What Remains

It had been a "good day" until then. By good, I mean numb. I mean functional. I mean a day with minimal sobbing spells and no flashes of anger at the impudence of inanimate tools in my vicinity. I had gotten out of bed without excess drama. I'd made food that was acceptably edible to forego any gag reflex. Bathed, even. Dressed. And had settled into a mindless mill of work distractions with only the occasional blip of the sureality of present circumstances.

Had been.

Until Cherise - impeccably wrapped in all the ghosts that haunted me - materialized in my doorway with a battered box in her arms.

That unmistakable tingle about my temples and cheeks danced across my face as I turned to see her. I reached through my desk, pawing for my pill case, trying to maintain some semblance of calm.

The cursory discomfort between us so deeply saturated with all that was missing: it flipped my stomach and wore into my clenched jaw.

We exchanged meaningless inquiries into each other's well-being and answered each other with perfunctory lies.

A pause. And then, Cherise nodded to the box.

"I'm cleaning out Rob's things... I found these," her voice unfurled through space betraying no emotion.

A junk drawer of a box. Pieces of crumpled paper. Various fliers and tickets and coasters. Random mementos I didn't fully place on a quick glance.

My brow furrowed enough to betray my hesitancy.

"Your notes. To or with him, I mean. A few of those word games you used to do. Some tickets and awards I'm honestly not sure what all this is, but they seem to have involved you, so thought it best to let you decided to keep or toss"

I found my blessed case and swallowed the pill dry, gagging slightly as it scraped against my throat.

"Oh. Thanks." My voice shook with a faint sense of dread, imagining the memories lurking in that box. I received it and placed it on the far corner of the desk hoping it would get bored and wander away.

"I didn't read them." Her voice a waver above monotone. "The notes. Except to see your name."

"Oh, uh, well I can't imagine there's anything particularly private," my voice kept no pristine levels, instead of croaking across the spectrum in an awkward splay. "But, thank you..."

I toyed with some follow up inquiry. Something painfully impotent and redundant "How have you been holding up?" perhaps.

Or else:

"Did you get rid of everything? What happened to that burgundy sweater that smelled like cookies? Will you keep his books?... Are your handsome lovers helping you clean? Does one of them get a promotion? How does all that work?" More flavor, but somehow not the right tone.

 All words caught in my throat at a distinct grunt.

 I blushed and repeated, "thank you." In a tone that may well have screamed "now go!" I had about 15 minutes before the migraine fully descended and an hour or two before the medication would chill it back out. I rubbed my forehead ineffectually.

Cherise remained.

"You were special to him," a deeper note and a minor tritone sparked some sense of disapproval in the echoes tearing through my brain..

The space throbbed with silence as her words settled. I had nothing to say. Nothing. Nothing except that increasing screaming desire for her to go. Nothing except a completely unearned but omnipresent layer of rueful inadequacy that this magnificent woman always brought out in me.

"He was a dear, dear friend. And mentor. I owe him my career and then some." I muttered mechanically. They flailed under Cherise's gaze like fish on the hull of a boat.

"Indeed." She raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, betraying more expression that she'd ever deigned to grant before. "And then some.." her final consonant dragged out into the space in front of her coiling itself into ellipses for unasked questions.

 "Oh, um, I didn't mean... We never...Nothing ever happened between us." I trailed off in a dead stare, feeling weaker and more exposed for the unprompted, nonsensical denial.

Worse, although utterly factually accurate, it felt deeply false.

****

A hand brushing my hair to remove a stray leaf.

Fingers brushing palms or wrists when exchanging objects. Two fingers surgically lifting a necklace from my collarbone to inspect the stone. A hand on my arm to steady my step or punctuate a joke. A squeeze of the shoulder. A back against my chest in a crowded line. A chest against my back on an elevator. The endless contact of jostling. A piece of lint from a suit. The endless scents and sounds and glances of a million microseconds of mutual being.

Every moment of life surges with intimacies unnoticed and untaken.

I hadn't meant to take those, but I had. At every opportunity.. With avarice.

My mind concocting mosaics of stolen moments, sculpting new experience and unfathomable communions with this man, my friend and her husband.

