Eyes like the Ocean

Eyes like the Ocean

Now (Senior Year)

With desire, she stares at the side of his long, white face that is sprinkled with brown freckles flashing across his complexion. His jaw line punctures down from his temple and sits as sharp as a steak knife in a kitchen drawer. He is turned to the table in front of the two, not looking over at her. She, however, body turned on the white couch they are sitting on, is staring at him. He looks sadly forward as silence fills the space between them. I watch them from behind the couch, a couple tables over in the first floor of McWherter Library, the heart wrenchingly beautiful four level library that sits at the North end of the University of Memphis. I wish I was him.

She reaches over, him looking somberly forward, and lays her head on his shoulder like a mini statue on a shelf, frozen and staring. She wants to kiss him, to be inside of him, for him to be inside her, to snuggle herself into the dark wool jacket that sits over his long, broad shoulders, and falls down his body. I want to be him. She doesn’t even think about moving her head from his shoulder, and he finally turns over to her, and she sits up without letting him say a single syllable and places her cool, pink lips on his cheek. She then sits her head back on his shoulder, letting her hair fall off the back of the couch. The few strands of her long, absolutely strikingly gorgeous amber hair looked sad hanging off the couch. She stared blankly forward with him again, and I wanted my body to fill into his long, built posture. I wanted to be him.

            “My friend,” he finally says, “wants me to meet him across campus at Sampson’s.”

Sampson’s was the coffee shop located at the South end of Memphis’ campus. I sit in there and write when I can, hearing conversations of friend groups I’ve never mingled with, wishing I could relate to the words that fall out of their mouths.

He gets up to leave, and her head drags off of his shoulders like a phone being unplugged from a charger, losing battery. Losing life.

He now is kissing her cheek and turning to leave, while I’m sitting simultaneously motionless, staring. I wish I was him.

I don’t hear what they say as he departs, but she doesn’t even bother looking away from him as he walks away, down the empty hallway of the first floor. I was lost in her and she was lost in him; a fractured love triangle.

She turns around, sees me with my blank gaze, and looks through me like a glass door leading out into the street. She shoots back around to face forward again, and I know she knows that I was watching them, but I couldn’t stop. The simple romance bloomed right in front of my eyes like a magnolia flower, revealing a lost fortune during mid-bloom. Simple, oh yes, but powerfully intoxicating.

Her lover, a well-built man with lengthy, sandy brown hair, brown beard, and navy blue glasses that sat on his face that reflected light when he rose to leave the library, made me tingle with jealousy; the ugliest form of emotion is curling itself around my heart and latching on with its tight grip. However, I wasn’t angered with him, nor her, but nostalgic and loathing to be in his shoes. To be wearing the Levi jeans and black Marc Anthony cardigan that draped over him. To have her love me.

She, with her soft, white skin, and thick, long amber hair that fell down her body like the melancholy in my heart, was refreshingly beautiful. However, I already knew that. Of course I already knew that.

That lost gaze she had as he wandered down the library hallway and into the stairwell, I knew that gaze. Of course I did. The small pecks on the cheek, I knew that. The feel of her head on my shoulder as we both gazed mindlessly forward after we had spent hours fighting, I knew that. Before this blonde, beautiful man came into her life, there was me. I was him; she was mine.

Now, not even the look she just gave me in the library is for me. When she looks at me now, piercing through my body, it’s for the son of a bitch inside me that made her leave.

. . .

Then (Sophomore Year)

I first saw her on a walk on our college campus our freshman year, as the bitter wind of winter blew against my face and the last leaves of autumn fell lonely to the ground. I saw her from about a hundred feet away—she had long, amber hair (like now), a red and black scarf draped around her neck. Black leggings met with Chuck Taylor’s at the bottom. She and I exchanged eyes and the only sound I heard was our feet hitting the ground—clapping against the pavement—and the beating of my heart.

I dragged on a few feet further, but I could barely walk. A bench to my right drew me in like it a magnet and sat me down. I looked back to my left and watched her glide up the rest of the way to Wilkerson Hall, or wherever the hell she was going, and watched her hair dance up and down on her shoulders.

Later that day, I saw her again standing at the counter of Sampson’s coffee shop, and I couldn’t look away.

The rooms lighting was dimmed and it made the room look blurry and surreal, like I was lucid dreaming—not knowing what is real and what is fake, but feeling every emotion of that exact moment. She was glowing, to say the least, and the light behind her surrounded her like it was trying to enter her soul and shine as one with her.

