Three Weeks

When he remembered he would wear Calvin Klein cologne. When he remembered. Most of the time he just smelled like Suave body wash and Gain detergent--the flings that came in the flowery pink container. I knew because I used the same ones. He forgot to eat, forgot to sleep, while he was studying. He could stare at an equation for hours on end, which was fine because I'd spend those hours staring at him. He had blue eyes that he insisted were grey. But they were the hazy kind of blue that the sky turned before a late August thunderstorm. The kind of blue that looked like the ocean that would swallow you whole if you weren't careful--the riptide your mother warned you about.
Sometimes he looked like a crazy person; a full fledged lunatic. Three in the morning with his wavy blonde hair all sorts of disheveled, pencil behind his ear and another gripped between his teeth, shoulders slumped in concentration, staring at his computer screen. He was mesmerizing. I would stay quiet for fear of derailing his train of thought but there would be these absolutely perfect moments when he would look up at me, smile a small crooked smile, and his gaze would soften to show some of the smile lines around his lips--to remind me that he knew how to be happy.
Everyone saw him as cold, harsh, all wrong for me. They tell me I'm better off because I needed someone more relaxed, loving, warm; if we'd stayed together I'd be lonely. But the moments I've chosen to hold on to are the ones that no one else got a chance to see; the moments that make me weep when I think of how flawless and pure they were. We were both so driven; so harsh--like pieces of steel or sandpaper grating against one another. We pushed one another; we looked out for one another. We held each other when it got too rough. The grain of the sandpaper fell away, turned us into silk, gently caressing one another until we relaxed. We were so much the same.
I hold in my heart our first date: when we went to see the Minion movie, the first night we spent together: after I met his family, the nights he would put his homework aside for an hour to have dinner with me after work, the last night I saw him before the break-up.
There were a million other perfect moments in between, but these are the ones I won't ever be able to forget.
It was a Monday night, sometime around eleven o'clock before I even got to his house. We were both exhausted. Somehow I felt it coming. I came home that night and I wrote about it. I didn't want to let go when I hugged him. It was the last time his arms wrapped around me. I wanted that goodbye kiss to last forever. It's perfectly sealed and preserved in my mind. Where we were standing in his kitchen, what we were wearing--his shirt was the exact color of his eyes. How it felt so safe and so warm in his arms when everyone kept reminding me he was cold and jagged. The way he looked at me with his head tilted to the side, eyes soft, like he absolutely adored me. The last time I looked into his eyes. The last time someone looked at me like they loved me.
Tonight marks three weeks since the break-up, and I haven't seen him since that Monday night. We didn't have any of each other's things so we didn't need to do that awkward dance where we exchange the things we loved that weren't ours. We haven't spoken in over a week and we do this awkward back and forth thing on social media that is super transparent. It dawns on me daily that I'm never going to stop loving him. It has dawned on me that it might be the same for him. I'm not okay. I'm not going to be for a long time.
I wish I couldn't remember that last kiss so well. I wish I couldn't remember the nights we spent together when he'd pull me into his chest and kiss my cheek. I wish I could forget him whispering against my lips that he loved me. I wish I could forget that his car always smelled like a box of Crayola crayons and that his favorite candy was Swedish Fish and the way he spoke German the first night we met. I wish I could forget how he held a pencil like a toddler, how he insisted on holding the door for me, and how he complained about his squeaky breaks and warped rotors (I still imagine I hear them outside every so often). I wish I could forget all of these things, but they're etched into my memory in the same way that my name is. They're part of me now.
It has been three weeks since I've felt at home.