A hug at a moment of celebration. One that came too quickly for me to turn my head, leaving it squarely buried against a pleasantly rough cheek. My lips, retracted politely from his jaw, still stung with his sweat. My bones mapping the geography of his jaw, cheeks, nose... those lips dizzyingly near my ear, filling it with breath. Our bodies slowly adjusting to the curves and motions of the other, settling into mutual space that knew no boundaries between one to the other.

 I had memorized the bacteria on his breath, the distinct sequence of flowering pheremones, and their points of origin. How they mixed with scents of street and sudor and meals passed.

The curves of body, strength of grip, imprints fingers and their distinct callouses, arms, legs, and belly. A slight flutter as my eyelashes palped his skin. Muscles dancing tiny waltzes against each other with serpentine subtlety.

Without intention my mind had ordered these bits of data, filling in the blanks and transporting sensations of skin from place to place. Titillated by tapestries of memory and projection, I had led his lips to mine a million times, more so as his absence spread its chasm between us. His hands had explored my ennervated body with free range.

There was much left to the imagination. Things my mind declined to supplement out of some sense of propriety.

 But to say I never knew the taste of him. Never lost my body in his...

That I had experienced "nothing" of him. This was laughably false.

Had he done the same with me? The brunt of his affection had been overwhelmingly fraternal. If he had, would it be different? Would the mutually private hoarding of moments - aligned in tacit data gathering - bridge some gap between the real and unreal and truly belie my statement? Turn "nothing" into "something." It was irrelevant. Eternally unknowable. Probably for the best, though the question had seared itself into my brain.

The biggest something had always been chaste but more penetrating than flesh or earth. As if his neurons fired in my brain and vice versa. His laughter escaping from my lungs. We were tight in ways lover can never be and I knew what loss could come with the intimacies of flesh. Yet, my body still envied my soul on that account.

****

My face mirrored her marbled features fastidiously. I wasn't worthy of my sense of loss, I felt this with a single flash of her gaze. My colleague, my buddy. He wasn't mine to grieve at such depths. I got that.

Cherise settled her stoic face on me with its inscrutable distaste. Only her legendary equipoise limited the camber of her eyebrows and the hint of sneer I'd seen so many times before. She had never expressed much warmth towards me, and I had never fully grasped the specifics of my failings.

Though I never asked Rob directly, I took remarks that she didn't tend to get on with other women as intended reassurance. Best I understood, there was weakness about me that felt inexcusable to her. The final comment: Rob could do better.

A desperate anger at her perpetual disdain submerged itself in unnamed waves of guilt for things I'd never done, for things that were never even taboo by their own terms. It was a guilt that made no sense, but that guilt - like all the feelings - had tightened its grasp in grief. It bound the grief to me inextricably in ways that kept him close. I clung to it with all the rest.

She laughed and said nothing. My path still blocked, I focused my eyes on the exit behind her. It blurred and the areas around it shot with aura.

"I'm ... I'm sorry. I had thought you both discussed ... your uh partners?"

****

I first met Cherise a few months after I'd started working with Rob. He and I were grabbing drinks after work. Or in our case, soda: Rob, the son of an alcoholic, and me of the perpetual migraines. We had just settled into our second rounds, when my eyes stumbled into those of a tall, exquisitely elegant woman who was a handful of very formative years my senior. Krinkly dark curls swept themselves up with an effortless professionalism, and hints of divinity. Impeccably understated clothes breezily hugged her slim but distinct curves. She was quietly beautiful and openly formidable.On her arm was a mutually elegant man of about her age. He mostly served as a mirror to his companion, making little impression of his own.

They were walking towards our table, I realized. My stomach clenched.

 As they approached, Rob followed my stare and a smile spread wide across his face with infinitely comforting ease.

He proudly presented Cherise, his legendary wife. Politely introduced a man whose name I never bothered to memorize. And me, of course, the fledgling colleague.

Cherise shook my hand with a a brisk efficiency and a cursory politeness. I was thoroughly in awe, and staggered through some pleasantries before it was clear her attention had drifted to the men.

The encounter was stately and slightly uncomfortable. It ended quickly as became the pattern going forward. Three years of parallel socializing at endless events, and our interactions largely boiled down to stale pleasantries and Cherise rapidly drifting her focus elsewhere. Despite myself, I longed for this regal woman's approval, and became more flustered as the desire grew.

