Creative Writing Challenge 2.7 - Fading

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I was 22 years old the first time I fell in love.

I’d finished my degree a semester early, and took the time before graduate school to go find myself. That’s what we called it in those days, as if your self were a concrete entity lost somewhere in the mists, just waiting to be discovered.

I suppose what I was really doing was creating myself. But I’m getting distracted now, aren’t I?

22 years old, and I’d just stepped off of a bus that took me to New Orleans with a friend who wanted to do Mardi Gras. Such a long bus ride, you know. We thought we’d sleep through it, but we had too much energy. They say it’s wasted on the young, and our bus driver must have agreed. He threatened to leave us by the side of the road for laughing too much.

As I recall, that just made us laugh. Quietly, of course.

That city felt different than anything I’d ever known. Something in the air, a sense that I’d stepped into a world that only existed for itself. It was warm and thick with music that reached through your soul and let you know this could be your home, if you wanted it.

My friend wanted coffee and beignets. He brought both to our table. He asked where we were from, and we made all the proper small talk. But he wasn’t a waiter. Nobody in that city is just a waiter. He was a musician, and he gave us each a flyer cheaply printed on blue paper.

Come see me tonight, he said.

Something in his smile kept me from throwing it away.

The bar was two blocks off the tourist path, with no technicolor drink specials to lure us in. We didn’t care, we were there for the music. Well, maybe just for the musician. He was easy to spot across the half empty room, and when we said hello he told the bartender to give us as much bourbon and Coke as we could drink before he took the stage.

He was talented. I can’t tell you much about music, but I can tell you about happiness, and the liquor in my blood let the notes in deep. I told him he was good, and he told me to meet him for lunch the next day.

If my friend was jealous, she didn’t let it show. I think she was happy to have a tour guide. He showed us the best parts of the city and a few of the worst, and when it was time for me to leave he asked me to stay.

We had six months together. Young love, summer love, the kind of love that didn’t worry about the future because it already knew there was none. I lay on his bed drenched in the wet August heat and again, he asked me to stay.

He already knew the answer. Obligations, promises, a school that had accepted me and a life patiently waiting back home. I couldn’t stay.

The lie came out easily, and when he said that he understood, I was grateful that the rest of it could remain unspoken.

I could have stayed. I didn’t want to.

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Eva finished tapping out the words on the tablet that would convert them to speech. Her eyes were misty as she looked up at Charles.

Her son set aside the syringe he had been preparing and reached down to stroke his mother’s cheek. His words were soft, hesitant, but carried behind them a longing curiosity and need to know.

“Do you ever regret it?”

“No,” Eva typed. “If I’d stayed, I never would have met your father. I never would have had you.”

Charles nodded. He retrieved the dose of morphine that would be large enough to let his mother rest, and took a deep breath.

She lay back against the pillows, sending one last message before stretching out her arm and closing her eyes with a smile.

“But maybe I’ll see him on the other side.”

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Written for Task #7 of the Second Creative Writing Challenge run by @steemfluencer!

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