Only A Possibility

Summary: A college student thinks of a wishful future with his friend, however the dream is quite far away. | Word Count: 5,169

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Her skin reflected supernaturally in the stream of light from the projector. She appeared from the shadows of the classroom with angelic grace and tricked me into thinking I was in an ethereal dream. Everything felt slow motion for a few seconds. With every overly melodramatic thought racing through my head, it vividly struck me how much I was crushing on her. It was Eva Evergreen. Even with her features obscured by the dimness of the room, I could see her a cheery smile as she approached me and a sliver of light bounced off her olive eyes and twinkled with excitement. She stopped at my side by the computer podium at the front of the classroom.

I am responsible for running the meetings in our college student organization, playing the videos, and eventually arousing some relevant discussion on various topics. Nothing too hard, only time consuming. I get to learn new things and make friends. And of course when making friends, one is sure to make a few crushes along the way.

“Lucas! I just checked my email. I got the offer.” Eva whispered giddily, “I’m going to meet up with my professor for a late dinner with the other grads tonight – I will have to skip the dinner with everyone.”

I did my best to hold back any disappointment as I was looking forward to talking with her and the other members of The Club after the meeting. We usually went out for pizza near the campus. I forced a smile, then nodded my head to her.

“That’s great. Congratulations. I knew they would accept you.” I said quickly.

There was a follow-up question that lingered on my mind for a second too long and of course, she took notice.

“Don’t worry. We can still have our outing tomorrow. That part hasn’t changed.” Eva reassured me and held her hand to my back for a second.

There was something about her personality that trapped me like a sinkhole during the first time we met. She had a wholesome air to her that day when she signed up for The Club email list; it grabbed me and did not let go no matter how much I tried to escape. She was someone you wanted to hang out with for entertaining and intriguing discussions. With only a few conversations I found she was thoughtful, yet critical. It became an enthralling experience to talk with her, even if we were only shooting the shit with random topics when we crossed paths.

 “Good. I look forward to it.” I said to her almost with a light head.

 She twiddled her fingers playfully, mouthed the words “bye”, then left out the door.

The classroom had only five members tonight, all of whom were fairly tired and looking at their phones more than video on esoteric metaphysical topics in science. One of them had already fallen asleep. It was Friday evening and I could feel the whole University winding down as the next week was Spring break. I most likely should have canceled the meeting.

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“That’s a terrible book.” I pointed out.

Eva examined the book, read the back cover, and flipped through some pages. On the front there was an illustration of a man on a motorcycle with a woman. The man was depicted as hard boiled, rugged, and wearing a black leather jacket with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The woman had dark eyes, red lips, and was in a sleek red romper with the wind blowing through her hair. It was the most generic romance scene other than the half naked muscle man dipping the love-stuck woman with half her dress strap hanging down the book cover.

We were outside a used bookstore of a strip mall, browsing the free book bin, and looking for interesting things to talk about. We had already exhausted topics related to the action movie we had just watched at the theater here and wanted to wander about – idly in peace.

“Under the Dark; Moonlight Serenade” Eva read the title with interest, “Why – what is bad about it? It looks good. Maybe a guilty pleasure at worst.” Eva asked, putting the book back into the box.

She locked my eyes with her gaze like a lion. The eyeliner she wore made her irises more vivid and striking. I felt like I was being analyzed in a thousand different ways. She wore a perfect poke face. It was intimidating, yet alluring all the same.

She must have caught me staring too long, because she smiled and tucked a hair behind her ear. It was a tick of hers that she did every so often.

She also had on heels and a bright flower sundress. This was a much different outfit from her normal jeans and t-shirts. Her shoulder-length hair hung down instead of keeping it in a ponytail. Her bangs were straight cut, perfectly contouring her face and her lips were colored with bright red lipstick. The effect was that certain features stood out more. She did not normally wear makeup and I was always silently happy with that decision, as I could see her freckles in perfect view. Not even the occasional pimples and blemishes could detract from her natural beauty.

By comparison, I was underdressed. I wore a black shirt with a V-neck cut and a pair of new blue jeans that actually fit compared to the rolled up ones I was used to wearing everyday. Not even my hair was combed, although keeping my dark curls in line required them to be put into submission by the strongest of hair styling creams or they would pop back out.

I asked her when I picked her up this afternoon, why this outfit?

She said she wanted me to feel special today.

And I did – by God – I felt as if I could die right now and be content in my short existence. We used to be equal in height and see eye to eye, but her heels made her slightly taller than me, which was a plus to me.