A noted contrast to my easy and vastly fecund interactions with Rob.

Rob took me in every dimension of existence, potential and brightly colored vivid being. What he found, I honed, eagerly. Growing in every dimension with voracious appetite. I intrigued and amused a little extra in a world that was intriguing and amusing.

Professional connection bled into humorous exchange. Which bled into extracurricular pursuits. Then into the fine mechanics of the world itself. Our working relationship took on added dimensions of cordiality and intimacy until we were rapidly inseparable. My friend. So undeniably attractive and charming, but not in a way that left me tongue tied and neurotic. Instead it set me at ease and made me feel more myself. The exact opposite of my fully unsuccessful courtship of Cherise's affections.

Later that evening, I referred to the elegant man as Cherise's brother, and Rob had laughed with that signature scrunch of his forehead and eyes

"Oh no, he" (whoever he was, Rob referred to him by name) " is one of Cherise's boyfriends. Nice enough guy. Sort of pretentious. She can obviously do better," he winked and blushed a little as I blushed in my error. He punched my shoulder lightly and shrugged, setting me immediately at ease the way did. The subject flitted gracefully to easier topics.

No more was made of it at the time, though of course the details elaborated in conversation as we grew closer.

It was too early in our acquaintance for the hint of openness to offer me any particular lure or enticement, but no doubt my awareness of that fact lingered on as the occasional intimacy broached ambiguity. Yet, somehow, as I had admitted freely to Cherise, "nothing" ever had happened outside of my fecund imaginings.

Nothing? Again that silly word.

Three years of connection, tutelage, and term-redefining friendship. That was everything. The other "things," well... distracting fantasies. detritus that continued to subsume everything real in grief. A waste. But real, too. It was what it was. A dimension of longing that I can never extract from my story of us.

****

"Of course, " she waved her hand. "We talked about our partners. Even if he hadn't told me, I suppose I'd have known. Rob wasn't one for keeping secret. I hadn't meant to imply." A pause, and I thought perhaps she'd relent, but then she reeled back with a sidehook: "Though why not really? Are you too good to share?" A velvety laugh painted the comment as more humorous than her tone had suggested.

I blushed in irritation. "I don't really think... we were coworkers. He was my mentor. We were friends. It wasn't. It never came up."

This was also technically true, though I could have pointed to moments where I'd no longer dared to guess if we were or weren't discussing just that. Hope colors all things even past death, it would turn out.

Cherise remained inert.

***

Cherise's date nights often became "friend nights" for Rob, and thus for us. A chance to ditch the suits and the work-hour intensity and just goof off. At first Rob often seemed anxious, checking his phone, fiddling with any manual object in his purview. "Distract me!" he'd order, and I would indulge with my whole heart with strings of nonsense and shiny things.

We had a regular karaoke battle royale, all the more exquisite for our utter lack of talent. His lush baritone had all the timbre of heaven, but with ecstatic disregard for tone or rhythm. Mine was pure bacchic caterwaul. Our duets could melt glass, but the wholeheartedness of the affair was at least endearing to the other patrons. Afterwards, we'd find an all night diner, talking heatedly about the relative merits of song lyrics and other more fantastical nonsense. Other nights, we'd sneak out to the docks and collapse on them, staring at the sky and hearing the water glub glub against the wooden structures under us.

And there, staring at the sky, our most personal conversations: family, hopes, dreams, fears, love. And sometimes, sometimes, Cherise.

I don't suppose their relationship was particularly odd any more than all relationships are. But of course, it remained slightly to the side of the norm I'd known and of particular interest to me.

In Rob's words, one particularly laconic evening:

Cherise and I married young. At the time we planned to have children immediately, but that didn't pan out so well. Two years of pretty rough IVF and several early losses. When Cherise miscarried in her fifth month, it was devastating. 

Those years, I did everything I could to lessen the load, and in some ways we were closer then than any other time. I lived for her. But there was no way for me to take a better share of that burden. The shots and hormones and tests were constant. The emotional pain. I could only imagine how exhausted she was from how worn down I felt. I hated it. 

