We almost made love under the house on fire (2/3)

The middle of an affair that consumed me

Loafers and I spent the following weeks texting like very mature adults. He told me that he’s secretly studying tailoring. I asked him to tailor my wedding dress. He said he would only do that for his wife. I asked him to tailor my wedding dress. He asked me what age I would like to get married. I told him that depended on how fast he could sow.

But what would be the teenage giddiness of young dating without aging disappointment? I had told Loafers on our first date that my favorite cuisine was Thai, and we agreed to meet for dinner at a Thai restaurant the following Tuesday. On Monday, he rescheduled the date to Wednesday. On Wednesday, half an hour before the date, he cancelled. He had a work emergency. (Work emergency?)

Loafers promised to make it up to me, and I wished him luck. Our flirty and getting-to-know-each-other exchanges ceased, and I was surprised to miss them as much as I did.

After a week of silence, I told Anagha, my friend from high school visiting me, about Loafers and drafted a rather spunky text message. All who know Anagha would suspect, and suspect correctly, that she pressed the green send button.

His then-law firm client was Blackrock. Bad.

I brushed off the logistical incoherence of his reason for not rescheduling. We exchanged busy schedules and settled on a date in two weeks, right before I left Spain for two weeks during the winter holidays. I tried to remember the last time I scheduled a date so far in advance.

Unfortunately patience is not one of my virtues. In the following days our teenage exchanges resumed, and I wanted to see him. I asked Loafers if he wanted to meet for a nighttime cigarette break.

We agreed to meet at 10:30 p.m. outside Casa Encendida, a broad white building that stretched across the street I lived on. I always understood Casa Encendida to be a church because I only ever saw elderly grandparent-aged folks with rowdy toddlers lining up outside its doors in their Sunday best. God seems like a good investment at the beginning and end of life.

I approached the church’s doorstep and saw Loafers in a dark blue puffer and, of course, loafers. He looked exactly the same with a clean-shaven beard, hair gelled with not a flyaway in sight, and an eager smile plastered over his face. He was flawless in a way that made my admiration tickle with jealousy. I pressed my hands into the pockets of my grey sweatpants.

I felt like a rebellious teenager sneaking out of my childhood home. This was the first time I had skipped my dance class. It was past my bedtime. It was a weekday.

We leaned against the church’s brick exterior and stared at each other as the other spoke, momentarily retreating to cigarettes after each turn of talking. We plucked a second from his pack. Over an hour passed, and we kept warm in the Spanish winter with laughter and locked eyes, and I was reminded of the excitement of momentarily harmless recklessness.

Loafers told me about believing in his bedtime dreams and loving his brother. He told me about his mother who cried often and who he often consoled. He told me about wanting a big, crazy, drunken, romantic Armenian wedding. He wanted to move to the U.S. He wanted to get married young. He wanted a daughter. He was 26.

I knew that his behavior and visions for the future contradicted what I wanted for myself. I was 23 years old and didn’t see myself getting married until I was financially stable and my prefrontal cortex had further developed. I wanted an intimate wedding and to adopt my children. And most importantly, I couldn’t stand a momma’s boy.

Our incompatibility screamed at me like morning alarms, but I silenced them to avoid reality. I didn’t want to understand this man as unaligned with my core values and plans. So instead, I made him out to be someone who was a perfect fit.

I saw Loafers as a financially stable young man who loved his family and wanted to start his own. I saw a man who wanted to move to my home country. I saw a man who knew how to dress himself irresistibly well. I saw a man who was committed. Committed to who, to what exactly, I wouldn’t have wanted to parse out, let alone tell you, at the time.

But it was evident that he didn’t back down easily, and that was enough for me to follow him like a disciple. So on I let his words consume me like religion, and on I went blissfully misconstruing deal-breaking details. None of those matter when you have a man leaning over you with stars in his eyes.

---

We met again the next night at the doors of Casa Encendida. Loafers proposed a stroll through the neighborhood. We approached La Caníbal, a wine bar, and he asked me if I fancied a drink. On a Wednesday night? Unwise decisions shouldn’t feel as good as they do.

We peeled off our winter layers and settled into two high seats near the window bar. One drink became two, and they had to, because we were talking politics.