            “Medium flat white coffee with cream, please,” she said to the cashier holding the telephone. She was probably receiving an order for pick-up from their bakery business that ran on Monday and Wednesday for students that year.

Regrettably, I somehow decided to turn my back to her, and wander to a distant table. My mind still yearned to say hello, to know her name, to have her soft, blue eyes see me again. I felt insane for wanting a girl who I never met, never even shared the same breath during conversation, to be infatuated with me as well. She began to walk toward me, but suddenly turned left and headed up the aisle of tables before sitting down towards the back of the room and pulling her purse over her head and shoulders.

Her hair intoxicated my eyes that day. Signs of stress showed in her hair with small strands pulling out at random points of her hair, itching to be combed over. However, the mess, the amber, it swallowed me in and didn’t let go.

At that point, my anxiety was bursting through my heart.

Who is she? Where is she going? Will I see her again? Will I ever feel this again? I thought, and my heart innocently and eagerly yelled for her, forgetting the prematurity of these feelings.

When it seemed like she wasn’t going to stay, to marinate within the dim light room, my body temperature began to rise inside my clothes at the sight of her gathering her things.

My mind was telling my legs and body to get up and go speak to her, but they didn’t listen; they never listen in times like this.

I watched her creep towards the back exit of the store that pours out into the long center drive that pushes itself through the hills of campus.

I let situations like this sit and boil in front of my face and then let them wash away like soap and water in the shower drain.

She pushed open the exit and the glorious light of day embraced her body, and I watched her through the glass door as she stepped down the small flight of stairs, away from me.

. . .

According to her, we bumped into each other a couple nights after that day at a bar called Lucky’s in Memphis as the night was ending and my memory was fading. When she came up to me that Monday evening the night after the bar at Sampson’s, embarrassment rushed through my blood like the current moving down the Nile.

At first, I didn’t know why she was coming up to me, obviously, and it was like I was lucid dreaming again, only feeling my heart rattle within my chest.

            “You left your I.D. last night at the bar,” she said.

Silent, and unaware I even took my I.D. out of my wallet, I reached out and grabbed it from her.

            “You’re welcome?” she said after seeing my complete blank stare.

Say something dumbass, I thought to myself.

            “No, sorry. I didn’t meant to be rude,” she stared at me with those blue eyes, soft and open.

            “I appreciate you grabbing this, because embarrassingly enough, I don’t remember talking nor losing this.” I felt my chances, if there was one at all, fall down from my hands and burn in rubble with my choice of words. My body was flowing, endlessly, with embarrassment.

            “You called me beautiful last night before even telling me your name,” she said, peering down.

Silence filled me again.

            “Why didn’t you tell me this at Sampson’s last week when you were starting me?” My mind eased, she was still talking to me, but she also knew of this infatuation I had with her.

            “What else did I say last night?” I asked, shrugging off the question I didn’t have an answer to, trying to remember my forgotten words from the night before.

            “Nothing, it happened when you were leaving. The only reason you lost your I.D. is because they asked for verification for your credit card. You left it right there on the counter, drowning in beer.” Her voice was soft, but the things she said sounded so sure I had no choice but to believe it.

            However, I sat silent, like I didn’t realize she was actually standing in front of me.

            “Evelyn,” she stuck her hand out in front of me.

            “Palmer.”

We shook hands, hers were cold while mine were warm, and we both recognized the refreshing difference by the looks we gave each other. Her blue eyes were drawing me in like the ocean, and her voice played the part of the waves, carrying me deeper and deeper into its void. She was flawlessly gorgeous as she stood there.

My anxiety settled simultaneously with my hand relaxing from the grip of the handshake, and my body felt lighter and clearer. This wasn’t a damn lucid dream.

            “I apologize for saying that last night and my shyness today,” I said staring into her eyes in which felt like the first time.

            “And you’re right, I should have told you while I was here last week.”

            “Yes, you should have, because you don’t even remember what I said back to you last night.”

Silent. Again.

           

“I told you that I could feel you watching me walk out of here last week, that it was almost creeping up on my shoulders.”

            “Oh, god,” I moaned. My opportunity once again looked in flames.

            “It could be, but no. You obviously didn’t feel me staring at you when I was ordering that day.”

            The cashier with the telephone came back into my mind and silence filled the space between us, sadly, again.

            “Tomorrow. 9 A.M.,” she said to me. “Talk with me while I drink my coffee instead of staring.” She smiled, her hair touching the sun light breaking through the trees outside and windows surrounding Sampson’s.

