Chapter 3: Threes
For Journey, college found him some relief. He took a comfort in schedules and fancied the idea of being a cog turning in some larger machine. His pass time was getting lost in crowds, and he enjoyed the anonymity of it all. On Wednesdays, his third class of the day was an intro to psychology course. He enjoyed the almost free license it assigned him to diagnose the mental state of others, all the while believing that he had an innate gift for psychoanalysis, which, had he taken the time to diagnose himself, would have clearly marked him as delusional.
He met Delilah as a part of a study group he entered by way of a friend of a friend. Soft green eyes that looked to him like sea water off the coast of a tropical island glanced at him perilously over the top of chemistry books and periodic tables. “What was the atomic weight of Lithium?” she might ask him, not really caring what the answer was; she just liked hearing his voice. At first the feeling was unfamiliar to Journey, foreign, scary. He tried to fight it for a while, but even he couldn’t ignore the first feeling he had felt in a while that didn’t feel like nothing.
The day could never be too long when they were together and the best days were spent running from the rain in March. It amused her to point out that she was a Gemini and that even the stars agreed that they should be together; it was so perfect. Journey didn’t require astrology to confirm his feelings for her, all he needed to know was that when their eyes met, he could hear lighting in the distance, and sometimes he would forget to breathe. His favorite moments were ones spent lazily on the couch playing boundaries games. Slowly, with his foot, he would creep her skirt up her leg, which normally would hang to her ankles. The game was to see how far he could get before she would stop him. He loved the way that skirt hung off her hips just below the navel it was so vibrant with color and it flowed as she walked. One of his most private of memories was when they first laid together, and he stayed awake to watch her sleep. When he looked at the clock, it read “3:03 a.m.” He thought to himself that he could die in the next thirty seconds; it was all so perfect, there was nothing else left for him to do.
They had spent three summers together when he graduated, and in that time he had never been able to say the three words she most wanted to hear. At best he might allude to an emotion, “baby, you know how I feel,” but his glancing attempts could not appease the insecurities that formed in her heart. The day he told her he had received an offer and that he would be leaving, she responded “stay with me…” There was no sentence he could speak, no grammar that he was able to command capable of expressing his desires, and again, all he could say was “baby, you know how I feel,” but she doubted.
The day Journey left, he told her he would call. He told her they would work something out, that they would speak to each other again. From June through August He picked up his phone, as if she might sense it and call him from the other end. Not knowing what to say, he just starred at it waiting. He never spoke to Delilah again.
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