The alarms rang louder, begging me to wake up. We weren’t on opposite sides of the spectrum, but he had a lot of space to cover to reach me on the left. I challenged him, but in the end, kept on hitting snooze. Instead, I steadied my brain swimming in wine by studying the rhythm to which his lips parted and came together. I wondered if following their rhythm would be enough to distract me from our important and nonnegotiable differences, the specifics of which I am far too ashamed to admit.

He talked more of his mother, his brother, and work, and this time I was content in not having the mic returned as much. Instead, he gave my knee the soft of his fingertips, and I swallowed the last of my red.

Loafers walked me back to my apartment, and we faced each other, resting arms on brick. He gave me another starry look as he had the day before. Fire flickered in his eyes and, in the same second, he stepped into the space between us and pulled my face towards his. His mouth thrashed against mine like waves crashing onto shore before a hurricane. His hands moved to the back of my head, scrunched my curls, and pulled.

I remember telling him to be softer. I remember him not listening. I remember not liking it.

---

The next day, I felt insane. I wrestled with my undeniable attraction towards this man for reasons I couldn’t figure out and definite discomfort I felt when he was essentially eating my face. It wasn’t the romance I yearned for, but maybe he was just excited, maybe he was a little drunk, maybe it wasn’t that bad and I was the one who had too much to drink. I wrangled with myself for hours, all while waiting for his name to flash on my phone, all while consciously resisting the thought that this wasn’t how I was supposed to feel, and that it was unfeminist of me to blame any part of myself for how I felt.

I incessantly “checked the time” and, conveniently so, my notifications board on my phone. It was entirely immature and a clear indication of an anxious attachment I knew to recognize and put an end to. I did it anyway. My phone lit with a message from him at 10:30 p.m. He’d had some drinks and wanted to see me.

My friends and I were having dinner at TKO Taco. I set down my strawberry margarita and left to meet him outside. He was practically bouncing in place when he saw me. He took his hands out of his pockets, cusped my cheeks, and kissed me softly. This kiss was different, without haste and sweet, and I whisked away any remaining concerns I had from last night.

He’d had a job interview earlier that day that went well and met with some partners to brainstorm business plans. I used this information as a relieving justification for his lack of messages. His mind raced faster than his mouth did, and it excited me to see him burst out of his body with energy.

“When I like something, I become obsessed with it.”

You know exactly what I thought of at this moment.

We strolled around the plaza outside the restaurant before I invited him inside to meet my friends. I sipped my icey pink drink while he extended his hand out to meet the most international group of friends I’d ever had; the Polish, Nicaraguan, Irish, British, American, Mexican, and Spanish greeted him with smiles while stuffing their faces in salsa-dripping taco goodness. I returned to my drink.

I rested my coat on my lap. My hands found my glass and his found their way under my coat’s wool, caressing the flesh above my knee.

I felt the urge to pull him deeper into my world. He didn’t have an Instagram, but I grabbed his hand and introduced him to mine, which recorded my growing up the past four years. I showed him my roommates the last two years in college, the painting in Rome that inspired me to go brafree, mountains I hiked in Los Angeles during my first solo trip, my sister’s extravagant Indian-American sweet 16 birthday party, a book I absorbed in New York City about a freelance writer who goes to Paris to have explosive sex. I told him stories of pictures I hadn’t voiced before. I opened my online life to bring him closer to my physical one, and he squeezed my leg while I smiled and spilled my life inside the taco restaurant. I felt warm and threw the rest of the margarita down my throat.

He walked me to my apartment building and kissed me just as he had earlier. I told him I liked it when he kissed me softly.

“I know.”

It didn’t feel right, and I knew why. I wanted something slow, something to grow over time, something that meant something beyond skin and lips. Something that didn’t burn out as fast as it burned bright. Slow things last.

But maybe this was the slowness I craved. Did it count if we retreated our lips to catch our breaths? To study each other’s eyes before going in for more? Was it still slow if he caught my stumble up the stairs and slowly pulled me into the elevator? Does it matter if he slowly slipped his fingertips under my coat, then under my waistband? Was it right if he slowly walked into my bedroom and took a polite pause to look around before his hands slowly reached for the nervous sway of my hips? Was it okay if I let myself become his, feeling I was losing some of myself, but slowly, before completely?

He pulled me in front of my bedroom mirror, his bare chest curling behind mine, and we gazed at each other in the mirror.

“We look perfect together, don’t we?”

Oh, how I love taking things slow. After all, a fire grows slowly before it consumes you.