On the shoals

Last night West Coast called out of the blue.

I was out with a group of friends when the phone rang, and I hopped over feet and bags and chair legs as I ran to find a relatively quiet spot where I could hear him.

"Sounds like you're at a party," he said. "You should get back to it."

"Not as such -- it's the people I like to try to meet on Thursday. I think I've told you about them. It's okay, we can talk a little while."

He sounded tired, down, and oddly uncomfortable, like he didn't want to be talking to me at all. I wondered why he had called in the first place.

I spent the rest of the night wondering why we weren't in the same place, occupying the same bed. The way he had originally begged me to consider. The way we had planned.

I used to be irritated by books about doomed relationships -- you know, the ones where there doesn't seem to be any real obstacle to the protagonists' being together save for their own strange inability to be together. The ones where both people insist they love each other and can't live without each other, and then . . . do. Now that I'm in one of those relationships, I can empathize. That doesn't mean I understand it any better than I ever did. I honestly don't know what is keeping us apart. It's the damnedest thing.