Subjects are thrown around the room
looking for the one that got away
I'm feeling this soft anticipation of the confrontation I won't make

I hadn’t really seen her in years. Once, maybe twice around Christmas time because I went to shows at my church when visiting Baltimore again and she was in the crowd, watching some teenage-fantasized crowd she grew up on. I never had the nerve to go up to her, though. But one rainy Saturday afternoon, getting out of my shower there was a red light beeping on my phone, informing me of a missed call.

“Hey! So I’m in town in a few weeks and I know you live here or whatever! Want to catch up again for old time’s sake? You know my number, right? Holler back, kid.”

“To delete, press seven. To save, press 9. To return this call, press 8…” the annoying voicemail lady whined. I quickly pressed nine and looked at my calendar next to my bed. Knowing her, she’d only be here for the next two maybe three days. She was like that, quickly skipping town to skip possible confrontation. She was the one who broke it off with me. She said she needed the change. SHE…never mind.

And now I was sitting in some café after leaving a message on her phone about meeting up. It was the little restaurant right across the university I graduated from two years ago. I stared longingly at the campus, remembering the first time she came up to visit one long weekend with my best friend, Kasey.

“So this is it, eh?” she said, looking around my dorm. My roommate’s side was covered in Lord of the Rings memorabilia but mine was covered in swim gear, books, and pictures of her and me. She flopped onto my bed and rolled over to let Kasey sit next to her.

“Dude, let’s go skate,” said Kasey eagerly, not having seen me in a month or so. I was itching to get back onto my board but I looked over to her, missing her more than anything. She laughed. “Go ahead. I have to go to the information session in an hour anyway and I still have to find the campus.” Being a year younger than me, she was looking at University of Pennsylvania, which happened to only be twenty or something minutes away from the college I was at.

“Go get the bags and shit, Kasey. I’ll be down in a minute and I’ll show you some sweet spots I found,” I said and nudged her over silently, wrapping my arms around her petite waist. She was so small and her round face lit up, especially her huge brown eyes as she snuggled closer to my 6’3’’ frame.

“Oh, I get it,” Kasey winked and skipped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

“I missed you, baby,” she whispered as she kissed me softly, running her fingers through my shaggy blond hair. “I missed you, too,” I replied as her kisses started trailing down to my neck.

But how do we do, when we turned into something else entirely
we fake it, oh I wanted it so desperately to be real...

I was snapped out of nostalgia as her short frame came into my line of vision as she crossed the street. She immediately spotted me, a talent she’s had since a freshman in high school. She smiled, but I could tell she was nervous. The way she kept fingering her shiny black hair and biting her lip. I stood up, shoving my hands in my pockets, then thinking better of it went to enclose her into a hug. Not sure whether or not she wanted one, I looked a little lame holding my arms out to her. But thankfully I didn’t look too much like an idiot as she wrapped her arms around my waist. Thank god I worked out tirelessly out of nervousness and I was in shape. I didn’t want her to think I was getting fat and lazy or something.

“Heys, yous!” she giggled, as she lightly tapped my chin, a playful gesture that I knew was her flirtatious side.

“Oooh, getting feisty, eh?” Was I imagining her flirting with me or was I being hopeful? I pulled her chair out so she could sit down, something I never did when we were together. She looked surprised and I just smiled. “Why, thank you,” she said, blushing pink. I smiled even wider. To tell the truth, I never did that anyway but I read once in her blog that she loved guys being all gentleman like. It didn’t hurt.

“So, how have you been?” I asked.

Love, love, holding on to some pieces that you left behind.

“Good, good,” she said, plastering a smile on her face, “you?”

“Not too bad,” I answered, leaning back but immediately sitting straight, remembering how we used to smack each other in the back for slouching. My 18th birthday, she smacked me so hard food almost came flying out of my mouth and I laughed aloud at thinking of it.

“What?” she said, laughing at me for being a dork.

“Oh, uhh…well remember my 18th birthday?” I asked, blushing at being such a loser. She looked thoughtful for a moment before asking, “Did we order Indian or Thai or something that night?” I nodded, “Yeah and you hit me on the back for not sitting up straight I nearly choked…I was just thinking about that.”

