restraint, reality, and us

On clarity, tension, and the pieces of ourselves we try to find in someone else.

Not every waking moment in life is meant to be figured out. Some just desperately want to be felt. His thirtieth birthday felt like one of those moments. I debated showing up. Not because I didn’t care, but because I cared in ways I wasn’t sure I was allowed to.

We had placed an intentional boundary between us, like children tracing a line in the dirt and daring the other not to cross. We called it space. Space to protect what was still good. Space to prevent what we didn’t yet know how to name. But space doesn’t dissolve the connection. For me, it only sharpened it. It made the voids louder and gave room for my questions to echo in a way that made me wonder if what we had was real.

Showing up for him made me question myself and my intentions. I didn’t like the way it made me feel, but I tried to push through it anyway. My heart was in the right place, but I couldn’t help wondering what he’d see if I did show up. Would he see me the way people from my past once did—messy, chaotic—or would he see who I’ve become now? Steady, self-aware, and more in control.

I went. I didn’t go to seduce or stir the past. I went to honor his birthday, to show him that he was, in fact, special to me. I didn’t dress to impress him, I didn’t shave my legs, or wear my hair the way he once said he liked. It wasn’t that kind of night. Or at least, I told myself it wasn’t. My presence wasn’t a stage for a performance. It would be a kind gesture—a simple one. I thought if I could just stand in that room, if I could look at him without needing anything back, I’d be free of the what-ifs. It would be a way to prove that the feelings should continue to be suppressed.

But freedom from that is a tricky thing. It always showed up as detachment, when really all I wanted was to be near him. Still, I walked into that room confident. He turned, our eyes met, and in that instant I felt the illusion dissolve—not because anything happened, but because something still could. That scared me a little, but that was also my thrill. It was exhilarating. That was always the danger with us: the possibility was in the things unsaid. Maybe especially in the silence.

He had a blank stare, but the embrace lingered. Was I his ghost? His friends were all there; I had never actually met any of them. I only knew them by name. I knew so much about them. Did they know about me? Did he joke about me in passing, or tell his friends how much time we spent together?

I waited in line. He didn’t come up to me right away, but I slowly felt his hand graze my waist. His touch was electrifying—my essence. A magnet to my skin that made any buried tension rise. He looked at me in disbelief that I was actually there. More than anything, I wanted to know if he was happy to see me—so I asked. His slow nod gave me the answer I didn’t know I needed in that moment.

The night went on, and he did what he knew best: lingered around the edges, moving through conversations, looking at me in flashes. That was always his way of acknowledging me—with his eyes.

Later, he said I knew what I was doing—that I had orchestrated something by being there—but his eyes said something different. The lines started to blur for him; I knew it. What he didn’t understand was that I didn’t come to reenact the past. I came to show face and stand firm on the fact that he was important to me.

He rode with me. A song came on—one of our songs. Volverte A Ver by Juanes. On my way there, I had been listening to a playlist filled with songs that reminded me of him. I’d been caught. I skipped it so fast, and his first instinct was to put it back. That, more than anything, was the tell.

He guided me onto the wrong street. It was dark. One streetlight flickered, and the street was filled with parked cars. And there I was—in a random corner, with the man I shouldn’t be with. Not because I didn’t want him, but because being with him wasn’t good for me at this stage in my life—in the middle of Eagle Rock, Los Angeles. I knew where I was, but I didn’t know where his mind was.

He leaned in, and there it was again—the moment before the moment, where anything is possible and everything is at stake. He put my car in park. “We shouldn’t,” I whispered. And I meant it. Not in a moral sense, but because I couldn’t open that door again. Not now. I was desperate to prove to him I didn’t need this. Not tonight.

There’s a difference between restraint and resolve. That night, I learned I still only had the first. Our lips took more than seconds to touch. Our eyes searched each other. It was more than a moment—it was a feeling, a connection. It was ours. The kiss electrified my skin, physically and dramatically.

I put the car in drive, frustrated. What was that? Why did I put myself in that predicament? We drove back, and the tension was sharp. The tension—it’s my weakness. It makes me spiral. It makes me want so much more of him. It made me physically ill.