I'd thought giving up would be a relief for both of us. That we would rediscover each other and use our recovered energy and money to build something fresh. Sex for the sake of sex. Love for the sake of love. Vacations whenever we wanted. At nobody's beck and call. By the end, I couldn't hide that was excited to declare ourselves childless and start over. 

Cherise finally gave in. As expected, she recovered a ton of energy, but it all went into work. The emotional connection we'd built in those years of trying: she froze it off as too painful. She flinched when I touched her most times, and thinly tolerated my attempts to romance. That lost child was like a canyon between us. 

I had a lot of time all the sudden. And a lot of loneliness that I was determined to deal with while waiting out what I thought of as Cherise's mourning period. I went to therapy. I took classes at night in whatever I could find - macrame, guitar, art, Ethiopian cooking, pottery. Didn't matter. I joined clubs. I went to any lecture on off hours. I stayed sane. Cherise and I breezed along in parallel lives.

 After a little while, I met a really engrossing woman in my chess club. Brilliant and charming and damned cute. I remember, the way she made eye contact or shook hands gave me full body warm shivers. 

We talked during club. After club. Outside of club. She loved poetry and - reading it with her - it all started to hit on a visceral level. Sane didn't feel good enough anymore. I was that thirsty man in the desert, taking in years of suspended enthusiasm and discovery and cherishing. Of course, I began to fall for this brilliant beautiful woman. My fantasies began to drift to her, and for the first time I wondered what it might be like to be free to pursue her. 

But I couldn't imagine it either. Cherise had been my partner since we were teens. We'd been through everything imaginable together. Besides which, I couldn't imagine adding to the strain and loss with my selfishness. 

And ultimately, I was still waiting for her. Waiting for the mourning period to pass. Waiting for us to reconnect. 

Overwhelmed, I admitted to Cherise that I'd developed feelings for this other woman. I was expecting reproach. Or anger. Or maybe - deep in my heart - that jealousy might shock her out of herself and we might rebuild. But permission if not that. 

She looked very pale, but didn't say anything. 

I swore that I loved her more than I ever had. That I longed for her still. That my growing affection for this other woman had no bearing on my love for her. That, if anything, it made it easier to appreciate what Cherise was, because the needs she couldn't meet were being met. 

Riding the crescendo of my monologue, I proclaimed that people could love and be attracted to several people at once and maybe that was what I needed then. That I would never lie to her or betray her. But that  I needed to have that contact, that love. If not from her, then somewhere...

 I didn't mean to threaten, but I realized how much I meant what I'd said.

Cherise listened this far, then stood and ran out the door. She was gone a couple of days and I thought that was the end. But then, there she was again. She shrugged and said, "well maybe you're right. Maybe we aren't meant to be with just one person only. Sure."

My heart stopped. I wasn't really expecting that. I immediately felt sick with suspicion that she had been with somebody else those days. Perhaps even before. But what could I do? I bit my tongue and solemnly agreed. 

She came home with a book or two, emitting a strange new sort of energy. We started talking, really talking, in ways we hadn't for months. We made ground rules. What was permissible. What was a line. How we'd deal with jealousy. What we'd share and what should be left to discretion. The exercise alone was exciting. The practice filled me with dread. 

In a week or two, I found myself haplessly following through on my words. It terrified me, but at the same time  I couldn't go back now. Devastating as it may be, any change was a necessary improvement. 

A beautiful woman like Cherise had no difficulty finding an interested guy. She merely flicked through a mental record of the men who'd smiled in just such a way, and located a suitable sample. It was brisk and simple and I cringed at how easily it was done. He was handsome, of course. A few years younger. A small bit less successful. I felt nauseous thinking about what my wife had already imagined doing with this man, or perhaps what she'd already done. But I couldn't back out. 

We chose our night. 

I returned to chess club with Cherise's encouragement. The woman and I connected with sparks and steam as always. She beat me soundly several times, as always. And after group, we went out. And the chemistry was real as always. She said something clever. I said something amusing. She laughed into my arm and my whole body blossomed. I took that leap across the void with a deep breath and...

Since we were both laying down I could only hear Rob's shrug scrape lightly against the wood of the dock. But I felt it cut its way through my body.

