Enough

She started from a dream: In the minutes before her alarm rang, her internal clock ticked her toes, her legs, her torso, her arms, her heart and her head awake. In this tick, tick, ticking awake state that indecisively fluttered between consciousness and unconsciousness, she couldn't tell if the scene she saw was only the inside of her eyelids, which of her thoughts originated in dreams or reality, whether or not... It had to be real, that wasn't a thing she could imagine or create out of air, such a thing had to come from something more corporeal--or someone. She inhaled deeply again and, smiling with excitement, opened her eyes; but he wasn't there--he wasn't standing next to her to wake her up, or give her one of his famous hugs, or just watching her sleep because they were both content with the silence they found in one another. He wasn't there. It was gone: the scent of him was gone.

She sat up in bed and crossed her legs, placing her elbows on her knees and putting her forehead in her hand. Her body, so quiet only moments before, wrenched into impassioned, uncontrollable sobs--fiery tears she hoped would purge her from the inside-- a drop of remorse, a drop of longing, a drop of anguish: she could have swum in the ocean of her misery, she could equally have drowned in it. Her abdomen began to scream its complaint, followed by her throat, hollow and rasping. She fell onto her side, letting her head hit the pillow hard. She hugged her knees into her chest and held so tight to her opposite elbows that her fingernails left markings there. Her bones screamed the paroxysm her voice failed to evince. Her arms gave out, muscles twitching in protestation. She unfolded in a mess of limbs falling gracelessly limp, like a paralytic bird falling from the sky. She barely had enough strength to think how she could have imagined it. Too much.

She wanted to crawl back beneath her covers and hide herself from life, from reality. She grasped at an evanescent dream that had taunted her. It slid like smoke through the fingers of her consciousness, becoming more scattered the more she reached, fruitlessly. She tried to go back to sleep, hoping a REM cycle would coax it out of its corner; but the sun reached out her arm-like rays and cradled her, rocking away her grief, singing the hopeful songs of dawn, promising the day didn’t have to start this way.

She sat up on the inhale straight, tall, strong, feet planted firmly on the floor, ready to meet the memories that escaped her sleep and followed her into her waking hours while she searched for it.

It wasn’t like the Old Spice or Axe that a lot of guys, including her brother, wore because their girlfriends or sisters picked it up from a drugstore for them. It was never so strong, either. She shuddered to remember the suffocating breath of air inundated with the too-liberally-applied spray in junior high halls, outside the men’s locker room, with her dance partner. She didn’t associate the scent for which she searched with any of these things. It wasn’t the Jean Paul Gaultier donned by rich boys with tacky taste and their Hispanic wife-beater-and-bling-wearing counterparts. Nor was it the “eau de gay” sold at Abercrombie and Hollister, spritzed by nancy boys and prep wannabes who idolized the models with their pouts made to look pensive, succeeding only in looking confused and daft, probably because they didn’t know where they’d left their shirts. It wasn’t like the “I’ve-just-stepped-off-my-yacht” salt-breeze sported by her former math tutor that she found so irresistible she kept going to sessions even though she taught him more than he taught her. It wasn’t any of these things. She knew what it wasn’t, but beyond that… Tears traced her cheeks again.

She couldn’t remember the scent, but she remembered what it meant. It meant a shower to remove the sweat and grease and a change of clothes to impress her father. It meant a firm handshake, hands placed coolly in pockets, a relaxed and easy posture. It meant being the only person to make her cry of happiness and sorrow, the only person whom she ever hugged without reservation, the only person of whom her father had approvingly said, “Those are the types of guys you need to be bringing home.” It meant having to say good-bye twice. It meant the worst day of her life, followed by a hundred beautiful Mondays.

She walked to her closet to get dressed. It was the first thing she saw when she opened the wardrobe: the shirt she’d worn the last time she saw him, the last time she’d hugged him. Over a year and many washes later it no longer smelled like him, but she held it close to her nose all the same. Almost. She could almost feel being close to him, resisting the urge to put her head on his shoulder, resisting the desire to watch him leave through the window, and failing miserably to see him wave good-bye.

She didn’t remember the way he smelled, but she didn’t have to remember. These memories were enough. Knowing he was there for her, still, in the way she needed most, was enough. It was enough, what he had given and continued to give her. It was enough to know it would work out in the end, for both of them, but not necessarily with each other. Where they were right now was enough. It was no longer too much.