The night continued, and there you were, sitting across from me. I was supposed to leave hours ago, but you asking me to stay made me want to give in. As everyone left, you grabbed the waist of my jeans and whispered softly, “You’re not leaving yet.” You waved goodbye to the group and leaned against your car. My arms naturally crept up around your neck. Your fingertips traced down my arms, and our stare deepened by the second.

Your eyes—hazel, your lashes curling perfectly, your long wavy hair falling into your face until I slowly moved it away. “I should go,” I said again and again. You insisted I stay, but the truth was, I couldn’t be the game any longer. The unspoken words had been driving me insane. After trying to leave again, I finally blurted, “You only play games with me.”

And there it was. You finally said it: “You’re still technically married, you realize that, right?”

The silence was loud but not uncomfortable. It felt like the silence had finally settled. You meant that, and I understood. It all started to make sense. How could I be so insensitive to that? We never argued—our conversations were always careful—so the light bickering was new to me. I felt defeated. Yes, I was married, but so separated, only weeks away from officially filing. His frustration became mine.

We didn’t bicker for long, and before we knew it, we were intertwined. We made love in the car as if it were the first time we had really seen each other. His hands across my face when we finished made me nervous. What had I done?

I stood in front of him as he stepped out of the car. God, his face was perfect. The full moon lit him from behind, and all I could think was, his face compliments the moon so well. It was a memory I wanted to hold, to write about the next day. I audibly spilled the thoughts racing in my mind. “This can’t be it, right?”

Instead of answering, we agreed we’d see each other again—sober and present. Too much could be misconstrued.

A week later, after texts and banter, we finally agreed to meet. I wasn’t sure if we’d ignore what happened or fall back into silence. But it wasn’t like that.

When he walked into the living room, it wasn’t words that came first—it was our bodies. There was no denying what was there. We were all over each other before we even made it to the couch, like the pause had only made the craving worse. And then after, we sat there—quiet, messy hair, hearts still racing—finally able to talk.

I told him everything I once thought I’d hold back. That he had been in my head this whole time. That I couldn’t listen to music or spend my Fridays alone. And that most of all, I had questioned if it had all been in my mind.

He looked at me and agreed. He confessed that I couldn’t compare to everything else he knew. And I made him understand that the clarity I’d been searching for wasn’t in how we ended—it was in the distance we placed between us.

What he gave me was enough.

Because the truth is, I never made it all up. The connection we had wasn’t one-sided. It wasn’t a memory I held on to out of desperation. He told me just enough to confirm that the way we moved around each other meant something. That I had been sitting on his mind, too. That the tension wasn’t imagined. That the version of us I carried quietly through all those in-between moments wasn’t fiction.

And while the words didn’t fully say it, the pauses did. The glances did. The hesitation before goodbye did.

It was never about closure. I’m not someone who needs that. It was about clarity. Because clarity has a way of calming the parts of me that question everything—the parts that wonder if I’m too much, if I dream too vividly, if I feel too deeply for people who don’t feel me back.

But he wasn’t unfeeling. Just guarded in ways I couldn’t understand. He’s the kind of man who feels things deeply but hides it beneath timing, reason, and restraint. Everything about him exists in the almost. Almost said, almost done, almost felt. He’s careful with what he gives, protective of what he keeps. Sometimes I think he’s spent his whole life trying not to be consumed by anything, or anyone. Maybe that’s why he wanders instead of stays. Why he speaks in looks more than words.

There’s something about his quiet that always pulled me in. Admittedly, I liked it and thought if I stayed long enough, I might catch the flicker of what he never says out loud. But that’s the thing about people like him: they’re not meant to be solved. They show you mirrors instead of answers. And maybe that’s what he was for me. A mirror. A reflection of the restraint I so deeply wish I had, and the ache I can’t seem to ever outgrow. I feel everything beyond it’s limits.

Even beyond the limits, I know that this isn’t love. I don’t claim it to be. This isn’t something I need to rewrite into a happy ending or shape into a story that makes sense. It’s just what happened—the truth of the moments spent together and everything that came before it.

This truth doesn’t need a resolution. It just needed a place to be undeniably seen.

So I write it down. To remember. Because in the end, that’s what we keep—not the people, not the promises, not even the pain. Just the moments that change us.

And how could I forget this?
How could I ever forget this?

How could I forget you?