Objectively it was good. In my mind, though, I felt every touch as Cherise's lover feeling - touching - Cherise. I mimicked their amors more than experiencing mine. Acting out this consensual betrayal that I had set in motion. I saw my partner's body and face as ephemeral masks that faded into Cherise's. I performed my role with an increasing terror and disgust, but couldn't stop. Couldn't reverse this moment that I had engineered. 

 When it was over, I made a weak excuse, ran to the car and sobbed. I went home to an empty house, threw up, and cried more. 

Cherise, however, came home glowing. Revelation. It wasn't so much about the man, she said, but about how he saw her, or didn't. A beautiful powerful force, with no scars. No blood. No rips and tears from a hundred fruitless treatments. Nothing sad or broken. No awkward teen depressions or failures. Pure erotic energy. It woke up dormant parts of her she'd forgotten. She felt more alive. 

I felt increasingly lost, and cried in her arms in silence. She held me in ways she had never done before. Stronger, firmer, and more lovingly. By morning, we were filled with good fresh and clean lust we hadn't shared since our teen years.

 She got more radiant. More playful. And so sensual. She showered me with affection. And when we talked about her lover - she had seen him a few more times - it still killed me, but the intimacy was also energizing. I learned things. So many things. And I felt privileged to be her confidante. And then, always, the physical intimacy that followed. 

It was a relief, when Cherise found a few more lovers. Suddenly my role felt more distinct. They seemed in competition with each other, while I held on to my role as husband. 

The jealousy still hits crazy hard, but the change is undeniable. And our connection feels deeper than before. Her lovers are nice guys. They do things I don't. They round me out, I guess. And I get so more of her than I had when she was all mine. If people broaden their marriage to bring children into it, was this so different? You know what I mean?"

"And you? Did you and the chess club woman ...?" I was embarrassed at how transparent my question felt..

 I'd never presumed to envy Rob's dogged devotion to Cherise. Nor could I imagine their sorties with anything more than a certain appreciation of like to like beauty. It seemed only natural. Cherise was  a formative force whose self was entirely etched into his, and though her disapproval cut deep, I was otherwise inclined to admire her.

Nor, in particular, had I felt stirrings of envy for the occasional date Rob wandered off with. But this other woman's mention had riled something deep and painful in me that I was ill prepared to contemplate. Who was she? Was she still teasing him with her deft end games and shivery glances? Did he still blossom in her touch? Did she still delight him so fantastically? The lines of poetry he quoted: were they theirs? Were they devoted to her memory? My skin stung thinking of it.

Yeah, I tried seeing the woman from chess club again. but it was different. Tainted. The connection we'd had was severed, to my dismay. I'd destroyed it somehow. A shame. I know it had nothing to do with her, but what we did... how I experienced it. There was no coming back from that for me. I was never great at chess anyways, so haven't played since.

"Oh" was all I had to say. Feeling his disappointment blended into my relief.

After a few similar experiences, I've stopped looking for women who attract me emotionally or intellectually. No matter the woman, my mind always grafts Cherise's face and body to hers. In moments of passion, I still inhabit her lovers and reenact what I've heard or imagined they'd done with her. A level of excruciating pain mixed into the pleasure, but there's pleasure. Some women are equally happy to imagine some lover of theirs with me. Some women just looking for a body. Some women don't mind being used or are too simple to expect or inspire anything beyond a basic lust. I lose nothing and take nothing from them that way.

It works. As well as anything. For us. Not everyone I'm sure. 

This must sound kind of sad and strange to you? 

"No. I mean yes a bit. But romantic. Very romantic," I said. And very sad, echoed my mind.

"I'm so glad you're my friend," he said. "Not many people I can feel comfortable talking with like this." He reached out across the dock and punched at my shoulder with a jostle.

"I'm glad, too,"  I murmured. And I was. Deeply. Painfully even. "More than you'll ever know."

****

"It's too easy to ruin a friendship when you mix those things in," I exhaled in a plaintive voice that finally hit some honesty.

I ached to leave the office. To run past Cherise into the street. To crumple alone in my bedroom with the sobs forming in my chest and give in to the throbbing of my brain. Short of that, to just scream. But there were no words and no air. Cheeks blazing with a swirl of hurt and embarrassment. I felt this elegant terror was chastising me like I was a child who'd passed a note in class that I'd yet to see. Deathly afraid the note might be read aloud before I even knew what it said."