“Oh yeah!” she laughed, “That was a fun day. And the muffins after were amazing!” Yeah they were. I smiled and started reeling memory after memory that I could think of that would just make her smile.

“Oh!” she said, “Remember that one day you snuck over and I had to shove you in the closet when my dad came home?” I groaned and laughed. “That was the worse!”

We kept it up for an hour. Hour and a half. Two hours. Its as if things hadn’t changed all that much. We kept laughing and replaying the good moments in our lives. I didn’t mention that most of the times we mentioned were times we made love to each other. That was awkward to bring up to the girl you were supposed to marry…but didn’t.

“Oh my fuck,” she said after glancing at her clock. “How long have we been here?” I looked back down at mine. “I don’t know. A few hours?”

“Shit. I’m sorry, sweetie pie. It was so much fun talking to you but I have to be somewhere in an hour or I’m…going to be in trouble,” she mumbled, grabbing her things and looking around, throwing a ten out of her pocket to cover the smoothies we ordered plus tip. I was about to object when I noticed how distressed she looked.

Hope, now, as I walk away. You’re the one that finds me out
run from the only thing left that I hold close.

Almost forgetting how angry she got when I refused to let her pay, I didn’t want to piss her off further so I helped her gather her things.

“I’ll talk to you later then?” I asked awkwardly. She nodded, already waving a taxi down. I gaped my mouth stupidly but then decided better of whatever I wasn’t thinking and walked away, waving half heartedly away, clinging to the hope that she wouldn’t break her promise of seeing her again.

Well I was letting you in, you've got the feeling you've been followed under your skin, it will be weighing on your shoulder, believe it.

It was exactly six hours before I ran into her again at a show in Philly.

“You don’t like this band…” she said playfully. “Yeah, well…the opening act is a friend of mine so whatever…” I said, pretending to act cool. She brightened up, saying “Really? They weren’t half bad. I loved the chord progression at the last song of their lineup. It was really…” She looked for the word for a moment before settling on “catchy.” Smiling, I just said that I’d tell him that when I saw him next.

“Hey, you want to get out of here? I can’t breathe with all the cigarette smoke and the band I came for already played,” she said, hope sparkling in her eyes for company.

“Sure,” I said, shrugging but inside I could feel my heart pounding the blood straight to my ears, the consistent boom, boom popping my ears out. She slipped an arm through mine, so as to not lose me through the crowd but it only made me happy. Her hips swayed to the music as she sashayed out of the crowded place, and spilled into the still warm night street.

“Today was interesting,” she said, laughing quietly.

“Yup,” I said, disappointed as she slid her arm out from beneath mine. I shoved my hands into my pockets as habit and we sat on the curb. “Hey, did you make your appointment?” I asked.

“What? Oh, that…yeah,” she said uncomfortably. She looked around tensely and I sensed that there was something wrong.

“Care to share?” She looked at me uneasily, bit her lip, and looked away. “I…” she trailed off.

I took her hand and squeezed it, whispering her name encouragingly. “You know that you could always tell me anything.”

Out of no where, she bursted out crying. “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know!” she wailed, “I just…can’t seem to be satisfied. Everything I try to do I fucking fail at and even with my last boyfriend when he beat me and stalked me, I just don’t know why I couldn’t end it and ended up with such an asshole. I keep making my situation shittier and I just…”

If I could express it in a different dialect or in a delicate way, I’d capture the phrases inside the cage beneath my chest, and keep it locked for days. I wanted you so desperately to believe it...

I held her there as she just kept shaking. Everyone told me that she was doing great. Successful but never satisfied for long, made loads of money, and had a “great” boyfriend. She quieted down to tell me the truth of her life, not that I let on that I knew anything that had been going on with her real life.