            She turned, and I watched her go out the back exit, through the glass door, down the flight of stairs, away from me.

. . .

Then (Junior year)

I can see us two, her with her glasses on, at a cabin in the wilderness of the Adirondack Mountains in upper-state New York just about a year after we started dating during late winter. It seemed like we were infatuated with each other, and our love was building between each other like two waves forming as one huge tidal wave ready to take on whatever.

We found the cabin in a spontaneous choice to go somewhere during our early spring break, and the only thing we had to do was supply our own cooking utensils. I was obsessed with this trip, with the idea of spending day and night with the woman of my dreams doing nothing but wandering. It was also going to let me see how her mind worked away from the speed of our lives in Memphis; I just wanted to take a flashlight and walk through the doors of her mind and look around, to know everything about her, to love her endlessly.

On the second night, we were surrounded by a burning fire in the cabin fireplace that warmed us as we sprawled our bodies under a hand-knitted blanket. She was wearing one of my grey wool sweaters that said MEMPHIS in the blue and grey school colors while her eyes gleamed in the reflection of the fire. There was no words, just the sound of the wood burning and cracking. The fire was the only light in the room, besides the light her eyes were giving off of course. Her amber color hair fell down her neck and hugged her shoulders—front and back—and I couldn’t stop staring.

“What?” she asked with a smirk and a laugh, knowing she’s beautiful and that I’m under a spell she’s casts on me. She knew I was in love with her.

            “Nothing,” I said, smiling back, reaching over to push her hair behind her left ear.

She maneuvered over, put her hands on my chest and lips on my mouth. The touch of her lips sent energy through my mouth and all the way through my body. Her hands on my chest felt like they were growing into me, weighing me down forever.

“Why don’t we go to Veranda tomorrow?” she asked, fitting her body closer to mine like she was trying to fit into the curves and angels of my body.

Veranda, which was about a 30 minute drive from the cabin, was a small, cute old town my parents introduced to me when I was a young boy on vacation with them in Lake Placid. Its city limits were not filled with many things, but there was 3 café’s, 1 bookstore, and 2 bars, Harry’s and Riverside, which were located right across the street from one another. It had an antique shop and a couple other stores that dressed the one street that ran through town. She loved antique shops. From everything to the lightly musky smell, to the hovering paintings that hung down from the ceilings, to the cramped isles that held beautifully crafted aged pottery and crafts—it was all her. I remember walking through another antique shop with her, Twigs antique shop in Lake Placid, as her hands sat between mine and we walked through the store.

However, I didn’t want to wake up the next day, shower, eat breakfast, and then get in a car and go do something like being a tourist. I wanted to bask in this cabin of ours until the moment we left, and I didn’t have any reason as to why. The woods that surrounded us, with its hanging trees that crept low to the ground, were swallowing me in and making me feel at home in the cabin.

“Why don’t we just sit here and watch the fire blaze and the rain pour?”

“That’s all you ever want. You never want to do anything with me outside of just sitting her and staring.” Her body moved slightly away from mine and into its own space. She would always have these one-liners that seemed to stick a dagger in my heart.

“Then how do you describe what this is? This spontaneous trip?”

“Palmer, it’s our second night here, and you haven’t even made an attempt to unpack your bags. We slept on the floor for Christ sake.” Her ears were starting to flare.

“I thought sleeping on the floor was romantic, especially with the fire.”

“Not all things have to be forced into being something romantic, Palmer.” She only said my name when she was either making love to me or when she felt distant from me—strange, I know.

I got up and went into the kitchen, leaving her in the room with the unromantic fire and sound of rain pelting against the window. This was the first moment I felt something was pulling inside my loins away from her, and I didn’t know why it had to be then. I didn’t know why that offended me so, and it truthfully shouldn’t have; it was foolish for me to let this drive me mad, but it did. I felt the love we had for each other, or at least I thought I felt, at the beginning of the trip lose all momentum in that simple conversation. It boiled me up inside; I wanted her to love the things I loved, just as passionately. To be as lonely as I was.

            When I walked back in the room, she wasn’t there, but was inside the bedroom of the cabin, covered in the fresh sheets she must have put on while I sat in the kitchen. She looked into me at the doorway, turned back over and mumbled something.

            “I’ll be going to the veranda tomorrow whether you’re with me or not.”

            She pulled the sheets closer to her body and continued to face the other way. I was silent, of course, and I regret it now.

