to wait forever. Exactly opposite of the one I was just getting over. I didn't take me as long to fall this time, it was gradual. We had been seeing each other for a couple of months, on and off, very casually, when I made my first mistake. I admitted to him, one night after a couple of drinks had made my tongue loose, that I had only been in love once, with Woody. I didn't think that anything would come of it, and for a while it didn't.
I walk alone
I walk alone
But when Woody had to fly back to Boston 20 months after he had left, my mistake was obvious. Some new evidence had been found on a case that had gone cold more than three years before. So Woody was requested toreturn for a few days to testify. I wasn't working on the case when Woody was here, so I had no reason to know that he would be coming back. I had no reason to care, Jason and I were in love, and though I hadn't told it to him directly, I was already thinking about wedding rings, dreaming of a life with him. On that fateful night, when the two men of my life met at the bar I had inherited, all hell broke loose.
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Until then I walk alone
I was behind the bar, making drinks, when Jason came in after his shift. I greeted him with a quick kiss over the counter and went to get him a beer.
He shook his head no, smiled, and said over the noise in the bar, "No thanks, I'm actually pretty beat tonight, I just wanted to let you know I'm just heading to my apartment." I nodded my consent and told him that I would see him the next day.
I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone
An hour later, a face that had only showed itself in my dreams, memories, and a few treasured pictures, reentered into my bar, my life.
"Woody!" I exclaimed and ran out from behind the counter to greet him with a hug.
"Jordan, I was hoping to catch a glimpse of you while I was back." He hugged me back, and catching his scent for the first time in a year and a half brought back wonderful memories.
I asked him to stay, it was almost closing time, and he earnestly obliged. He waited while I wiped down the tables and counted the till. I poured a glass of beer for me and went to join him at the booth in the back.
We talked for a while, about silly, unimportant things, not asking about the known relationships that the other was in. He knew I was seeing a guy, and I knew he was serious about his long-term girlfriend. I hoped that for one night it could be like it always should have been.
He dropped a few coins into the jukebox, and put out his hand, not vocalizing his request. I smiled, and the 20 months of separation vanished with the space between us. He held me, and we swayed, not needing to say anything. My head rested on his shoulder, and I took a deep breath of his scent that I had missed for so long. When the song was over, I looked up to a pair of eyes that I still yearn for today. He leaned down, to kiss me and I closed my eyes.
It wasn't a kiss of passion, and I'm glad he didn't make it one because I wouldn't have been able to help myself. But it was a long, soft kiss. The goodbye kiss that I didn't get the first time he had left. It was a kiss of closure.
"Jordan." It wasn't from Woody. I turned out of his arms, to look straight at Jason, who apparently was surprising me at closing like he did once in a while. He turned to leave, hurt evident in his eyes.
"Wait, Jason! Wait! This is not what it looks like!" I ran out into the cold, and instantly covered my arms and started to shiver, I followed him to his car and stood, begging him not to leave. "This is Woody, an old friend, it wasn't like that kind of kiss…it was…" But I couldn't explain it.
"So that's the man you were in love with?" he demanded, "Or are you still in love with him?"
I looked down at my feet to come up with an answer that would fix this without having to regress to lying. Woody's car started a few parking spaces down and I watched it drive away. When I looked up, a pair of brown eyes looked into mine and it was known.
"Okay, where do I fit into this? Where do we fit into this?" He was still mad, and starting to yell louder and louder. Tears leaked from my eyes as I stood speechless once again.
"Its fine, you know," his voice cracked, "Sometimes love is just open-ended. It doesn't end. Even when it should have or you want it to. I won't be able to get over you soon either." And with that he left, driving off before I could break down and cry in the falling snow.
Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone
Sometimes I know it was for the best, but I wish that it had been more civilized. I wish I had told Jason that I wanted to try to fix it. I wish I had called him that night, and the next, and the next. So many times I had typed it into my cell phone, only to find myself hitting end instead of send. So many times I had cursed Woody for showing up, for asking me to dance. So many times I wished that I didn't ask Woody to stay while I closed. But I never called him. I saw Jason a couple of times, at a club we used to go to together, and once at a movie theater. Him, with a girlfriend, me alone. It was a year later. But I was still getting over him. He was right, love is open-ended.
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone
Twice, I have been in love twice. Neither time the man knew. They still don't know. So as I pull into my parking space, listening to the end of a song that mirrors my so-called-life, I vow that this year will be different. My resolution this year will be to tell everyone just how much I appreciate them. How much I love them, if that should happen again.
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone...
