Stuff and Things

New Bloom

It was their fifth date and she still felt guilty. Rose had asked Charlie to leave over a year ago, and though tears streamed down his cheeks, she could no longer clear them with kisses. They'd spent fifteen years together, had twin daughters, but he'd given up on life long ago and she couldn't keep giving him reasons to be angry. The hurt was seismic, the landscape of her life shaken far worse than she expected although she'd prepared herself again and again for the big one: the earthquake that did finally come when she discovered his infidelity. Rose understood the reasons, but it was irreversible betrayal, and no tears, apologies or sound logic could pull her back from her decision. He was gone from her heart, and while she knew she'd unintentionally banished him long ago, leading him to find another, it didn't change matters. In love there's only what's happened, the whys of it all just salt sprinkled on papercut hearts. And now there was Eric, handsome, respectful, divorced and with a daughter of his own that was older than her twins. He charmed her, and after hearing rumor of Charlie's escapades, of how he had actually introduced their children to various women he'd taken up with as "friends," she gave in to Eric's sweetness, perhaps partly out of revenge but more because it was simply time. Rose had lived in the purgatory of her choice long enough, and the wine on their first date was exquisite, blooming heat inside her and loosening her limbs and lips. She smiled as he spoke, a confident man and funny too, like Charlie but without her ex's endless pathos. She used to tell Charlie that she liked his edginess and that it fed the creativity that drew her to him in the first place; his paintings imbued with the same ferocious energy that ultimately destroyed them.

But Eric was normal, level. He knew enough to be interesting and instead of his passions being volcanic, they seemed like a geyser, small and predictable. They didn't kiss that first night, her experience with the wine and his company enough on their own, but on the second date she leaned across the console of his huge pick-up truck and shared a nice kiss. Just nice. No fireworks or certainty, but enough to keep going despite the tug Charlie still had on her thoughts. She made love to Eric on their fourth date after he'd cooked her a dinner of spicey Italian seafood that numbed her tongue for a while and made the wine that night less acidic, almost as if it were a balm. And that's around the time Charlie asked if she'd started seeing someone, once again exhibiting his significant powers of observation that both impressed and drove Rose mad. She confessed, and so maybe that's why the guilt was now stronger as she again sat across from Eric with his warm smile and easy grin, a glass of red one again in hand while they spoke about nothing in particular to kill the time before they would fall into bed and beat back the icy hold of alone. Rose sipped the wine and thought about how Charlie would have liked the flavor of it, the full-bodied fruitiness and lack of tannins. Then she banished him from her thoughts as if he was a wild animal held in captivity and returned to the wild after a failed attempt at domesticity. And as she lay in bed later that evening listening to the soft snore of Eric beside her, she begged for her own sleep to take her, release her from the haunt of all she let go. She'd done right by both of them. He was never going to be happy, at least not with her, and it was finally time for her to be again. She deserved it. Because inside Rose grew the promise of normal love, a bloom that didn't require the water of passion, just the willing light of comfort.