“It did not have much of a plot.” I answered, “It went to so many different places, barely connecting each scene and chapter with another. The narrator spent too much time in the characters head and not enough time on building tension. The love scenes were cheap because of it. So yeah – I guess it would meet your criteria as a ‘guilty pleasure’ read. Oh – and look at the cover – they are riding a motorcycle with no helmets. Bad!”

She dropped the book without care back into the bin and then swept another book up with her fingers.

“And this one? Have you read it?” she asked as if she was quizzing me.

By sheer chance I had. What was with this pile of books reading my brain?

The book was green, white, and black with a knight fighting a dragon. In his left hand was a shining orb which blinded the dragon and was able to keep some distance as his left hand was missing and bleeding. It would have been more gory if not for the blood being in shades of black and white. There were green lines outlining them in the same way Tron characters were depicted. The reader would be unsure of if the cover showed some type of abstract representation or if the strange design was important. And it was as if the characters were actually in a video game. None of it was supposed to be real – but that did not stop it from meaning something in the end. It was basically Tron meets Lord of the Rings.

“Yeah. The initial conflict between the main character and the antagonist was sidelined for another antagonist and sidelined even more for a larger part of the overall story. It also introduced too many characters’ backstories that got resolved too quickly without much payoff. It didn’t make cohesive sense. It was…too messy.”

Eva giggled showing a pristine smile that clenched my heart in ways that I knew were naïve, but it felt too overwhelming to suppress the urge to think: I want to marry her. Every feature of her face from her dimples to her nose was attractive and that image of her laughing was being permanently imprinted into my memory.

“You’re too picky.” she joked and stepped next to me, bumping my arm with hers by mistake.

She moved on to the next store and I followed.

“I mean life is messy.” Eva said, holding her hands behind her back, “We all try to plot our lives out, but there isn’t any story we follow. Sometimes it ends prematurely, other times there is hardly any lesson to be learned. We just live on doing the best we can each day. Why can’t some books emulate that? Be without a point?”

“I don’t know. If a book was like life, then it would be pages of boring humdrum chapters about going to school or work everyday, then a bunch of emotion fueled rants about the inconveniences of life. I suppose if you were a celebrity or in a war torn country, then relative to your life a story would be filled with novel excitement and new interesting experiences that could be intricately detailed.” I mused.

“Boo!” Eva complained, “you’re too literal. I mean life doesn’t have a set path. It wanes and waxes. Goes off-track and takes the sideroad. Adventure with mysteries that go unsolved and questions that never get told. Filled with laughs, sorrows, and love…life is messy. Why can’t a book be too?”

“Try pitching that to an editor.” I said without hesitation.

She stopped walking as came to the corner of the building and I stopped right next to her shoulder. I thought I said something wrong, but she was smiling and in an unexpected turn she let her head rest on my shoulder for a second; its warmth felt pleasant and comforting, however brief.

“You are a dork. You know.” she said.

“True observation as ever.” I said, still thinking about her head on my shoulders, “I guess that’s why you also joined The Club. We bring up some existential topics that you find intriguing. However, unlike some of the writers of science and human nature that we go over, I prefer to read for entertainment. I want a solid beginning and a complete ending that makes sense. A well plotted and well paced story that doesn’t leave a tangle of the loose ends.”

“Of course.” she said and spun around on her heel, looked both ways across the street, then jumped off the sidewalk as if she was leaping across a river and danced towards my car, leaving me to gawk at her. At times she became more playful, especially outside the confines of academia, where she was professional in how she interacted with her classmates that were not close friends.

She waited for me at the back of my car.

“You look at the nuts and bolts of life like it’s all designed on a schematic! You got to be more flexible, Lucas! Not everything goes the way you want it! ” she exclaimed suddenly from afar.

I walked steadily to my car, thinking that I could not match her energy. Not with how nervous I was currently and how uncertain I was expecting to feel at the end of the night. Time was fleeting and I was never catching up.

I couldn’t make eye contact until I was in the car.

That last sentence stung even if she did not intend it too.

We got in the car. One door slammed, then the other, and we sat in the quiet car. I inserted the key, but was waiting to turn the key. In front of my eyes, the sun was sinking below the trees, painting the sky with purples and pinks.

It was a sweet cotton candy sky.

“I know…but it’s nice to dream,” I said, finally turning the ignition.

The car cranked alive and purred like a cat that got one too many belly scratches. The car had seen better days, but it got me places and it was bought by my parents. There was nothing to complain about.

