Thanks to being Washington’s ace pitcher in last year’s World Series, I’m experiencing that for myself right now.
“I was at the game tonight,” she says. “You looked good out there.”
I nod slowly while she continues to talk. My mind drifts to that night senior year of college at The Purple Spike. I walked around the bar with all of my friends, feeling right at home. Not feeling the need to hide or put a cap low over my forehead.
Sky walked around with that ridiculous cardboard sign over her chest that said I’m here to listen, if you need to talk.
I smile and take a pull on my whisky, feeling my heart rate accelerate thinking about Sky.
“Is something funny?” the girl asks me.
“No, no. Go on.”
I’ve moved on from Sky and our senior year adventure. We were just a couple of young, crazy kids running around together. Enjoying life. Making mistakes.
At least, I’d like to say I’ve moved on fully. But the way my body responds to even a suggestion of her in my mind, suggests otherwise.
At least it’s better now, though. For a while it hurt to think of her. I would check on her social media updates constantly, and I felt that separation anxiety of having shared something so close with her—something that felt so real—and now knowing she was gone, four thousand miles away. I needed to let her go, and be happy that I’d had those five months with her.
I even went down to visit her in Paraguay later that first year she was there. I met her host family and her dog and we tried to be just friends.
That lasted for about five days, and then one night we crossed the physical line.
Then she rode with me to the airport, hugged and kissed me goodbye.
What are we? We both wondered aloud to each other. Friends, lovers, less than that, more that?
We were beyond definition.
Then I got on the plane, and our communications became less and less frequent. Two years was a long time, and I think we both realized it wasn’t healthy to stay in this state of flux where we wanted to be with one another but weren’t truly in each others’ lives.
For a while I felt grim as I tried to move on.
I’d get sick to my stomach picturing her there, living out her best life and saving the world, doing what she was intended to do in life.
I did a lot of thinking about what love really was, and in the end, I believed the only true love is unconditional love. You wanted the best for someone whether or not they were with you. It hurt my heart to work my way to that conclusion, but I’d done it. I wanted Sky to be happy no matter where I was in that equation, if I was in her life, out of it, or something in between. Love was wanting the best for her.
Plus, I was doing my own thing, anyway. I’d been dating around these past few years. I’d definitely moved on from my old, womanizing ways and how I acted when I was with Sky. I just couldn’t sleep with a woman anymore unless we had an amazing connection.
File that under ‘words twenty-one year old me wouldn’t have been able to comprehend.’
But it was true. Skylar showed me what it was like to be with someone who you were on multiple levels with together—as friends, lovers, and everything in between.
The problem, I found, was that I was still emotionally unavailable no matter who I was dating so this made connection difficult. This was crystal clear to me. A perfect example being the cutie sitting next to me while I think about Sky.
I’d heard through the grapevine that she’d started dating somebody seriously, though I wasn’t sure who and I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know what the guy was like who had the honor of wrapping his arms around her at night.
I shuddered just thinking about it. I’d had to mute her on social media after she had posted a picture of her with some guys on the beach.
Sky was back in the U.S. now.
I swallow the rest of my whisky, and slip a hand into the inside pocket of my jacket and finger the letter I’d written Sky, but never gave her.
I had put it in there because I was thinking about mailing it to Sky at the beginning of last season. When we won the first game with it in my jacket, I decided it was good luck to hold onto it.
It made me think, though, about what love was and what you were supposed to do with it. Was I just supposed to give this love away now?
I regretted not sharing those thoughts with Sky at the time, yes.
But now, was it too late to send her the letter and let her know how I’d felt at the time?
She’d read the letter, and all she’d feel in her heart was a faint breeze of a rather ridiculous college romance that was almost something more. She’d just feel sorry for the guy who couldn’t get over her.
Wow, famous people have problems too, she’d think.
Maybe I am nostalgic for something that wasn’t even there. After all, we’d only been together, initially, to fake our way through something. But did those special moments we shared together just dry up like raisins in the sun? Did she still think about them sometimes, and smile?
And what happened to love, if you hung onto it, like I had, by not giving her the letter? I wasn’t always the most articulate when it came to sharing my love, and this was a big change for me.
The letter felt like a bomb in my jacket. Sky was happy now. She was with a guy--I was pretty sure, and how unfair would it be to send this letter to her now and throw a wrench into her life? It would be like tossing an emotional bomb into her house.
She’d probably had to work to move on from me, too, as I had her. The selfish thing to do was to give her this letter.
The loving, right thing to do was to hold onto this love, to suffocate it. Maybe even to burn the letter. People wrote letters all the time and didn’t send them, right? That was something people did.
“So do you live near here?” Cutie asks. “I’d love to see your place.”
I don’t resist rubbing my temple this time.
“Look…you seem great and all...what’s your name?”
“Rachel.”
“Rachel,” I say. “I feel the need to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“I’m as emotionally unavailable as they come. Trust me when I say, you really don’t want to get involved with me.”
She bites her lower lip and gives me an up-and-down. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
Just as I’m coming up with a response, I hear footsteps behind me.
“Lucas.”
Her voice gives me the chills. I feel like I’m hearing a ghost.
I pull my hoodie down, and whirl around.
“Cielo.”
I get down off of my barstool and wrap her up in the tightest hug.
“Um…” Rachel interjects. “That doesn’t seem like a very emotionally unavailable hug, to me.”
Sky takes my hand and turns to her.
“Well, we’re engaged, actually.”
Rachel raises an eyebrow in my direction. “Why didn’t you say that was what you meant?”
I just shrug. “It’s not really anyone’s business.”
Rachel grabs her purse off of the bar and walks off.
I turn to Sky, unable to control my smile. My body is firing with every possible warm emotion.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I live in D.C. now. I’m working at the Peace Corps headquarters.”