05

I'm thinking of ending things..

Once the thought arrives. It sticks, lingers, it dominates. 

There isn't much I can do about it, trust me. but it doesn't go away.

Laurence once said "sometimes a thought is closer to the truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can't fake a thought." 

You can't fake a thought.

And here is what I'm thinking: 

I don't want to be here. 

It worries me. It really does. Maybe I should have known how it was going to end for us. Maybe the end was written right from the beginning. 

When did it start? What if this thought wasn't conceived by me but planted in my mind... 

Predeveloped? 

Is an unspoken idea unorignial? Maybe I actually known all along. Maybe this is how it was always going to end. 

The road outside of the bar is mostly empty. It's quiet around here. Vacant. More so than anticipated. So much to see but not many people, not many buildings or houses. Sky trees. Fields. fences. The road and it's gravel shoulders. 

People inside the place I was in, seemed happy to be there, but we couldn't exactly tell if they were happy on the inside, could we? 

It feels like I've known Rupert longer than I have. What has it been? a couple weeks? Six weeks? Maybe Seven? I should know exactly. I get that. I'll say seven weeks. We have a difficult connection, a rare and intense connection, and I've never experienced anything like it with a person I had just met. 

I turn in my seat to face Rupert who was still standing behind the bar, often serving others. 

Grabbing my left leg and bringing it up under me like a cushion I had asked. "is it normally this quiet around here?" 

He seemed distant. Like he was in a trance or something. It's hard to explain what I'm seeing, but I have a feeling that he isn't fully there. 

"Sorry, what?" He had asked me, as he turned around from what he was doing and started to talk to me. 

I took a sip of my vodka. 

"oh- well, like I said earlier. Game days, can get pretty bad." He had said as he saw me just sitting there awkwardly with my dress half up my leg from the position I was in.  

A couple of his workers had walked by and winked at the two of us, making me confused I turned my head back to look at Rupert. 

"What did you tell them?" 

"That I met a pretty girl who drinks too much Vodka." 

"You don't know who I am." I say. 

He thinks I'm joking. But I'm not. Emma and Rupert really don't know who I am. What I could be capable of, and how I handle things. Emma, she must think I'm someone who needs watching over or something because as far as I have tried tonight, Rupert wouldn't even let me go talk to a gentlemen who tried to call me over momentarily before this conversation. They don't know anything, and I don't know if they ever would want to know about me, or my past. 

Rupert looks like he's going to speak but changes his mind. HE reaches out and turns the radio up. Just a bit. The only music we could find after scanning through several times was a country station. The old stuff. I watched with admiration as he nods with the track, humming along softly. 

"I never heard you hum before," I say. "That's a quality hum you have." 

I Don't think my parent's will ever know that I have moved in with Emma and Rupert. It's not like I could tell them anyways. Not like I could tell them. Not now, not even retroactively. As people kept coming in and out of the bar, either with someone they met or a friend they had come with, it makes me think I'm a bad person. I feel selfish, self-centered. I should tell Rupert what I am thinking. It's just very hard to talk about. Once I bring up these doubts, I can't go back. 

I've more or less decided. I'm pretty sure I'm going to end it. The night. That takes off the pressure of things even going further, something that I don't know if I'm ready for. But now, I also feel guilty. I mean, I have been sleeping inside of their loft, paying the rent, and half the time just taking up their whole couch lounging around doing nothing but cry and watch disney movies, shoving my face in nothing but bucket full of ice cream. 

Rupert was standing in front of me, often talking to strangers that came in to serve them their drink. 

He is here in front of me. What's he thinking about? He doesn't have a clue. It's not going to be easy, and I don't want to hurt him. But again... I should just stay right? and enjoy the night out? Right? 

Right. 

I'm thinking of- 

"Excuse me miss, is this seat taken?" Someone had asked Clarissa, as she was lost in thought. She didn't hear him right away, so the male had asked again. 

"Excuse me, may I sit here?" He had said as he tapped Clarissa on the shoulder.

That got her attention.

Turning her body towards the male, she gave him a smile. "Oh no, it's free." She had said as she looked back into her cup of vodka and sipped on it some more. 

How do we know when something is menacing? What cues us that something is not innocent? Instinct always trumps reason. At night, when I wake up alone, the memory still terrifies me. It scares me more the older I get. Each time I remember it, it seems worse, more sinister. Maybe each time I remember it, I make it worse than it was. I don't know. 

And then, the man waved. I wasn't expecting it. I honestly don't know if it was definitely a wave of movement of his hand. Maybe it was just a wavelike Gesture. To me, the wave changed everything. It had an effect of malice, as if he were suggesting I could never be completely on my own, that he would be around, that he would be back. I suddenly was afraid. The thing is, that feeling is just as real to me now as it was then. The visuals are just as real. 

Clarissa was glaring at Rupert. She didn't like the fact that he was basically there, every time a man had come to sit next to her. She could take care of herself just as fine, or at least she thought she could. "Look, just do you're job. I'll be fine. You and Emma wanted me to get out of the house anyways right?" 

Rupert mumbled something unintelligent to Clarissa's ears, she turned back to the man that was sitting next to her and smiled a little, not exactly caring how Rupert felt about it. "Sorry about him, he's my roomate, keeping an eye out for me." She had explained as she saw the confusion on the man's face. She tried to make a conversation with him. 

"Hey, do you think secrets are inherently unfair, or bad or immoral in a relationship?" Clarissa had asked the man after he got his drink passed down to him from Rupert. 

He was caught off guard. The man looked at Clarissa then back at his drink to taste it. 

"I don't know. It would depend on the secret. Is it significant? Is there more than one secret? How many are there? and what is being hidden? All relationships have secrets, though, don't you think? Even in lifelong relationships, and fifty-year marriages, there are secrets." The mysterious man had spoke, to her.

On the fifth morning we had breakfast together Is topped trying to start up a discussion. I didn't make any jokes. I sat. I ate cereal. Laurence's brand. I looked around the room. I watched him. I observed. I thought: This is good. This is how we really get to know each other.  

I remembered he was reading a magazine. there was a faint white film or residue under his bottom lip, concentrated in the corners of his mouth, in the valley where the top and bottom lips meet. This happened most mornings, this white lip film. After he showered it was normally gone. Toothpaste. I was glad for it. And this man here who sat beside me at the bar, could totally use some too. 

Clarissa had hated to dwell on things. They're unimportant and banal, but now's the time to think about them before the night continues on. She surely thought this made her crazy. 

"Do you think your parent's have secrets?" She asked. 

"Absolutely, I'm sure they do. They'd have too." He had said making Clarissa think more about secrets. 

The weirdest part-- and it's some pretty unalloyed irony, as Laurence would say-- is that I can't say anything to him about my doubts. They have everything to do with him, and he's the one person I wasn't even comfortable talking to about them. I won't say anything until I'm sure it's over. I can't. What I'm questioning involves both of us. Rupert and I. I wanted to leave, but again I couldn't. Why?

What does that say about relationships? 

"Why all the questions about secrets?" The male had asked Clarissa that night in the bar. She couldn't be so sure herself, but she knew she would have to answer his question one day. 

"No reason.." She said. "Just thinking." 

She couldn't remember how she had gotten home that night.