We sat together and yet respectfully apart, her hands on her purse, my left arm draped across the back of the booth and my right on the table, close to hers and aching to feel the warmth of her yet hesitant to move forward. It could have taken only one shot, one reach across the table towards her hands to show her what she meant to me, or to put it simply what she had done. She was responsible for the state I was in but she seemed to be trying her best to walk away without actually standing and walking away, just as I was trying my damndest to get closer to her without physically moving. It is what they call a Mexican standoff, where two parties find themselves in a state of equilibrium and neither is able to gain the upper hand over the other. I was no stranger to the experience and I would not allow myself to be defeated, though, strangely enough, I did not want to defeat. It would take some form of cunning to navigate this field.
“Do you have to leave? It’s been… I can’t explain it, I can’t. It’s been years of wondering who she would be, when I would meet her, what she would be wearing, if she would be older, or younger, and what her words would say when I finally found her, the person who I was meant to spend a life with. The woman whose heart would rest on mine and whose lips would reach for me in the dead of night beneath warm blankets. I will not admit that I have found her but I will simply ask that you stay and allow me one more dance.”
I thought I saw her react but her gaze was steadfast and her hands did not shift, nor her resolve waver.
“No,” she told me. A bullet whizzed past my ear. “I can’t stay here,” and a crippling shot in the leg. I was now limping.
She wasn’t smiling and that frown was not unlike a dagger twisted into my ribs, hurtful as it was. I would have mentally accused her of being a bitch and wanting nothing more than to string me along so that she could just walk away and leave me a pitiful sight to all eyes, so pitiful that there would be no ambulatory aid to raise me from this booth; but, I could not come to that conclusion. It seemed she was trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince me.
“Why?”
“You’ve been… wonderful, but I can’t. I need to leave. I never should’ve even come out, I don’t know. Please…” and she stands! A grenade had been lobbed and I had no choice but to dash for cover and hold on for dear life.
“This can’t be it. We had a great time, didn’t we? This can’t be it.”
“This is it for us. I hope you find the woman you’ve always wondered about, but it isn’t me. Now, let go of my hand,” she told me, but I did not do so immediately. I was filled with thoughts of holding on, and bringing her back to me by force if necessary. They were the thoughts that occasionally although inevitably appear as strategies for success are considered, but I was not one to fight a dirty war, and so I let go, and meekly sat back, raising my lower lip in defeat and watching as she stood, her hips wonderfully shaped in the strapless dress, its pattern barely recognizable beneath the gaudy lights of the club debauchery. The chestnut locks of her shimmering hair fell across her face as she picked up her purse from the table and in that moment I thought I detected hesitation, a thought which quickly dissipated when her face and faint smile came into view.
“Thank you,” she said, and then fired what would be the final bullet. She walked, not toward the main entrance but toward the side door directly across from the booth where she and I had briefly been the greatest of unions. The dance floor seemed to part for her; or, perhaps, the revelers did so on my account, allowing full view of the beauty whose killer form and deadly eyes waged a decisive battle where the enemy fought bravely and died dishonorably at the feet of an adversary far greater and more admirable than the armies of all the nations on this Earth.