They all ask me the same question: “Are you guys over?”
I don’t answer.
I’m so busy thinking about how excited I was to move in together that I ordered a custom return address stamp with our names intertwined, and our address underneath. It probably stamped 23, maybe 27, or 29 pieces of mail before it ran out of ink, but it marks the spot that was ours.
I think about how maybe one day, in a hundred years, one of our friends’ great-grandchildren will unearth a letter I wrote, tucked away in a shoebox or in an attic somewhere. I imagine them tracing over our names with their finger just like I did when I stamped the envelope. “We were HERE!” I want to scream, “and WE WERE IN LOVE.”
But I don’t scream. In fact, I hardly speak these days, unless I’m spoken to.
“What happened?” they ask.
But I’m too busy thinking about the couple hundred square feet that we turned into other galaxies and planets together, talking into the deepest hours of the morning, high on just each other’s breath.
The promises we made, and all of the plans.
Oh, the plans we made together, were always the best at 4:30 am.
The boy names and girl names for our children.
The trip to Africa next year, maybe Indonesia too.
The diamond ring you’d picked out just for me that you secretly showed me when you were tipsy on mimosas one morning. It was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen.
“So are you guys still friends?” they question. They poke and they prod, but I still remain silent.
Because I’m in the living room forts with endless bottles of champagne that turned into long afternoons with long kisses and lingering glances.
I’m busy thinking about the bone structure of our bed, the spine we forged together that Sunday afternoon when we moved in, and the safe haven it became from the scary places our minds would sometimes wander.
I’m fast asleep and dreaming, tangled up in you and wearing your favorite t-shirt.
I’m still tracing your birthmark and showing you mine.
I’m dancing in the kitchen to the records you loved, and you’re right there holding me, spinning me, tickling me deep between my ribs until my head is thrown back in equal parts hysteria and laughter, begging you to stop but also hoping that you never will.
“Do you still love him?” they ask, and I am finally jolted into the present moment.
I look around, like a just-born deer, wobbly on its long limbs, and just awakening to the world. The version of the world where all of the past things don’t matter anymore because it doesn’t matter if I’m in love with you if you aren’t in love with me too. The new world. The one without you in it.
“Yes,” I say, answering all of their questions and none at the same time.
“Yes.”
There are no words. . . just warm vibes of love floating to you through the heart waves. . .