The one where life goes on and someone forgot to tell us

We are sitting in the middle of the floor, in folding chairs in the middle of a row of people whose faces I never even noticed. It is dark, except for the stage, lit up with single harsh lavender bulbs here and there to show her at the piano. She is singing, her background singer just behind her, and she is hitting every single solitary high note. Not pitchy at all, before we knew what pitchy was. You are holding my hand and I stop occasionally to look down and make sure they are still there, our hands. When the music is especially good, you look at me to see if I’m looking at you, and I am.

It feels good to be on our own this night, out on the town, freedom being a newly-won privilege. I drove, you rode. We knew what to listen to and we loved riding with the sunroof open, driving too fast on the highway between the mountains. They came with us, too – part of the deal – and we don’t mind, for they can entertain themselves without noticing the electricity we have. It is palpable and we can hardly contain ourselves, set to set, during the intermission, during the drive home. Sometimes it is hard not to smile when we say goodnight to each other, because we know it won’t be too long before we say hello again. Minutes, even.

You recall that night years later and you smile a little, as if that place was long ago and far away. It was. No one likes to admit that though, least of all me. For a while we hung in suspension, no safety net, no tethers holding us together. Just two people, drawn together in one time and space by what? Fire? Lust? Hormones? All of the above, we say. We look like shadows of ourselves when we talk about those days. I change, you don’t. You move on quickly, I don’t. A soundtrack of those days plays in our heads over and over, and we don’t even have to conjure up images or sounds – they are just there. The people are gone, moved on, moved forward, left us. Our lives have done the same, but one of us tries mightily to hold on longer than the other. Funny, because it is opposite of all those years ago – one of us pulling away, the other holding on tightly.

Then a game, just like all the other games. The same players, but different in a way this time, because you don’t make a bet. You don’t place a gamble like always – you let the days and weeks slide by, likely hoping that I will forget. But I don’t forget. One of my worst faults, you said, always remembering things that should be forgotten. I have tried, very hard, to forget the things that should be forgotten, and to remember the things that are important, but the mind works in ways we tell it not to. My mind, anyway. I don’t know about yours anymore.

We are both happy, if forgetful. We are both hanging in new suspension now, after years and love past, and while we are burned into each other’s memory, we are somehow not there at all. It is just as well, because our friends tell us that life goes on and that we shouldn’t look back – the road behind us always looks different from this angle.

But tonight, when I hear her singing just as she did that good night, I think of your face, young and unlined and hopeful, and I wonder what happened to the girl I knew then. That girl had dreams and hopes and plans, and now – tonight – I ask that girl if she is what she thought she would be. She is not, she answers, but she is not sorry. The road ahead looks different from this angle, too.

And amongst the cliches and weepy sad stories is one bottom line: we had a good night, we had a few good years, and then life went on. She sang about it; seems like we should have known.