            She went alone the next day, and I did nothing but sit in the living room and watch the fire blaze as I fell in and out of sleep. The day felt grey to me, wandering endlessly inside my own mind. My relationship was undoubtedly taking a turn for the worse, and I didn’t realize it until late that she was waiting for me to save it.

            When she came home, as the sun was setting, she didn’t have anything in her hand—no bags from shopping, no new hoodie pullover that said Adirondack Mountains, no nothing.

            “Hi,” I said, but she didn’t even look at me as she walked into the bedroom.

            She came out moments later, suitcase in hand, and said that we needed to go home in the morning, and that she was sleeping on the couch. I sat silent, unprotestingly. Again, I knew she wanted me to fight for her to stay, to sleep in the same sheets as her, but I couldn’t do it. The greyness of the day dulled my mind and I was moving through the current of life without being in control.

            My mind felt hazy that it seemed our relationship was going up in flames over a childish disagreement, but I didn’t know what to say. I let myself watch it crash and burn.

            That night progressed as silently as the woods outside, and neither of us slept very much. The fire burned, but the rain was absent.

            The morning light was our alarm, and within thirty minutes of waking, we were settling into my navy blue Jeep Cherokee, silent, heading south for Memphis.

. . .

It took us twenty hours to return from that trip in New York, and I would say that we talked for a total of two hours, none about our issues.

We tried, for the next couple weeks, to move ourselves back to normalcy.

“I’m pretty embarrassed we’ve let ourselves get carried away by a silly confrontation,” she said one morning at Sampson’s.

Ever since we met at Sampson’s our sophomore year, that’s been our spot. Our second home. Every morning, we both would sit at Sampson’s; I would write and she would read, most likely from her psychology book she was constantly staring at.

“I guess,” I said back to her, not really trying to entertain the idea of solving our issues. During the last couple weeks of our relationship, this is how it was for me. I was going through the motions, trying to force myself to love. I let things destroy me, and this was no different. In the moment, my relationship going into flames was the least of my worries. School was ramping up, and a spot in Boston’s English grad program was on my mind. I wanted to spend my time writing so that when it came time to apply, I had enough things to fall back on. Evelyn didn’t know I wanted to do that, and I guess that’s a clear signal that I didn’t really want to address these things with her. I didn’t know how I was going to make everything work.

“I guess I just haven’t been thinking about—,” I turned to Evelyn, but she was gone. I hadn’t figured this out at the time, but I was forcing Evelyn to fall out of love with me.

. . .

Our midterm break, and our getaway to New York, had only been a few weeks before our one year anniversary in late February.  The incident at Sampson’s was ignored, of course by me, and I ignorantly thought things were going to subdue, that our love was going to creep back into our hearts for one another. However, our love, and most loves, don’t work that way. 

“Let’s go to Panera for our anniversary,” Evelyn had told me days prior to the actual anniversary. “Nothing more I’d like to do than stare at you over a bowl of broccoli cheddar soup.” She had a way of making things seem like they were okay when they really weren’t, she hid her emotions like a dog hiding it’s bone—something to dig up later.   

Her favorite restaurant was Panera Bread, and honestly, she’s the one who made me fall in love with the damn place. Their creamy, delicious cheese intertwined with hot, steaming broccoli had intoxicated my taste buds the same way her hair had intoxicated my eyes in Sampson’s. Plus, I love small dates where the words shared between partners are where the fire lays, not in the expensive food you are tasting.

“It’s a date,” I said back to her that night as I wrote at the desk in my room. I felt her staring at me in that moment, wanting more from me than just those three words.

I looked over to her, and she looked back down to the table where her psychology book was laying.

“I do love you,” I said as she was reading.

“Me too,” she said.

. . .

The evening of our anniversary was a tad warm for the last week in February, and she wore a smooth, black skirt that held no sleeves and cut off at the perfect spot of her thigh so I could place my hand on her soft, buttercup lotion enriched skin. Her eyes were highlighted with a splash of black eye shadow, making her magnificent blue eyes pop whenever she looked at me. The amber hair that feel down her  shoulders lit up her body in her dark dress, and I couldn’t help but thinking about making love to her hours ago, her body sliding with mine, hands clasped together, and the sounds of our sighs rising and falling with the movements of our body.

Her voice rose unexpectedly from the passenger seat. “What if we never met?” her hand relaxed the grip it had on mine while it sat on her thigh.

I wasn’t ready for the question, but I’d be lying if I said I never thought about what a world without Evelyn would have been like while we were together—it’s a sad, sad truth, but the way things were going, it wasn’t hard to not think about it. I’d also venture to say most people in a relationship, from time to time, indulge in this same sad truth.