She moved towards me and reached out as if through water.

My shoulder smarted under her surgically precise touch.

"Poor kid," she said with a tone bridging contempt and compassion. "You were all braced for years to get your sweet little heart broken and instead your friend was ... ripped from existence." her voice caught as she continued. "And his crazy widow's chasing you around trying to tear the last bits of him from your head to feed her misery." She missed the point, but something hit. Ripped ... away. That was it.

****

This was just the kind of guy Rob was: After learning about my migraines, Rob quickly made migraine mitigation and eradication his business. He was never overbearing or paternalistic, but always quietly adjusting the surroundings to minimize triggers and ease episodes.

The office and surrounding areas were swept for loud noises or offensive scents. All potential offences were delicately eradicated. Instead the office smelled of fresh lavender. Rob had started picking up bouquets from a corner store after having read that it helped somehow.

Within a year and change, Rob could tell they were coming as quickly as I could. He would turn off the lights, declare quiet time for the office, and then lead me to my little migraine sanctuary. He had set up an air mattress and pillows in his office for me to rest while I waited for medication to kick in. If deadlines were pressing he'd cover my fires along with his while I recovered.

When things were less busy, he'd stealthily sneak into the quiet space: offering ice for my neck; pressing fingers into to mine searching for acupressure points he'd read about somewhere or other; or maybe gently rubbing my neck and temples, because that just felt like it should help.

He never found a miracle cure, but his care felt more miraculous than any recovery. What were once episodes of agonizing self-loathing were exquisite moments shocked through with warmth and intimacy. Some small sliver of me grinned when I felt the aura set in. Hands itching for that tender prodding. The quiet. The unobtrusive presence and unprecedented concern, a concern so thick I could bury myself in it. A heavy creamy caring that laid no claim to my pain, saw no weakness, judged nothing, and was simply present. In tune with me. So incredibly there.

His hands buzzing through my brain. Sending shockwaves of inimitable tenderness and warmth through my body with warm-chills. Slowly pulling down from my temples to my neck and simply stopping for a minute as if he were attempting so suck the throbs out into his fingers.

After his death, the migraines came more often, as if my brain sought to summon him back to life with its agony. At times I'd lay back and hold my own hand, letting his work through mine, striving to smell the echoes of lavender mixed with his soft breath. The pain was grounding. I placed myself in the the care of an abyss. I felt the nothing more deeply than ever. And yet... these have been times I felt him most.

****

Tears squeezed their way through the barriers, heavy and burning, ripping my breath from me as they fell. A gravitational vortex about the center of my face pulled every feature inwards. My chest fought boulders to pull air back. A whimper escaped my lips - to my disdain. I'd crumbled into the strange majestic woman who'd haunted my years with her tacit distaste. I felt weak, as if I'd ceded something precious I couldn't fathom.

In slow motion I collapsed into her pristine arms, smelling a perfume that had once lingered over Rob's own bouquets. It stung in concentrated quantities, but soothed at the same time. She was an integral part of the friend I'd loved. My deepest core clung to hers.

"Yeah, my fucking friend." I sobbed without the energy for the reproach implied. "He's gone and I don't.... It burns. I can't... I can't breathe..." I fell into her shirt. The last scents of Rob spinning my head with grief and vertigo.

"I know." She whispered. A soft moment. I felt myself take comfort in this unexpected place, feeling lithe fingers cradling my head so tenderly. My head and eyes throbbed and waves of nausea passed through me, pulling me closer into her embrace. I imagined Rob sobbing in these same arms. I wondered where he'd buried his head.Whether she'd held his head and rocked slightly the way she did now. I thought, with a pang, of the child they'd never had.

Cherise spoke softly now, almost trance-like. In minor tones that sank in deep.

"I miss... I have missed so much.. There were so many details that just fell into the background. And now I try to remember how he held his fork. How he smiled. The turn of his voice when he laughed. And I know I knew it once, but now it's a blur..."

She stroked my hair like a mother chasing away her children's nightmares.

"The way you inhaled him. Drinking him in detail by detail and swishing it all around your palate like a fine fucking whiskey.. You have more of him now. It's like I feel him on your skin."

