“Well, that happened,” I thought. Then I said out loud. Fuck it. If there was ever going to be a good moment to say that it in my life, it was right there and then. I mean, after getting a catch-up message from my Mancunian ex-lover on Friday -and replying pathetically to it- and the usual confusing coffee with T a couple of hours after that, among other things… shit… just fuck it. After all that, saying “Well, that happened” felt right.
Charlie was onto something. She knew it, and I did too. “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Marie,” she had said, and was spot on. After a month and a half since the last time we met, she came back in the picture. Because, by now you probably know it as well as I do: a girl like Marie doesn’t simply disappear. A girl like her will always be there. Too much intensity, too much passion, too much life. Either she doesn’t go away or you don’t let her -in your mind, mainly.
I looked around my apartment and saw the traces of our day together. The coffee and the remains of the burgers and fries we bought, getting cold on the table. My speaker, playing music on the coffee table. Some leaves from the park on the floor. I looked around, and then I looked down. Marie looked up. “Well, that happened,” I said. She smiled and we kissed, lying on my now legendary red sofabed from Ikea.
“I think I really like this guy,” Marie said. “It’s dangerous.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said. Then I started laughing.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I just think the irony of this whole situation is delicious.”
“How come?”
“Look at us! We just fucked and here we are, naked, talking about the people we like.” Marie and I laughed, loudly. It was fucked up. Very much.
After a while together, we got dressed. We drank some relaxing herb tea, kept chatting and catching up. I started to feel slightly uncomfortable, though. “What’s this?” I wondered. I had met Marie at my worst, and soon I became clingy and needy. But, after Chile, things had changed for the better. I was finally feeling in control, that I was putting my shit together. Perhaps, the distance between us after coming back was an important driver of my personal change. And now, the memories of my old fucked up self were all coming back, as if our sex was going to drag me right back to that depressed version of me.
When she left, I kept thinking about everything for a while, digesting it. Then I switched my mind to killer mode, and went on a savage rampage against an army of maggots eating the flour and seeds on my kitchen shelves. And, as I went down to the rubbish deposit of my building with a garbage bag filled with insect corpses, I had a realization: I’m not ready for a relationship. It took me an intense weekend to figure that out, but it was definitely worth it. So was the maggot genocide.
