One More Glass and Perhaps, One More Chance

A conversation stops. Someone leaves. There is a last message, a door closing, an ordinary morning when you get up and carry on because there are things to do.

Then, much later, music comes through an open window, and for a moment you are back in a room you thought you had left.

I cannot remember what we were laughing about that night.

I remember the champagne. I remember setting my glass down without looking where I put it, because you had already taken my other hand.

The room was nothing special. I could not tell you now which song was playing. You missed a step and laughed, and I laughed with you, and whatever I had been preparing to say slipped out of reach.

I let it go.

For a while, we moved badly and happily around the small space we had made for ourselves. The light caught your face whenever you turned towards me. I remember looking at you without wondering what your expression meant, without measuring how close I could stand or how long I could stay there.

It was a relief to be that unguarded. I had forgotten how much attention it took to seem as though I needed very little.

You brought me closer. I went.

At first, I wanted the song to last.

Then I wanted another glass, another hour before either of us looked at the time, the walk home with the music still in our heads.

And somewhere in the ease of it, I began to imagine other evenings, your coat left over a chair while we made dinner, a song playing from the next room, both of us tired from an ordinary day and still pleased to find each other at the end of it.

I could almost see where we would put the glasses.

The music softened. Your hand was still warm against my back.

I said nothing about the mornings I had just imagined.

I knew how easily a few good hours could become something to live on afterwards. I had stayed awake with memories before, turning them over until the room outside them felt unfamiliar. Even then, with you in front of me, I knew there would be a moment when we would have to pick up our things and leave.

You were still moving with the music. I could feel the small adjustment of your hand as we turned.

I stayed close.

When one song ended, we waited together through the silence before the next. Neither of us let go. It seemed a small enough thing to ask of the evening: a little more of what it had already given us.

That is the moment I return to. We had reached for each other so easily, and I let myself believe that ease might follow us out of the room.

It didn't.

There were conversations afterwards. Questions we answered badly, or left alone. I remember less of the wording now than I once thought possible. Some days I am grateful for that.

But I remember your smile before the next song began.

I do not think of that night as a request for you to come back. I can wish you well and still miss the life I briefly saw from beside you. In that life, we would have had more evenings that amounted to very little: a drink, music, something foolish that made us laugh. We would have had time to become used to being happy together.

What I miss most is how honest those few hours felt.

I wasn't trying to appear stronger than I was. You seemed at ease too. We had stopped asking the evening to tell us whether we were safe, whether this would last, what we might owe each other in the morning. For a while, being there was enough.

I have kept that much.

Memory has worn away parts of the room. I am no longer certain where the lamp stood, or whether we ever finished the champagne. Yet I can still see you turning towards me. In that small part of the evening, you have never had to leave.

Sometimes I let the memory go on a little longer.

There is still a drink on the table. We have forgotten whose it is. You hear the beginning of another song and reach for my hand, already smiling, as though we have all the time we need.

I give it to you.

Neither of us knows yet that this is how I will remember saying goodbye.