Vignettes I

Vignettes
I.
It was the first time I had seen her in a year. April was looking just as gorgeous as ever. I was back from the Academy for the first time since last June, and we decided to see each other over a lazy afternoon lunch break.

It was a typical day, overcast and not too hot. Still, the humidity on the East Coast was on the opposite end of the dry air that I was used to from the Colorado Mountains. We got some deli sandwiches: I got the J-Ray, my favorite, and she got a number 8 Griller. I was unsure how to approach her, so much had changed during this last year, our first year of college. Nonetheless, we walked to the park and ate at the picnic tables.

As I walked to a set of picnic tables just outside of the children’s baseball field, I looked around. To my left was the park bench where I once took Chloe on a date. It was the same bench where, in June 2007 I would pen a particular set of words in my journal that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Then, later that August, I would be back at that same bench, penning the beginning of Shades of Gray – a punching bag album that I used to address every little insecurity I had in my life. A year later I finished writing that album at the tables that we were about to sit at.

April walked delicately; she didn’t match my pace but she also didn’t dwindle behind me. We made small talk like we had just seen each other yesterday, but deep inside there had to be an overwhelming urge to spill everything: the who’s what’s when’s where’s and why’s of every event that had happened in the past year where we had virtually no communication. There had to be at least a tickle of this urge. At least it was in me, but I restrained myself in fear of making things awkward and becoming someone so different that we could no longer connect.

We started to eat, but I did most of the talking. After about 15 minutes of sitting, my J-Ray was almost untouched, with a few bites perforating the outer edges of the sandwich. As I spoke I watched April eat and the way she used her napkin after every bite. It was almost a one way conversation, April mhm’ing and nodding. Sometimes she would put her sandwich down to comment on my stories. Even when she did this though, it was as if she was dancing around landmines, afraid that if she pried too deeply into my stories that I would become offended or bored of explaining the same things to her that I did to everyone else. We were playing a game of limbo; there was a line that she refused to cross, a line that I unwillingly restrained from crossing.

There was one landmine that she stepped on. Without a caveat, April looked at me and stated, without the slightest bit of emotion: You have a girlfriend now. And then a grin peeled across her face, and gave a quick disclaimer: Not that I’ve been facebook stalking you or anything. I laughed and told her all about my girlfriend and our situation during the summer. How we met, where she’s from, and the general run down. After I gave my spiel, I fired back at April – What about you? She said that she was in a “thing” with a guy. She explained how they had been seeing each other on and off throughout the year. That brief instance where there was no taboo topic between us disappeared just as quickly as it had left, and ended with just as much emotion. “That’s cool…”

By this time, I had managed to eat only half of my lunch, and I wrapped up the rest and put it back in the brown paper bag. For a moment, I was fearful that I had sent the wrong social cue; I didn’t want to leave and I didn’t want the conversation to end. I don’t think April did either because she just sat there, both of us still talking about life in general, but not life itself. For some reason I thought about the time a few years ago when we were hanging out at the playground a little further into the park. That night, my friends Angelo and Donald were with me. We were just hanging out and talking after a day of rapping and making music. At some point, April said “Why don’t you just ever say what you want to say?” I thought about what she said, but didn’t reply.

Years later, we were in the same park. This time it was just me and her, but we were two completely different people. There was a time when we could talk openly, about anything deep inside our growing souls. Throughout our lunch together I noticed that she seldom looked into my eyes. It was as if she was looking beyond me, at the memories, at the person that I used to be to her. I walked her back to her car, and our goodbye was brief, punctuated by a hug. She still came out to see me, a gesture that suggested more than any of the words exchanged between us.