whisper

His friend leaned to whisper in his ear, “that is the girl that disappeared a while ago and now she is back.”
He didn’t believe him nor was he ready to feed into the fantasy that long played in his mind. His fixed a disinterested gaze on the television screen that was mounted on the tavern’s wall. A sports game was playing and in the brief moment the camera panned to reveal the crowd, the image of a woman reminded him of someone he once knew. His friend insisted the girl across the bar was the same one he once felt for and put his life on hold for some time ago.
The girl across the bar resembled the girl in the camera’s eye and in an infinite amount of torrential bits, he tried to make some kind of connection but his mind had a hard time linking that physical being with the person he reveled with in his memory. Her hand was in her hair and she was in casual conversation with a group that seemed to be her friends. He wanted to be the person she smiled at.
Although her bright eyes shone, he saw something more passionate in her than this moment in the crowded tavern and for that brief second, he thought that he could understand. The crowd erupted in appreciation of a good play and he lost sight of her as he tuned his attention to the collective roar.
Hours later, he stumbled back inside after gulping fresh air between drags of cigarettes and slouched back into his assumed position on the bar stool. His friend was swearing up and down that the meaning of existence could be found in slice of fruit at the bottom of his glass to the girl next to him. It was her.
“you’re you,” he said to the girl on the other side of his friend.
“i am” she answered.
“i heard that you went away for a while.”
“i am back.”
“how did it go?”
“there is something to be said about getting away from all of this,” she raised her hand to indicate the surrounding rowdiness. “but really, it is all the same anywhere. I came back to feel more out of place than I did before.”
Her hair was different than the last time he saw her and her completion radiated atmospheres of sun and high altitudes. He wanted to confess that he couldn’t stop thinking of her and that his dreams were tormented of times they never spent together. He wanted to confess that she was too erroneous for him, he was too dependable for her, and that eternity was better left for fiction and films where adoration, reality, and consciousness were better left unaccountable to each other.
“there were things I missed, though, and some part of me is happy to return and to find my place is here,” she continued. “I tried to escape but I can’t imagine ever leaving and not longing to be home.”
His eyes returned to the game on screen and as much as he tried to focus on the plays between teams, his mind wandered to the struggle within him and the desire to make the game of her and him begin again. He felt the gaze of her affection was possible and wondered which of them would win this fight.