Eva looked at me, then the sky. Then I looked at the fascinating view of an empty parking lot. A piece of trash was blown in the wind, and a yellow vest security guard drove around the perimeter of the lot. Not many were out and about today. It was Spring Break week and the town was deserted.

“Dreams are nice to have.” she said with a faint smile.

She waited for me to finally turn the key, then flicked on the radio as we drove to the café. We listened to it until we arrived and said nothing on the way there.

The café was the usual post-modern, minimalist architecture chain seen in every place around the globe. The smell of roasted coffee filled my nose and the jazz music was only momentarily overtaken by the grinding of blenders and shrieking of espresso machines. There were single seat bars, large tables for study groups and scattered throughout the room were smaller tables that stood like miniature islands in a sea of empty chairs. Spring break gives the baristas a break.

We both sat at the smallest table, squished near a column and a wall since it was out of the view from the front counter. It was like joining a little kid’s tea party, although that was no complaint from me, who was not at the moment studying with copious amounts of books, a large laptop, and more study notes than the pages of a congressional bill. It was the perfect place to be alone with one other person. 

“Let me try yours.” Eva asked, sitting across from me.

“Here. Take a sip.” I said about letting her use her straw, but Eva leaned across the table, plucked my straw with her lips, and took a long slurp from it.

“Hey, that was more than a sip.” I joked, seeing the top part of my chocolate frappe disappearing.

She laughed and leaned back, crossing her legs, and adjusted her dress.

“Sorry. I got carried away. It was good tho – you can have more of mine.”

“No, thanks.” I waved my hand, “I white chocolate, but don’t like the artificial raspberry flavor that much.”

“Suit yourself.” Eva said, drinking hers at a brain-freeze certain pace.

Time continued to tick away as we talked. An hour ended up passing without me noticing until Eva looked at her phone.

“So. I guess this is our last spot for tonight.” I said suddenly.

“Yes. My parents and sister are flying in tomorrow since they want to celebrate my Ph.D. acceptance. I should be getting some rest soon.” she said, folding her arms, “But this was a nice trip. A nice short get away.”

I bit down on my tongue as she said that.

It was a nice trip, she said. Those words echoed in my head. It was the words she used in place of “date”.

A dreariness overcame her face. It was a stark difference from any other times she excitedly mentioned applying to the Astrophysics Program at her number one targeted college. She had started her dream. Heck. She was living it right now.

“Sorry for keeping you out so late. Yeah. It’s been a really nice night. A movie, window shopping, and a coffee da- I mean break. Then we part ways.” I shuddered with complete incompetence.

I had the word date on my mind and accidently let it slip. My eyes must have gone wide, because she took apparent notice of my Freudian slip. I looked down at my lackluster frape that I only mildly regret. The cocoa and caramel were flat and unremarkable. I should have gotten the latte version despite it being warm outside, but I don’t think anything at this moment would have tasted good. No flavor could surpass a depressed and embarrassed mind, dwelling on what could have been.

“You can call it what you like – the name doesn’t matter to me, but you had fun, right?” she asked with a look of concern on her face.

I blinked in surprise, having been caught off guard by the tone in which she asked. It was sharp as if she held back her own blended turmoil of emotions from my own response.

“Of course! Being with you – it’s…it’s great.” I said, trying to not spill my ever-loving heart out like a love struck fool that I was.

I was tempted to say something with overly flowery prose, but I thought better of it. There would be no love story here, let alone a happy ending. Even if there was the possibility of more time together, overdoing it with uncontrollable passion is always a mistake. I learned that in high school.

“I just wish. We could do this type of moment again.” I said, looking away.

There was a pensive silence that allowed the jazzy melody to drift back into our minds, where we once had tuned it out.

“There could be.” Eva said, biting her lip.

I immediately fell back under the spell of her eyes and held captive in an enchanted forest of lush greens and wrapped up in the winding vines. If someone told me her eyes were a portal to a fairytale land I would believe them instantly.

“But you are moving several states away. Over nine hundred miles.” I countered.

It was the same thing that happened to my very first crush in middle school. I didn’t even know what liking someone even meant until she left. Only after I realized she was never coming back, did the full force of adolescence slam into me. The emptiness in my life was from the missing personality that I craved to be around. I missed hearing that familiar tone of voice, those witty comments on peculiar obscure topics, or the teasing of how my hair was always messy. She paid attention to me, cared if I was in a good mood or not, and was a good friend.

Much like Eva had done. I suppose that’s why I fell for her so hard.