Cherise pressed me back, hands tight around my shoulder to meet my eyes. I'd never seen her face contorted with emotion. My mind focused on the little wrinkled in her forehead, telling secret stories of pain and passion.

"Please. Anything. I'm not ready to forget. I'm not ready to stop knowing him.."

I was too addled and air-hungry to respond or even fully register. What did I have to say that wasn't laughable? What did I have to say that would do anything for her?"

"... Please. I'm losing him by shreds every day." Her voice raised in urgency.

I didn't have words and I didn't understand anything except this gaping painful absence . The loss that had taken its own tangible form. Each flickering memory dragging itself through my gut with barbs and fire.

"I'm sorry. My head..." my knees buckled slightly for emphasis.

Cherise cleared her throat and assorted her face to its typical configuration. In a quiet mutter: "Migraines, right?" She intoned the words with a hint of annoyance. "Rob used to make me scour myself clean of before coming to the office." A memory. In that annoyed little laugh, I could tell I'd given her one detail at least. She looked down. "My perfume must be... I'm sorry. I should leave."

I blinked apologetically, as I stifled a gag reflex. "I'm so sorry Cherise." I never said her name. It felt odd on my tongue and spread her presence through my veins. "He loved you like you wouldn't believe."

"No," she responded, settling me down in my chair. "No, you don't owe me anything. I'm sorry to disturb you. I'm... sorry... for... well, feel better."

****

"Jesus, kid, there are children present. If you need a private moment with those strawberries, they got a back room upstairs."

"No, no try one. They are amazing. They are so good. Oh my god. I'm not ashamed of my love for the fruits of heaven" I held the strawberry to my lips, pausing to drown in its scent of sun-baked stupor. Rubbing the lizardy outer edge across my lips with a faint smile.

Rob, glowing a faint bronze in the sun, covered his eyes in his hands with exaggerated indignance. I continued to nibble at the strawberry in my hand, letting its juice meander down my cheek with a summer indolence.

Elbowing my scandalized companion: "Oh just stop it. It's impossible to eat strawberries in a non-racy way. Apples, sure. Strawberries, though. I defy anyone to try."

Rob grabbed the two largest strawberries and shoved them - stems and all - in his mouth, juice pouring down his face like the blood of fresh kill. His face contorted with effort as he gnawed, drooling red bits occasionally onto his plate.

"Oh god, I'm so turned on right now," the irony in my voice anxiously understating the actual veracity of the statement. His knee had been tangential to mine for the last several minutes, occasionally exchanging molecules with mine.

"Yeah, well you've been snogging that strawberry for a good twenty minutes. I imagine so. Thank god they opted against the chocolate covered ones." He wiped his maw with a napkin.

"Oh lord, that was an option? This party let me down. I'm outta here." I didn't move. Couldn't have with all my will.Not while that knee hovered so near.

"Oh good, can you grab some pizzas or something? A potluck starring vegan gluten free 'mac and cheeze' is pretty clearly punishment... Wait, you mean outta here like the party or is this grounds for quitting?"

"I haven't decided yet. There's still time to make this right."

"No, you should quit. We've been stifling your genius. Have you considered Multi Level Marketing?"

"Do they have chocolate covered strawberries?"

"If they do, I'm in."

"Shake." I reached out my hand and his engulfed mine with a gentle firmness, releasing too soon with a final pump and squeeze.

"So not to intrude on your thing with the strawberry, but am I gonna meet that dude of yours or no?"

"This strawberry is my boyfriend. We're gonna get married and have teeny little baby berries. Wanna be the dude of honor and/or godfather?"

"So, I don't getta meet your boy today?"

"Nope. Boy's not my anything. It wasn't... it wasn't strawberries. You gots a plus-one lurking around here?"

"Stag. Cherise is on some work trip, and the blackberries I wanted to ask were all sold out at the store, so...good. Bros and sisses before boys and misses. Like I always say."

"That was tortured. Let's never speak of it again."

"Buds before duds... and exceptionally lovely wives who are already on a plane to Memphis with their most tedious lover. The doesn't scan as well."

"Here, bud, maul another strawberry."

