Silver Springs

Mamie worked late on Thursdays. She waitressed tables until one in the morning and when she walked out for her post-shift cigarette, she seemed surprised to find me there. “You,” she said.

I looked up at her. “Yeah, me.”

She looked uncomfortable but lit her cigarette and stood next to me anyway. “Have you been waiting for me?” she asked.

“Yeah. I got out of the bar not too long ago. Came to see you for a bit.”

She nodded and then paused. “What are you really doing here?” she said.

I could be honest. And I could say that I really just wanted her to come home with me. God, I wanted to touch her again. So I said, “You know why.”

She trembled. “Gunnar, no,” she muttered unsteadily.

I looked at her with hard eyes. “We’re both adults. We can just talk and –it’ll be like old times.”

“It won’t be like old times. And you know it won’t. You’re fucking Jamie–“

I cut her off, “And you’re doing someone else. I get it. Who is he anyway?” I couldn’t help the anger that colored my words.

“That’s none of your business,” she hurled.

“Is that it, though? You’ve moved on?” Moving on was not an option. It just was not fucking possible. I loved her. I had told her every single thing about me and she had done the same and we had accepted it. We had accepted our flaws and our perfections and how could that just go away?

She struggled against tears, “Gunn. You know it’s not like that. It’s not like that at all. But how are we supposed to move on when we just keep following each other? If I go home with you tonight, I fear I might never come back.”

I took her words in and considered them seriously. “But would it be so bad?” I murmured, “To love me and have me love you? We’ll learn. We’ll change.”

She smiled sadly and wiped at the wetness on her cheeks. “And you call me naïve, Gunnar.”

I waited for her. She finished her smoke and just stood there watching the cars go past. “I’m standing at a precipice,” she whispered. I laughed. She always used big words when she was nervous.

Then she looked at me. Her tears had dried. She took my hand and said, “I’ll jump.”

I grinned and couldn’t help but do what I had longed to do since the second I had seen her at the diner. I grabbed her by the waist and kissed her. She gasped and then grabbed my collar gruffly, like she had been waiting for it too.

“Oh Gunnar,” she sighed when we had arrived at my apartment.

“Oh Gunnar” as I took off her pink uniform and cupped her breast.

“Oh Gunnar” as I moved inside of her.

Oh Gunnar. Oh Gunnar. Oh Gunnar.