And if I may just take your breath away; I don't mind if there's not much to say; sometimes the silence guides our minds; to move to a place so far away.
—The Neighbourhood, "Sweater Weather"
1
The wind plays with the copper tresses of your hair as you speed down the Pacific's highway with your arms tight around her waist.
Exhilaration courses through your veins like electricity, pulsating under your skin, mixing with your nerves the same way paint mixes with water.
It's been a few weeks since you saved her number, too hypnotized by her luscious eyes to know you had saved it wrong until you received a message from an unknown number.
She had asked to see you. And you'd said yes.
You didn't ask where you were going. You saw her there, waiting for you and leaning against her motorcycle, and you'd accepted the helmet with a timid smile.
It was her eyes and you knew it. Her eyes that were both distant and inviting. The eyes that pierced through your thoughts as if you shared the same mind.
She takes you to a friend's beach house, and you act shy even though you aren't, because everyone here is self-righteous and imposing; too pretty to care. But the way she holds your hand is reassuring, and the way she introduces you by saying your name as though she's been saying it her whole life, even more.
It isn't the house she wants to show you, she says, but what's on the other side of its back door.
The sand feels cold against your bare feet, and the breeze coming from the ocean makes you walk closer to her. It is a slight action—muted by your own hesitation—but she senses your intention and stops you with a cool hand on your forearm.
She gives you her leather jacket; insists that you take it. It is all said with a soft smile, as gentle as her own voice, and you accept it because deep down you know it will smell of her.
You stand side by side right where the ocean kisses the shore while the tide comes and goes, grazing your toes, sinking you further into the sand.
"I'm leaving California soon," she tells you after a while. It is a statement carried away by the wind but you hear it, if only because she is standing inches away from you.
"Why?" You ask.
Her expression darkens. It makes you wonder how there can be so much sadness in a pair of blue eyes so bright you can compare them to the sky.
"I'm not happy," she says, and this, you can understand.
"Happiness isn't always found in a place."
You mean this but you also don't; California feels like home to you. It is where you were raised, where all your dreams were once conceived.
She nods her head distractedly before she looks out at the ocean. The wind plays with her hair, and you can't help the smile that grows across your face. There is longing there in your eyes; you can feel it as blatantly as the coldness of the ocean itself.
"Elsa."
She turns to you with a questioning gaze. But how do you explain the unexplainable—that all you wanted to do was taste her name in your mouth?
So you smile instead, bashful, yet at home with yourself.
"You have a very pretty smile," she murmurs.
A hand goes to the back of your neck and you close your eyes in anticipation.
Your heart is suddenly going wild inside your chest; making a mess out of you; fumbling with the little remains of clarity you once had.
The sensation of her lips against yours makes you feel as though you've never been kissed before. It is the barest of touches; a phantom of a kiss that makes you reach out for her and hold onto the sleeves of her sweater.
She holds onto you for a few seconds, allowing you to revel in the taste of her lips before she gently pulls away, taking your breath along with her.
Your heart swells at the sight of her before it shrinks, realizing that this will be over before it ever had the chance to begin.
2
It's been almost three years. Things have changed; you have changed—if only a little; and the truth is that you never expected to see her again.
But expecting and hoping were two different things and you knew that. You knew, deep down and amongst the confines of your own subconscious, that you always hoped you'd see her again. Just not like this.
You've been dating Julia for a year now. You met her at a bar you tended to frequent with your friends, and she had been there; a brunette older than you for two years.
She was taller as well, and she wore a jacket that reminded you of someone you were still trying to forget. She had a thing for vintage glasses, and liked people to call her Jules.
"Like Jules Verne," you'd joked; tipsy enough to flirt. She had laughed out loud and that is the moment you think she began to like you. "Yes," she'd purred. "Just like Jules Verne."
The rest is history, you would tell your friends, but when they ask if you love her you change the subject. You care for her, you really do. She makes you laugh a lot, and the conversations you tend to have naked in bed always feel like a breath of fresh air. Jules is incredibly smart, and she knows how to cheer you up when you're feeling blue.
But love is not what you feel. Not the way you always imagined it would be.
You don't know why. All you know is that it can't ever be fair. And today, of all days, you know that stability for the two of you can no longer be enough.
You're attending the opening of an exhibition at the gallery you work at. It is a simple event—you've done this what feels like hundreds of times before: a myriad of people come. Some pretend to know the artist, some pretend they know all about modern art. But most, you've noticed, are only here because it makes them feel important.
She arrives when you least expect it, because you are deep into a discussion of the artist's experimental spirit with your girlfriend and your boss.
You see her luscious, blonde hair amidst the dullness of everyone else's, and you crane your neck to see better. It can't be, you say it like a mantra; for your own sake; for the sake of the girl standing next to you. But when your eyes meet hers your heart stops.
She steals your breath just like the last time you saw her.
Like a magnet, you feel drawn to her, so you excuse yourself. The hand that is holding your flute of champagne is shaking. Your legs are wobbly. After all these years, it just can't be.
But she is there, staring at the painting of the curves of a woman concealed in the dunes of a desert, and you see her looking at it for a few seconds before she turns to you. In her eyes you see something akin to the flickering of a light; a realization.
It is when she finally smiles that you know nothing has changed.
"Hi," she says, stepping closer to you.
"Elsa."
"That is my name, yes," she teases lightly.
You wonder what to ask, because it has been so long, and you are practically strangers to each other.
"What are you doing here?"
"I was in the city. I figured I could pay a visit... It was a long shot but I figured it was worth trying."
