It was my family’s annual Thanksgiving dinner, and the table was set and decorated. The house smelled of all the foods we were going to eat later that evening, as I stood in my room and put on my red dress. I sat next to my boyfriend during dinner. I glued a smile to my face that didn’t reach my eyes while my skin felt like a layer of plastic I was wrapped up in. Mentally I had receded into the fog that clouded my mind. When I heard a voice asking me something. My heart stopped for a split second, and with a gust of wind, the fog I was hiding in was blown away with fresh air. I was back in my seat at the Thanksgiving table. The music was louder, the colors brighter and my mind clearer when I looked over and looked into Ben’s eyes.
We got lost in conversation for hours. Our eyes never broke contact, and it felt like I could see into him. I saw a true soul in him, one I felt connected to, one I had a deep understanding for. Hours later my boyfriend came to give me a routine peck before he went to bed. Ben looked away and ran his hands through his hair which fell back into his face as he began rambling about his girlfriend. He hurried for the door. I rushed after him out into the winter’s cold without bothering to put my heels back on. I found him down the street smoking a cigarette looking up at the dark sky. “What’s going on, Ben?” I said crossing my arms from the cold. He turned around and rushed towards me throwing his jacket over my shoulders. “What are we doing?” he asked me instead. “It’s like 2 a.m. and I think we just got a little bit lost in conversation,” I said. He shook his head and stared at me while he exhaled the pull of his cigarette. “Tell me I’m imagining all this,” he whispered as he took a step towards me. I didn’t dare to look up into his eyes, since I knew that the sparks of joy and the pull of my heart would be too much to handle. “We can’t do this.”, I whispered with the little amount of air I still had in my lungs. The butterflies were up to my chest, and I was trying to contain the feeling. I stood looking up at him with my bare feet on the freezing pavement when he whispered my name, grabbed my head between his hands, and kissed me. I melted into him and into the kiss. I felt the waves of energy rush through my entire body. He whispered the sweetest words of affection that tickled my heart. I was in awe of the magic between us that had brought me back to life. My heart was open to him and I clung to him to keep me alive and the fog away. As I lay down next to my boyfriend at 8 a.m., I was filled with euphoria. The next evening Ben and I went for a walk that lasted three hours and felt like 15 minutes. It was snowing as we walked through the pitch-black forest. In the privacy of the woods, we shared cigarettes as we agreed that this couldn’t go on. But despite all the reasoning, he leaned in and kissed me again. We later jumped the fence of the ice-skating rink and tumbled across the ice field as I held my stomach with laughter. Afterward, we found an unlocked door behind which we could hide from the cold. We sat on the floor, drinking wine and spilling into each other the entire night.
He kissed me so frantically as if it was the best thing to happen to him. He held my hand with an assuring grasp as if to make a promise. I believed in soulmates because of him. We fell deeply in love and our story unfolded to an unbelievable crescendo. He found me just in time. And despite the wreckage that our story ended in, he is the rightest thing that ever happened to me.
© Ruby M 2023-09-04