Eyes

This prose piece is based on a conversation I had last year with a friend of mine. Upon reflection I realized that this was a significant conversation that had lots of potential for dissection (& storytelling!).

• Short story

								
“So what happened last night?” asked Becca as she stabbed her fork into her omelet, puncturing the middle and revealing a swarm of innards. 
“Oh, you know,” I started, “I’ve been burned out this week. I’m on my period. I miss home.” This was all true. But in a pie chart of reasons why I completely and maniacally broke down last night at approximately 11:50 pm at a college party, the before-mentioned list would take up less than 5%.
I plunged my own fork into a bowl of fruit. I didn’t want to eat. I was convinced my stomach had decided to dissolve into itself and then drag the rest of my body along with it. I thought of plunging my fork into her eyes instead. I smiled.
What happened last night was none of her business. He was none of her business. Him and his eyes were absolutely and entirely none of her concern. Neither were our inside jokes or our coffee order or the TV shows we watched together every night. Don’t even get me started on his royal blue truck and how the passenger seat was especially crafted for my figure, or that one Jack Kerouac poem we picked apart until its bones were dry of meat. Or my blanket – his favorite blanket – that he’s infused with the smell of his cologne. She had nothing to do with any of it. It was all mine…
“Okay, it just seemed like you were upset with me or something,” Becca remarked, throwing a quick dose of eye contact my way before going in for another forkful of egg. It was getting hard to breathe. Maybe because the elephant in the room was taking up so much goddamn space.
“I was upset. I- I just. I don’t know,” I began, refusing to reciprocate the eye contact in fear of the truth spilling out of my corneas, “This week I’ve felt a bit off. I was holding a lot in and I guess last night was my excuse to let it all out of my system.” There, we’ll leave it at that. Nothing further is to be talked about. Period. End of story.
“Is this about Ben? Because he told me he thinks it was his fault,” she inquired, fully aware of the weight that comment had on me.
My heart rate skyrocketed. The elephant burst like a balloon and now my lungs were stealing all the room’s oxygen. Alright. She went there. She went to the deep dark place that I do not want to talk about even though it’s all that I can think about in fact it’s eating me alive, bit by bit, and I suspect it started with my stomach because I cannot bear to digest anything, which is not ideal because right about now would be the perfect time to avoid the reality of this conversation and instead look down to eat a piece of fucking fruit, and–
I forgot I actually have to respond to this.
“Yes. It is,” I sigh, tears welling up in my truth-spilling corneas.
Wasn’t everything about him? Since the day I moved into that godforsaken building and heard the timbre of his voice when he introduced himself, with his torn up checkered shoes and his shaggy, sand-colored hair, everything in the world that had only ever belonged to me would now be saturated with him. Etched into the walls of my mind is the very moment I realized he wanted me. We were in a friend of a friend’s dorm room with a piano leaning up against the far left wall. He stood on the right side of the room, wearing an oversized white t-shirt and light-wash jeans. There were about a dozen people in the room and the second they found out I played keys, not a single one of them would shut up about wanting me to play a song. My face was on fire and I couldn’t feel my legs. Then he looked at me, but not in the normal way a person looks at another person. No – his eyes met mine and they twinkled. They told me it was okay. They told me he understood. It was as if I was naked and so was my soul and he could see every inch of me, as far down as I go. As days and weeks and months went on it was more than our eyes that had touched. Brushes of hands and leans onto shoulders sent sparks flying into the air. We’d fall asleep on my floor, fingers intertwined. What touched the most frequently were our brains. They would talk to each other until the sun came up. I started believing his brain and mine were made of the same stuff. I didn’t think that was possible.
“C’mon, we all knew there was something going on between you two. You didn’t exactly do the best job hiding it,” remarked Becca. She was my suitemate, so I knew she knew. She along with several of my roommates suffocated me like middle school girls the first few weeks of school, begging for details – for confirmation, even, that we were an item. It didn’t seem appropriate to tell them, though. It all felt too sacred and fantastical, as if speaking about us would somehow snap me out of the dream I was living in. It was a secret. It was my secret. Until now.
“You caught me. I liked him. He liked me,” I started, internally wincing at my usage of past-tense. “But now I know it’s over. I finally have my proof. And I need to move on.” For a second I thought I was going to vomit. Luckily there was nothing in me to vomit.
This nausea had crept up on me throughout the course of the past five days. I felt it faintly on Monday, and by the time Friday morning rolled around I assumed death was upon me. He hadn’t looked me in the eyes all week. My gut sent off a siren and my heart was throwing things at it, telling it to shut the hell up because everything was fine and he loved me. In response to my frustration with the war between my organs, I decided to go out on Friday night – last night. All was well until an entire batch of people living in my building, including the man who was the source of my misery, decided to throw away their existing plans and piggyback onto mine instead. 
Etched into the walls of my mind is the moment I realized he no longer wanted me. When strobe lights were flashing green and the wooden floors were bouncing up and down, I spotted him. He was standing on the left side of the room, and Becca was by his side. His eyes met hers…

and they twinkled.
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