Saturday Night

Around 8:30, she started to feel a certain pounding in her heart. And a wave of some emotion she couldn't put a handle on swept over her. But he noticed. He saw it instantly when she leaned back in the chair, eyes shut, and lifted her face toward the ceiling for just a fraction of a moment.

"What's wrong? Why are you sad?"

"I don't know." And, truthfully, she didn't.

So, she ignored her pounding heart, and the ache, the yearning that tinged everything a darker shade, the way their television has always been too dark, the way you can't see some of the details that are there in the dark corners, in the dark frames.

Watching the movie, sitting next to him, she decided to not feel sorry or scared for herself. It was a scary movie, a thriller, a psychological thriller and visually graphic, grippingly tense. She normally didn't sit next to him while they watched DVDs anyway. She normally sat in her chair, he sat on his couch, because his couch was front and center of the television, of the surround sound speaker system, and though, they could both lounge comfortably on her chaise lounge, he preferred to sit, front and center on the loveseat, his couch. And if she wanted to join him, well, ok, but he wasn't completely at ease and neither was she... they both sat up on the loveseat that was his couch. Paradoxically, very little loving ever happened on that loveseat.

There were times she had leaned into him, but he would move his right arm out of the way with a trace of impatience, the fraction of the thought, "Now what does she want?" briefly apparent in his body language and his facial expression. And then, he would set his arm over her shoulder, not to embrace her, but to figure out how he could get comfortable with the inconvenience of her in his arms. Then she would lean away sideways, and lay her legs over his. The blanket over her legs was even more of an imposition on him. He didn't want to be covered, he wasn't cold, so he put up with it for a while, but would shift and move the blanket away, and then notice what he was doing, and put it back, with a sigh.

Yeah, it was better, especially since she was feeling a little tender - to just sit up.

When the movies were over (they had watched two, along with some of the extra features), and the guests had left, he asked, "Do you want to go back to your chair?" It was because of the guests that she had sat with him. So the guests would have a place to sit. And now, he wanted to get comfortable. To finally relax.

And she did go back to her chair as they watched the second movie's director commentary. It really didn't matter anymore. She no longer needed soothing comfort and she had really gotten over everything. Because the strange feeling, the pounding heart had stopped sometime between 12:30 and 1 am.

She had been watching the movies, but a part of her was front and center of the strange sensation through her body and thoughts going through her head, her very own private surround sound theater of imagination happening.

Was it because of the decision to not feel sorry for herself? Was it because she herself created the ache and the yearning? All she had wanted was for someone to hold her hand, or stroke her leg, comfortingly soothing her through the intense drama of the movie. You know, like any girl would. But, no, the feelings had started even before the movies had started. So, while a reasonable explanation, and a more practical, realistic one at that, it wasn't it.

Here's the part that she really remembered. There was a time during those four or five hours, when she distinctly felt someone else thinking of her. Someone miles away. He could have been on the other side of the world, but she felt him. And she heard, literally heard, a song playing. Every word, every musical note, every part of it. As if a radio was playing somewhere else in the house. That was what had occurred to her in the first wave, that someone was thinking of her. Someone she knew, someone she couldn't have. And, it had gotten stronger with the song, and it made perfect sense, and she didn't doubt for one minute the truth of that thought: He was thinking of her.

He was reading her letters or rereading them, or thinking of them in his head. Listening to the song that she had sent him, either really listening to the song or reviewing it in his head - considering every lyric. He was thinking of her, even as he was loving someone else. Even as he was touching someone else or maybe just touching himself. He was thinking of her and feeling so sad too. Feeling so guilty for the dilemma of them, and feeling responsible for her pain, confusion, wanting.

He was taking the song literally, and maybe more literally than the words of her letters because whether or not she had known it at the time she had sent it to him, the song evoked a sad truth, more truthful than her letters, her words. There is always more message in the things that are not said, than in the things that were written. Always. Her letters tried so hard to be positive and hopeful, and to never blame, never want more than he could give, and never offer more than he could take, but so often, all of that was there in the things she didn't write.

She heard the song along with him, as he was thinking of it, as he was thinking of her. And she really listened to the words too. She was watching the movie, but another part of her, a deeper, more everlasting part of her was listening to the song with him. Contemplating certain lyrics, contemplating the chorus and together, though miles apart, she felt the truth of her written and unwritten words, the song, the poetry of their connection and she felt his pain too. His guilt. She felt that. And there was even a moment, where she said, in her mind's thought, "I'm sorry." Because she felt guilty too. She regretted the pain he felt. That she had caused, what her desires, what her yearning, what her hopes, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unwittingly stirred up in him. "It's ok, baby, it's ok." She wanted to comfort him, soothe him.

Just like every time else she ever thought of him - she also felt actual physical sensations of him. She felt his hands on her, his mouth moving across her body, she felt his kisses. And a part of her, a playful part of her, kept track of time... and thought, "Wow, two hours, three hours... and the loving doesn't stop. You go, boy."

As always, the conflicting playfulnes of their connection, and the more obvious, more damaging, more painful reality of their connection was there.

When the feelings had passed, as they always do, strong emotions always pass, she tried to remember the song. To test the theory of her imagination. There was a moment when she couldn't for the life of her think of the melody at all. And then, she laughed at herself and thought, "You're probably just playing games with your head. You know the song. Come on - you know it." And it was that feeling, that tip of the tongue feeling, where you know the word you can't remember, the tune to the song, the answer to the question, the name to the face. But he wasn't listening to the song anymore, and so she couldn't hear it in her head anymore.

All she knew, all she believed was that she got to share, four or five hours with him. Communicating with him, touching his heart, his mind, sharing something. With him, as she sat, at home, on a Saturday night watching movies, and he was wherever he was, with whoever he was with, doing whatever it was he was doing. That is, besides, thinking of her.