You feel like swooning, but you have to stop yourself from hugging her; from telling her just how much you've thought of her all this time, and just how unfair all of this is, because today, you just can't.
Julia comes to join you, placing a hand on your lower back as you see Elsa's smile waver for a second. You admire her poise, her undeterred gracefulness.
You introduce them to each other. You call Julia your girlfriend and Elsa smiles broadly as she shakes her hand. Elsa, turns out, has come from New York. She is a friend you hadn't seen in some time, you tell Jules, but tonight you know you will have to tell her the truth.
"I should get going," she smiles at the two of you.
You want to ask her to stay but you don't. What would be the point?
You don't stop yourself from hugging her this time no matter how much you struggle to keep your tears at bay. This longing... this ache in your heart is not something you expected, but then again, you really didn't expect to see her again.
"I'm sorry," you whisper in her ear.
Her nose rests on the crook of your neck for a second as you feel her arms tighten around your waist before she is gone.
3
You find yourself falling for New York in an instant. Like love at first sight.
You had once flown over its skyscrapers, so excited by the sight of them—like a view you'd only ever seen in dreams—that you had squeezed Julia's hand a bit tighter.
She had given you a lovely smile, despite the anxiousness of you meeting her parents, before kissing your lips thirty five thousand feet above the ground.
She got your excitement, she'd told you; the city tended to have that effect on people.
But all of that had been over a year ago, or something near that time. Back when Julia was still in your life; when you thought comfort was the closest thing to love, and you no longer saw a pair of piercing blue eyes when you closed your own.
She had let you go some weeks after you'd seen Elsa again. After you had done what you could to make it work.
Julia had been sweet, understanding to the point where you'd nearly stayed. "Us of all people should know we don't choose who we fall in love with," she'd said, and you had kissed her anyway; as a goodbye—because she had been so good to you, and because she deserved many more sweet kisses than the ones you had left.
You've come to New York by yourself because you think solitude can be cathartic when you're the type of person who's used to being surrounded by lots of people, while you suppress the hope that keeps flourishing in your heart every time you think of fate.
It is a belated celebration of your own birthday you tell yourself, as well as the nice lady sitting next to you on the plane.
She has hair that is the color of red unlike your own—made up in a salon, and she covers her mouth with her hand every time she smiles. Later—when you say something particularly silly and she laughs without notice—you'll realize it is because she has a chipped tooth.
You talk for almost the entirety of the flight over Biscoffs and watery, airline coffee. She tells you all about her past: about being married to an abusive man for twenty years, and about how breaking loose was an option she never thought she had. She tells you about her son, who lives in New York and whom she has not seen in five years. She talks about him with barely contained affection and you hope, deep in your heart, that he will give her the welcoming she deserves.
It gives you faith somehow, that not always is everything lost.
You tell her all about your present: about being a museum curator at LACMA, and about your dreams of traveling around the world to see the greatest pieces of art humanity has ever created. You give her very scarce details about your love life, but you tell her everything about Elsa—the very little you can tell at all—, and when you finally land in JFK and you've exchanged emails, she takes your hand before squeezing it with vehement reassurance.
"You'll find her again," she tells you and this, you decide, you will hold onto.
You've turned twenty-six this year which doesn't really make you any wiser. You still think magic exists, somewhere, hidden in plain sight; and you still think that all people can be good at heart if only the world would let them. What you don't believe is in coincidences and even less so, in accidents. This is what you keep hearing in your mind as you check into your hotel; as you glance at the billboards in Times Square; as you walk with distracted steps through the Met.
You don't believe in coincidences, but you also don't know what you're really doing in New York.
It makes you wonder how a city so beautiful can be so chaotic, and how it can swarm with people, yet make you feel so lonely.
You go to a bar in Hell's Kitchen and you order the craziest sounding cocktail on the menu—Aim to Misbehave, it reads—and you sit, waiting... letting life pass you by.
You look at the pictures hanging from the wall to your right. They're all in black and white, but it isn't this that captures your attention. It is the landscape: they're all taken from a highway by the ocean—suspiciously similar to a view you once had almost five years ago. A remembrance of your own memory.
The bartender tells you those pictures have been hanging in there for some years but he knows nothing else of them. When you ask to take a closer look he hands one over to you; protesting when you take the photo off the frame.
There is a watermark on the back, and this watermark makes your breath catch in your throat.
.
You find yourself standing outside of a studio the day after sleeping nothing but fragments of a whole night.
Unassuming, spacious; a photographer's workplace whose subject exists nowhere inside.
You walk in with tentative steps and are received by no one, so you try again, going farther into the studio than you probably should until the door opens behind you.
There are no coincidences, and there are no accidents; you know exactly why you've come to New York.
The reason is standing right in front of you.
"Elsa," you whisper, and she tilts her head, smiling at you.
"I'm glad you still remember my name," she teases, and these words pierce through your heart like no other declaration of love. Because these words are hers; these words give you hope.
"I could never..."
She steps closer to you while your hands quiver as much as the air that escapes your lungs.
"Forget?" She asks but all you can do is nod, because this right here is what you imagined it would always be like—this is the grand welcoming you hoped for yourself, the moment you'd pictured all these years in dreams you wouldn't be able to forget after waking up.
It is the back of your neck what Elsa goes to touch first; a gentle hold, warm and sweet—the tips of her fingers play with the thin tresses of your hair, and you smile because this is what's familiar.
"Can I?" She asks you, but you don't feel the need to respond with words.
You reach for her lips with your own, just like she did the first time you kissed.