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Date Posted: 22:50:25 08/30/09 Sun
Author: Mary
Author Host/IP: cpe-69-135-186-204.woh.res.rr.com / 69.135.186.204
Subject: In the Restaurant (1/1)
In reply to: Mary 's message, "A vignette...(r)" on 22:41:59 08/30/09 Sun

In the Restaurant

The chill of the late October afternoon is irrelevant to me as I sit in this familiar restaurant that holds soothing memories that warm my soul. Or maybe it is the incredibly handsome man sitting across the table from me that keeps me surrounded in warmth right now. Every sense that I possess is finely tuned at this moment and I know it is because of this treasured time spent with Michael.

Michael.

Everything in my world has continuously been about Michael for as long as I can remember. From that fated first encounter in the white room until this very moment, everything has been about me and Michael. And now, at this moment, I am terrorized in my heart that everything from here on out will be about what Michael and I could have been, perhaps even should have been.

At the stab of intense pain my drifting thoughts cause me, I pull myself back into just this precious time that he has allowed us to have, that I have allowed myself to have. I know that this time will be short and poignant, as all of our time together has always been. Our love has always been about stolen moments, heated passion and bittersweet memories.

I want to file away every moment that I can while we are so open with each other and so close. Every precious second needs to be indexed and filed in my mind so that I can retrieve it whenever I need it, and I will need it desperately. I know what lies ahead of me and what I will have to face. I will need these memories to be safe.

Michael, ever my savior, has taught me over the years that the safest things, the most essential things that we possess, are buried deep within us where they remain hidden from scrutiny. These precious things are then whatever we need them to be when we need them. No one can change them nor take them from us.

So as I sit here and watch him, as he watches me, I take in every detail of his soft face, the look in his magnificent eyes, the feel of his finger as it runs over my hand, the scent that is uniquely Michael. In his eyes I see burgeoning hope that he is scared to death to have, yet he realizes that the same hope can be squelched so easily by a single word from me.

He has risked everything to come back here. But, back here to this hell he had to come, for Adam and secondarily for me. He still thinks that I have a choice to make, I can see it in his eyes. I continue to let him believe it for just a little more time. I let myself believe it too, but not too much. No, if I believe it too much then it might become real to me and that can’t happen. The pain is so intense in my soul if I let that happen then I am afraid that I will eat a bullet as my next meal, and that is an unacceptable scenario at this time.

No I must be the balancing point. I must be Michael’s balancing point.

He speaks from across the table and my mind is trying desperately to process what he is saying to me. He’s talking about us going away together. He wants me to go with him and Adam. I use the one truly believable excuse that I have been practicing, “I could never replace Elena in Adam’s eyes.” And I see, as the practiced words fall from my lips that he will not buy that.

He softens at my words and tries to reassure me, “Don’t try. Be yourself.”

“A white picket fence, a mini-van? Cocker spaniel?” I laugh at my self as I say it, otherwise I will fall apart right there in front of him and I can’t have that happen either.

But he is serious, “Why not? We could even have children of our own.”

My stomach clenches as pure waves of panic rush over me at his words and I have to hold back the bile in the back of my throat. My chest constricts and I have to literally tell myself to pull air into my lungs. In a millisecond, memories overtake me…

I am back in bed in my little apartment with Michael and we are having one of those rare and precious moments when we are sharing phrases in whispers after making love.

My head is lying on his chest and he is slowly stroking my hair and then over my skin. My hand lazily moves against his chest as we both are unable to break the fragile connection. I am listening to his heart beat and his lungs fill with air. I feel something that he needs to say and I wait patiently as I have learned to do with him, eventually prompting to gain entry to his thoughts since I can’t see his eyes.

“Michael?”

“Mmm.” he whispers sleepily.

“If you could have one thing, anything, what would it be?”

His answer takes so long, and his gentle caresses stop, so I assume that he simply went to sleep in his exhaustion. But then he says in two words the most beautiful thing anyone will ever say to me in this life. Whispered, reverently delivered from deep within his soul he tells me, “Our child.”

That reminiscence makes my eyes burn with tears that I cannot let myself shed in front of him. I can’t. I have to keep control, hold the panic back and maintain that perilous balance. I hunt my mind for anything that I can say to him and then decide that he really will only be able to accept the truth. Of course I know this, just as I know him. He would see through anything else that I might try in my intense turmoil. "I fear I've lost the courage for our dream."

And I have. Over the last weeks I have launched deeper into my father’s organization than I ever wanted to know existed, deeper than anyone human would ever want to know. I have seen and read things that abhor me and yet I find that even in my repulsion I am driven to want to take action against it. Something in my soul stirs and growls that the thought of these horrible inhumanities continuing without any intervention, without my intervention.

So how do I now walk away from all of this, now that I have seen it? How do I turn it off and just assume that someone else will ‘take care of it’? I can’t. Just as my father couldn’t, I too cannot. I’ve known that truth for a few days now, I have driven myself to the point of total collapse right before Michael came back.

The intense love making this afternoon and the short, but very safe sleep with him at my side today, now has given me back the focus that I need to make it through this conversation.

I love Michael with all of my heart and soul, and I know with a certainty I can’t describe that I always will. It totally terrifies me to think of the coming time when every day apart from him I will ache with an intensity that I don’t know if I can live through. I don’t know if I am mentally strong enough to live through the type of pain and responsibility day in and day out that I know is coming. But I do not have a choice so I know what I must do, what I am expected to do, what I was supposedly born to do.

His eyes force mine to look up at him and he truly believes his words when he tells me, "It's no dream. We'll make it work."

Another part of me dies inside knowing, with very certain knowledge that we will never get the option to make it work, to make us work. Not now. Maybe another point in time in our lives, I try to tell myself in order to keep from losing it in this public place.

I look up at him and see the traces of hope in his eyes. It is so bittersweet to see it, I love knowing that Michael has learned to hope again, it means that he will be all right out in the world and raising Adam. He has the capacity to be a whole person again. But the pain also blinds me in knowing that I will not be there to see it happen.

Michael I am so sorry, so incredibly sorry. Our time is not now.

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