It’s not in a way or means of lust, however, but in means of thinking about survival. Evelyn, whose past floats between a father lost too soon, a broken relationship with her mother, and many, many broken hearts, had always survived. If you would have been in the car with me that night, when she asked me that question, you would have seen the look she had as she gazed out the window and took a few deep breathes; it was like she could feel an impending disaster sparking between us and was preparing for the hurt.

I was about to respond to her when she said something else, in a sad tone, a distant voice I didn’t familiarize with.

“Then we would have only been the people that each of us see in our dreams, but never recognize,” she paused. “I believe our souls were meant to be entangled, but what if we weren’t supposed to know it?”

My response that I just had was long lost in the trashcan that lays in the back of my mind. I was silent.

The sign for Panera crept forward into our sight, and the only thing I remember, just as I was about to pull in, was the voice of Evelyn that I recognized—the soft, but sure voice.

“Just go home.”

. . .

“Things just feel lost between us, they feel grey,” Evelyn told me as we walked through our apartment door, falling onto our couch. Her black dress rolled up against her body when she sat down, and again I was thinking of making love to her. I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have. I should have been focused on the words of her mind instead of the skin on her legs; I was starting to lose interest in the important things between her and me.

“I’ve been noticing it at Sampson’s in the morning,” she said.

 “You always leave before me for class,” Evelyn continued, “and every time you walk out, you always turn and look at me.” She paused and stared at me with those blue eyes.

“It’s not just a look,” she said softly, “It’s a look of love, of comfort. It tells me I am the one lighting up your eyes, not someone else.”

I was silent.

“You haven’t gave me that damn look in weeks, Palmer. Relationships run through the small things that hold you together, that give each other reassurance in times of doubt,” she paused, and was still staring at me.

I stood there like a dog in trouble, sad and droopy.

“When you stop doing those things, like looking at me as you walk out of Sampson’s, I feel the love you have for me walking out the door with you, Palmer.”

She wasn’t lying. I had become distant, but I didn’t know why. My overall mood that spring had changed; my mind kept running back over questions like she had asked me in the car that day.

What if I didn’t meet her? Who was I supposed to fall in love with? Was it her? Was it supposed to be the beautiful brunette that sat across from me in my English class last fall?

Evelyn hadn’t done anything wrong, I just felt incomplete within my heart.

I, obviously, knew the look at Sampson’s she was talking about, and further knew that I had stopped doing it. I didn’t look because I didn’t know what to do with the circulating emotions and questions I had. It felt like I was a beaten body in the woods being pawed at by a bear over and over again—no solutions or answers to my questions or problems.

This all broke my heart, and still does, so don’t think otherwise. We fell in love at Sampson’s, in a way, and it had rose to the point that I couldn’t even turn back and look at her. I wanted to love this girl, but in that time, I just couldn’t find it.

 “Evelyn,” I said, and then stopped. I knew this was poisonous, to keep on trying to force this love, but that is the problem and excitement with young love. The fire of young love boils so hot in a evenly young mind that you don’t think you’ll ever be able to grasp something like this again, this force inside you that sits like no other.

“You’re right,” I said. “I haven’t felt the same, but I do love you.” I hated how I said that in this moment; it was like giving someone a second place trophy and thanking them for the effort. A beautiful, remarkable woman was sitting in my apartment, with just as remarkable of a mind, and I was ready to fucking trash it.

“No, you don’t.” Her eyes went through me, and it wasn’t like the calm ocean the first time we talked, it was a ferocious hurricane that wanted to drown me.

Again, she was right. In that moment, I didn’t love her like I should have, it should have been more. I should have gave her the love that I know kindles within my heart whenever I’m in love, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

Evelyn, rose from her sitting position on the couch, stepped towards me, and stopped.

“I’m leaving, Palmer Ryan Leaf. I’m leaving.”

. . .

Now (Senior Year)

And now, as I sit here at the same table I was at watching Evelyn and her lover just moments ago, I realize I love Evelyn Claire Matthews. I always will, but now isn’t the time to realize it. I’ve lost her, and she and her love are never coming back.

Sadness pours down from my mind, through my head, and down into my heart where it pools like water after a rain shower.

Evelyn, now rising from the white couch she was sitting on, wraps her hair around the front part of her right shoulder and lets it lay softly; she’s already forgotten I’m sitting back here. All I see is the back of her body as she walks down the empty hallway of the library, past the aisles of books we used to walk through when we were in love, pushing through the door into the stairwell, and walking away from me.