“You graduate in another year right? I can’t promise anything. But if you move upstate with me. I would also be around to – spend time with. You would need your own place of course.” Eva posed.

“I – I….” I started to say.

I wavered, dropping eye contact again, and let myself lean back into my chair and think.

She fished around in my thoughts before she received the acceptance letter. Many times she prodded me for answers about what I was doing after college, where I wanted to go, and what I had planned in life. She had her life planned out from high school and succeeded in following that plan through to fruition. There was a lot I wanted to do, yet when it came down to it I lacked Eva’s commitment. I deeply admired her, both for how smart she was and how hard she worked, but that type of success was what I lacked.

“I have to – I want to stay here. My family is here. They need help as they get older. One of my close friends from high school is supposed to be getting an apartment with me soon.” I explained.

To uproot yourself from a place you lived most of your life was painstaking.

My life was here, not to mention I was a mess.

My grades were subpar and I lacked internships to achieve a lucrative career in my major. I was going to be poor right out of college. There wasn’t a way for me to fly back and forth everywhere and it was not as if America would be getting a high-speed train anytime soon to quell transit problems. Commuting long distances would be a tough deal for anyone.

“I assumed that was the case from how you talked. I think that was the reason why I didn’t want to call it a date.” Eva admitted leaning back in her chair.

It was like someone slammed me with a sledgehammer, busting my gut with debilitating pain.

“I wish things were different.” 

“Me too.” she said, taking another long sip of her drink.

The world was baffling. It presented me with opportunities I either squandered or failed to notice. I felt unlucky to never learn how to expect the unexpected; to anticipate the future. The possibilities that I profoundly desired, were in the end, out of reach.

I took a nervous gulp and looked directly at her.

“I just – I feel like you were someone I could…lo…I could really date long term.” I said desperately, without filtering this through the logic part of my brain. “I mean – I just feel like we are compatible. Couldn’t we keep seeing each other every now and then until something more developed? I could keep in touch online frequently.”

I held up my cellphone as if I was in show and tell.

Eva didn’t respond right away to my crazed rambles, she simply took the last few sips of her frappe, emptying it fully. She even made sure to get the whip cream and strawberry sprinkle that floated to the bottom. After dabbing her lips with a spare napkin she looked back into my eyes.

“I get that. I enjoyed the last two years since I transferred here. I didn’t know a lot of people here. You got me to join the club, which helped me feel at home. It gave me a lot of friends. Midnight dinners, symposiums, and random movie nights in cheap, overpriced apartments.”

“Dave’s living room was never quite the same after the raccoon nest fell through the ceiling.” I remarked off topic, remembering that crazy night.

“Yeah. Those were good moments.” Eva said, then took a long breath, “Lucas. I do want to hang out with you again. Even if we are just friends. I mean – that’s enough, right?”

I felt like I was going to vomit at the acceptance of where I was at this moment. The sinking feeling when I knew the ship had left and I was still on land, powerless to only wave. Life moves on and I have to accept that fact.

“Yes.” I said, halfway lying, “I don’t ever not want to be friends, but -”

“You can’t get over it, can you?”

Eva looked at me with sad eyes and I looked at her with ones that deeply longed for a possible future together. We truly saw each other at this moment, yet we did not see eye to eye.

“It’s hard, I know,” she began, but got stuck on words that had yet to come out, “..but sometimes it simply doesn’t work out.”

Eva played with her straw, making it dance around the cup as if to keep her hands occupied. Normally, she had few reservations about speaking. She was never shy in front of an audience and spoke when she needed to and kept to herself otherwise.

“Like your parents?” I said, thinking back to conversations we had before.

“Yeah. They were fine for several years in marriage, but then things started to fracture as I and my sister grew up. Midway through my bachelor’s, they announced their divorce.”

“Was it an affair or something else?” I asked, not previously having the courage to delve too much into that issue.

“No. Not really. Each honestly did their own thing eventually while still technically married, but they were in all practical terms separated – they just slept in the same house for a time. They told my extended family that they had “irreconcilable differences” with each other and slowly drifted apart.”

“That sounds vague.”

“It’s more like they got along well at first, then realized they were totally different people living together. The longer time went on, the more they realized they had different expectations of what each other wanted. It was not going to last when both I and my sister moved out.”

“Sometimes it does.” I said, thinking about my parents.

I had heard so much of my own parents’ troubles over the years, countless squabbles about each other, yet every time they managed to come back together in reconciliation. Understanding another person for a lifetime is a struggle that no one is good as they think they are – at least that is my impression.