"Thanks but the last stem is still stuck in my throat a bit."

"Rough, dude. I think I saw a toilet snake upstairs. Think that'll work?"

"I'm good. I'm good. I like it there. I am hoping to grow a little strawberry bush in my esophagus. Bush? Tree?...

 "Hang up, you got something... here hold still." He reached for the corner of my cheek and dragged it heavily with his thumb. "Dang, that's really on there! I'm gonna have to spit a little... no wait. got it... wait... no, ok. Brace yourself." With greater force, I had to counterweight my head into his hand as he battled with the offender on my cheek. I quietly prayed it would never come off. It did, though, eventually.

"Thanks, man. I didn't need skin anyways. What would I ever do without you?"

"Terrifying thought All that food just accumulating on your face... Well let's hope we never have to find out."

"I'll drink strawberry juice to that." We tapped the tips of two juicy berries together in salute.

 Chewing our strawberries with modest gusto, our gazes turned to the indistinct distance. A saporous silence wove itself around us, slackening our limbs and widening our lungs. The space between our knees melted away, and our adjacent arms settled into each other. We sighed in tandem with a small breeze, letting our weight sink deeply into each other for an eternal second. My hair settling itself on his shoulder, unfurling where my head so desperately yearned to follow. The silence serenading in symphonic strokes. 

At some unknown cue, Rob crossed his leg and leaned back away.

"No question. Gonna have to be friends forever! Don't you think?"

"That'd be cool." I unsunk myself casually, making to reach for another strawberry..

"Wow, that is non-comittal, there." His arm crashed back into mine with a jab.

I shrugged, focusing on my strawberry.

 "Man, I was not ready for this. You not in it for the long haul, pal?"

"I mean... forever... I dunno. A lot can happen in a couple of years, let alone forever. What if your breath gets really really bad? Like really bad? Or a bad hair cut? Plus, what happens if I get an aneurysm tomorrow? You're an atheist right, so pretty much that'd be it. My ghost would be all trying to hang with you and you'd just ignore me and ignore me and ignore me. That doesn't feel very friendly."

"For you, I'd make an exception. I'd get a ouija board app on my phone and harass you constantly. No eternal rest for you. And when I went I'd make sure to have bought me one of those eternal soul things from some cult or other so I could swirl around you wiping ectoplasmic goo off your face or whatever. So there. We're all good."

"Still..." I shrugged with some measure of sincerity.

Rob patted my arm softly, his big crooked smile emitting radiation.

"Nope. Forever. Don't leave me hanging here."

"I really hope so.."

"I know so."

"You better."

"You're stuck with me."

"I better be"

"Shake."

Our hands joined assertively and lingered interwoven, channeling the entire weight of a full body embrace between our palms.

****

I flailed for Cherise's hand as she began to leave. Her thumb reflexively pressed into my palm at some pressure point Rob had always pressed. I drew her in with a desperate reflex, like a dying man divulging his secret crimes. She stumbled slightly, before steadying herself and staring down at my knees.

Grumbling out from my diaphragm, afraid I might vomit, words came instead:

"When he laughed, his voice would sometimes get really high, like a falsetto with a fast staccato kind of quality. His cheeks and neck would get very red and his forehead would squeeze deep lines above his nose. One eye always teared a little so he'd wipe his face and keep his hand on his cheek after, still chuckling...

"He had a sideways smile with the left corner higher than the right. One, just one, dimple. His eyes would get long and wide and the crows feet dove down around his cheeks. It was warm. Really really warm.

"And... I don't know how he held his fork. Like regular I guess. But he insisted on carrying that metal straw with him whenever we went out, and he held that middle finger and thumb while he drank. A little dainty. A sommelier of water. I've never met somebody with such distinct tastes in tap water before..." I was out of voice, but there so much more to say. It roiled around in me like it might burst from my chest if unexpressed.

Cherises had remained somewhat rigid, concentrating deeply as if to conjure up her own parallel memory to confirm my offerings. "Thanks." She stood, still attached to my hand.

I wasn't ready to let go. Cherise sat again, hand consumed in mine. Her tears were discrete. Her posture still composed, but the wrinkle over her brow deepened as she stared at my hand. I tightened my grip. She tightened hers. And we held on.