Grey

Grey was always sending me strange little messages at the most random of times. I kept them on my phone. I still haven’t the heart to delete them. Sometimes, I just sit on my own and read through them all, trying to remember the day I received them and how I’d felt at the time, and how I’d responded and what had happened after that.

The thing about remembering one little thing is that it often comes back to you with a lot of other things. Just when you think you can’t possibly remember, one little detail of a memory sticks out, and then the rest comes crashing down on you like a wave, threatening to suck you under and drown you as you hopelessly struggle to fill your lungs with air.

I read through old text messages from Grey really quite a lot. People keep telling me that it’s doing me no good, that I should just delete them. But deleting those messages would be like deleting Grey from my memory, in a way, even though I know she’ll never really leave, and will always be with me in some way. I don’t want to do it. I can’t. I’m not ready to let go of her. I don’t know if I’ll ever be. I guess you don’t realize just how many memories you have with someone until you can’t make them anymore.

One message of hers always drags me back to that rainy day on the first of October. Her message was simply an address, and I remember the moment when I received it, how odd it had seemed. I had wondered momentarily if it had even been intended for me. So I didn’t respond to the message. I just got into my car and drove to the address she’d sent me.

An ice-cream parlor.

I remember staring at the peeling paint on the front of the store, which was tucked away in between two other busy restaurants, but still, it seemed haunted in a way. I don’t even know if that’s really the best way to describe it. It just looked so out of place. Just like Grey.

I found her inside, a bowl of vanilla ice-cream in front of her. I sat down next to her in the booth and just looked at her, and she turned to look at me, the spoon hanging from her mouth, trapped between her lips. She smiled and took the spoon out of her mouth, handing me another.

I took the spoon but just looked at her, still. I was confused, to say the very least. She just kept smiling in that way that she often did, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright. And I ate that ice-cream with her in silence and when we’d finished she told me that she only ate ice-cream when it was raining and I’d laughed because that was odd and she was odd and I could feel myself falling hopelessly in love with her.

I pushed her hair behind her ear and kissed her then, the taste of vanilla ice-cream lingering on our lips. And she just looked at me, still smiling, and I smiled back at her, completely infatuated and falling much too fast.

That moment means so much to me. I think it’s because that was the day when I finally admitted to myself that I wanted Grey, and I wanted her to be mine, and I finally decided that I’d tell her that. One day, if I ever found the nerve.