And now I must make a confession. While I didn't really feel drawn to Ethan upon first meeting him, by the time we were several weeks into our trivia conversations, I had a full blown crush on him. Ethan is not magazine model beautiful. Due to the pock marks, one would have to be an artist to see the beauty in his face. I am such a person. My full blown crush didn't start until that fateful smile. In that moment when he looked right into me I saw the universe in his eyes. He had meant what he said. There is no artifice in Ethan. And he had meant that he felt left out because I was still more reserved around him than with our other co workers. He said so later. He also said that I wasn't his traditional type. I am built like a farm kid, brawny where a girl shouldn't be and a little thick through the shoulders. And like I said, taller than him. I had seen his girlfriend once and tried to control my crush because I was certain that there was no way that he would ever find me attractive. She was petite in every sense of the word. But then came the day Cassie sent us home at the same time.
For several weeks straight Ethan and I stayed for the full shift, letting the college kids go home early to do homework. Ethan didn't need the hours they needed. He was a genius. One day, quite uncharacteristic of her, Cassie initiated a conversation about relationships. We each answered her questions as patiently as possible. Then she sent Ethan to the walk in cooler for something. "I'm sending you guys home together. You should go get coffee."
Then Ethan was out and I was headed to put away the fresh lettuce. Cassie sent him in for tomatoes and then slammed the door shut behind us. It was torture to be in there for the few seconds it took Ethan to get the door open. What ever Cassie thought would happen didn't. I couldn't have been more disappointed. But he had his girlfriend and I was trying to be a good little girl. We didn't go home early that day. A busload of kids came in. But she had another chance to match make two days later. And we went to coffee.
It was freezing. A front had moved in that made the moist air a little more solid. It was like breathing in pollen but it was frozen micro water particles. Cassie made us go early together. We weren't going to stop for coffee. Ethan had told me he knew Cassie was up to something. He couldn't let it happen without telling me that there was no chance. He was very polite about it.
I could feel the pain it caused him to say so. I didn't want to hear those words. My heart was so cold from his gentle let down that I barely felt the stinging air on my cheeks. Ethan felt the sting and turned us back to the coffee shop we had just passed. Three block from Togo's and we were already in danger of hypothermia... according to Ethan.
It was my first time in a coffee shop. The shop was one of those peace love and global brother hood places, very different from the yuppie place downtown. This was Ethan's refuge. He ordered me something he thought I would like and got his usual. We sat across from each other at a window table. I thought I was going to cry. I had wanted all of our conversations to mean something more substantial. My ego wanted to replace his girlfriend with my inadequate self. I wanted his mouth to say everything that his eyes said just so that I would know I wasn't nuts. How nuts could I have been? I was the only person at work that could get him to smile. Rather, I was the one he looked at every time he did smile. And we had developed a rapport that appeared we could read minds. He watched the sky for several long minutes. I tried not to tear up.
We finished our drinks. Ethan ordered two more. During the second round he squared his shoulders and opened the conversation. "It could work. We both want it to work." I couldn't have heard him correctly. "It's just that I have these commitments. I can't let her down." And he told me about the pock marks and the scars that went with them. He told me about a reaction to medicine after a bike crash and how she had been with him through the days in the hospital and the weeks of rehabilitation therapy. "She's been through a lot with me. That means something." I don't know what I said. I think he took my hand. "That doesn't mean that I don't feel something for you. I just have to sort this out." He told me that my smile made him feel loved and safe in ways that he couldn't anticipate needing after his accident. Ethan also said that sometimes he thought that he and his girlfriend were together at this point out of duty. Sometimes, when he was depressed and his thoughts wouldn't leave him alone, he thought that she was the only one who could have loved his disfigured face. And the equally disfigured soul that felt like Quasimodo.
We closed the coffee shop. It took most of the four and a half hours we were there to recover from how awkward the confession had become. We walked home in the dark. I left him at his street and continued on my way in a daze. Ethan had come as close as he dared to saying that he loved me. Part of me soared at that because I had been harboring those feelings for weeks. I just didn't dream he would reciprocate. The rest of me fell to the earth with a thud, knowing that his honor would never let him leave his girlfriend. She had accepted his proposal two days before I started working at Togos.
Three days later, in the dead of a fierce storm, we were working with Cassie again. She started us on the path to pain again. And finally, frustrated with trying to finesse confessions out of us, she just blurted out he own interpretation of the state of our affair. "You two obviously are goo goo about each other. Do it and get it over with." I had been mopping the eating area. Ethan had been on his way to the cooler with prepped vegetables. We stopped dead in our tracks. We made eye contact across the counter. The air was thick with the truth of our feelings and desires. "Where were you fours years ago?" He asked me, almost choking on the question, desperate to change the past. "Making some huge mistakes of my own." I said, equally desperate and more than a little hurt that I couldn't take him for myself. If it came to his honor or my happiness I knew I would chose his honor. It was the thing I liked best about him. If I made him abandon that for me then I would have changed something intrinsic in him that made our attraction so strong. He looked at me as though he just found the family pet dead beside the road. I felt my face make the same look. I went back to mopping. Ethan walked into the cooler. Cassie never brought it up again.
No one would look at either of us and drool on their shoes. What is true of each of us is this: you must know us. The more one knows about us the more attractive we become. I never touched Ethan. We tried very hard not to bump into each other during the craziness of a lunch rush. We didn't hold hands, only gazes. I never kissed him. When we had his going away party everyone hugged him except for me. We locked gazes that night and we knew. If we became tangled in that kind of embrace, even as only co workers wishing each other farewell, we would never have left each others arms. And so we parted with only the Live Long and Prosper salutation. My friends at the fellowship thought it was stupid. Everyone else told me later that it made them cry. After we left Ethan went to the basement and sulked the rest of the night. Jon had told me later, after my smile came back, that Ethan refused to talk to anyone for the rest of the night. He'd been carefree for hours but my departure had cast a pall. Jon actually admitted to some tears. He'd hugged me when my own started again.
I cried myself to sleep for eight months. Every time I closed my eyes I could see the smile that warmed his features only for me and my smile. His face is still one of the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life. And it is because of the love I felt for the person he was, his honor, his integrity and his compassionate instruction. It's been 11 years since I've seen him and I still he think he is beautiful. I would love to have an Ethan again. I don't think its the kind of love that comes once in someones' life. And I don't think than familiarity always breeds contempt. But I do believe that the people we find the most beautiful are the people that know us and our souls as well as we do and pledge, first in friendship, to protect and defend. That is where a lasting bond may begin. To start with the physical is to court disaster as inevitable change
No comments:
Post a Comment