“I don’t doubt that, but sometimes it really is for the best.” She said, “Romance takes a lot of effort to make happen. Each person has to sacrifice a lot to make a balanced partnership work. Tell me Lucas. How often will you be traveling to visit me? How much money are you willing to spend going back and forth? What will you give up during all that time and effort?”

She sat straight up and looked with unwavering eyes that had already decided on the outcome of her life. She would dream or die, whatever came first.

The truth was impossible to ignore and it ate me up inside.

“At the moment. Nothing. I don’t have any real plans. I don’t even have a job. No real achievable plans that would allow us to live together.” I said, defeated.

She accepted this with a nod.

“I am someone who doesn’t attempt something unless I think there is a good chance of it working. Some of my friends call it being callous – that I boil down relationships to investment and career outcomes, leaving out the mushy love aspects that triumph over destiny like in the movies or books, but if you build a life, then you need to expect how a partner fits into your life. I have to expect you to move to the same city or be committed to traveling back and forth until you do. Eventually I would want you to find a job there, to be a work-at-home dad if I decided I want kids or for us to be in good financial shape to make arrangements for a babysitter. I don’t do long-distance relationships.”

All the while she explained her reasoning to me, her foot rested on top of mine. I could not feel the warmth, only the pressure against my shoe. I felt connected, even while dejected and rejected.

“That all makes sense.” I said in complete truth.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s not something that you should have to say. It is what it is.”

Another few moments of silence lead to a short bathroom break and then the agreement to leave. There was no reason to stay very much longer. The employees had enough work to be completed before closing up and going home.

I drove Eva back to her apartment. It was a two-story apartment where many graduate students lived due to the cheap rent. The exterior was unclean and the interior worse, however it was close to the campus. I drove up and parked in front of her unit.

“Today was a good day.” Eva said, smiling once more.

All I could do was stare at her. A beautiful day for a beautiful woman, I thought. Especially when she briefly closed her eyes with a gleeful expression. The sides of her eyes would wrinkle just a little and her dimples grew greater. I am not sure if she ever noticed them the way I did, but someone else would. That I was certain of, depressingly so.

Damn It!

Why was my mind like this? Why was I so obsessed with her and why could I not get over it?

And just turn off this feeling like a LIGHTSWITCH!

“It was.” I said leaning back into my seat as she undid her seat belt, “I was glad you accepted this…outing when I asked you. But I would have understood if you had said no.” I said, putting my arm on the car’s armrest.

Eva shifted closer to me in the dimness of my car. The car light had not come on since either one of us had opened the door. The street lights had afforded us enough view to see each other in muted colors.

She pivoted in her seat to face me, close enough to feel her breath.

“I was really confused at first, when you asked me to go, when you knew I was leaving.” she said, “Then I thought about it and understood this date was the last time to spend with me in this way. I have no regrets.”

“It was stupid of me to ask, but I couldn’t stop myself.” I admitted with a shrug.

Eva turned to me closer now, only a few short inches away. Close enough to her gulp before speaking.

“Would you like a kiss goodbye?” she whispered softly.

I felt my world shift in every way possible like I was being teleported to another time and place. It was an out-of-body experience, culminating from all my hopes and wishes for just this moment, which then swirled and shot down into my stomach with such force that I thought I might have had a stroke.

The amount of nervousness I had wrapped up in my body was ungodly.

Eva held still with a hand on my knee and the other ready to push herself from the armrest towards me. Her face looked frozen in time, probably from not knowing if what she had just asked was the right thing to say.

I had to say something.

“I…don’t think I can.”

She leaned away from me, understanding the situation as I did as well.

“It’s fine. I think that would be…not the best choice right now. It would be like a tease towards you.”

“I think a hug would definitely do. I think a hug will be what we need.” I said, thinking that this would be the better outcome for me at least.

She leaned over to me and snuggled into my shoulder as I wrapped my arm around her gently. I closed my eyes as I held her. I was about to let go, but she pulled me back in and hugged me tighter. I was afraid I would forget this intimate moment, yet I did not want to let go.

“You are my friend.” Eva said.

“I know.”

“I want to hear from you. Good or bad or just to complain about life. At least every now and then. Don’t be weird. Just be you.”

“I know.”

“Then this is goodbye.”

“Yeah. But I hope to see Dr. Evergreen on the moon. Mars perhaps.” I jested, yet knew she definitely could.

“Maybe. I will have to wave to you if I do. And I expect you to wave back.”

“Of course.”

We both smiled at the possibilities of the future and what lives we wanted to live, despite our diverging paths.