“The last job I was at in New York, the magazine? Well, I basically had it great until I slept with the boss’s son at a New Year’s Eve party where I didn’t know the punch was spiked and you know I’m straight edge and then he blackmailed me into telling everyone I was a slut so he made me go out with him. When I left New York, I basically told my boss that I was offered a job somewhere else. I moved to North Carolina for a while. I don’t know why…visiting my best friend a little, working as a cocktail waitress. But that didn’t work out too well because there was this one guy who kept coming in to the bar just to keep harassing me for my number…says he knew me from somewhere. Moved back to Baltimore but other people moved back to and there was just tension between me and a few exes that I couldn’t take it. Moved to L.A. for a half year or so where I met my stalker ex-boyfriend and he was so nice and didn’t drink or do drugs or anything. I was so convinced he was right for me! And then one night he found a number he didn’t recognize in my cell phone and he beat me, thinking I cheated on him…It was my fucking mother calling from a hotel for God’s sake! And it was so hard to leave him because he kept telling me he loved me and he didn’t want to hurt me…So I ran away two months ago, just wandering the East Coast in the car I bought when I got here with the money I’ve been saving and I don’t know what to do…”

Her whole life story since we broke apart came rushing out in a matter of five minutes and I felt angry. Angry at her for allowing this to happen and being too scared, angry at her asshole ex who deserved to have his nuts chopped off with a laser, fried in the Colonel’s secret recipe and fed to him…but mostly angry at myself for ever letting her go and letting her get hurt, because I still loved her. And then she finished her story with one simple sentence that had my mind racing.

“Being with you this week was the best thing that’s happened to me since I first left here.”

Which is probably why I kissed her.

Run, Run, why are you running from another conversation? So what, I've been crying, I'm the only one that finds me out.
There’s nowhere, now I’ve found you, that I won't go.

As my lips brushed over hers and my hand slid from her arm to her cheek, I held her there for a moment savoring the taste of her tears and her apple-pomegranate lip butter she’s had since she graduated. I felt her tongue slide into my mouth, prying it open slightly so her bottom lip could be slowly sucked. I quickly obliged as I gently bit down, like I knew she loved. She moaned my name into my mouth and I could swear every muscle in me tensed.

When we parted, she looked at me scared and unsure, flustered and embarrassed, but mostly, which confused the fuck out of me, shy. My right hand still rested on her waist but my left clung to her hand, looking so hopeful that she wouldn’t clam up like she normally did when she was shy.

I said her name quietly so that she looked in my eyes. “I’ve been waiting for so long to tell you that I still love you. I cried for so many nights, so angry at myself for letting you go. We’re supposed to be together, damn it.” My voice I could tell would probably frighten her but I wasn’t letting her go this time without a fight. “I would follow you to the ends of the earth if it meant being with you for one more day.”

Well I was letting you in, you've got the feeling you've been followed under your skin, it will be weighing on your shoulder. You've got that seed in you, you've got that seed in you

I stared into her eyes, hoping she’d realize that I was giving her my last. My everything. The only thing I’ve been holding on to since she left. I knew she was scared. I knew I’d have to deal with her crazy ex boyfriend. Her fears, her insecurities, again… but all of that seemed insignificant to the way it would feel lying next to me, in my arms.

Run Run, why are you running from?
Let all the small steps expose your secrets
you don't have to speak for me to believe it. What do you mean?

“It can’t go back to the way it used to be, baby,” she whispered, looking away.

I got angrier. “Damn it, I’m not asking it to be! I just want another chance to marry the girl I was supposed to! The only girl I know I’m supposed to be with. What are you so damn scared of? What are you running from?”

She jumped up, fire back into her eyes as if she had never been crying in my arms. “You want to know what I’ve been running from?” She slowly stepped back from me. “Knowing the fact that my first fuck up involved…” she choked up, not able to say the last word. But one look in her eyes and we both knew that she still loved me, too. That leaving me was what spiraled her whole life out of loop.

I jumped up as well, glaring at her. “Then why did you do it?”

“Because!” she screamed. “Because everyone kept telling me it was going to be impossible to keep it going! Because I knew that if I didn’t leave you then, you’d be leaving me in the future! Because I’m not FUCKING GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU GODDAMNIT!” And with that, she ran off. I stood there, paralyzed at what I just heard. From all the years we were together, she kept saying it. But I never thought she believed it. I smacked myself for not taking it seriously.

And then I ran after her but by then, she had found a subway station and as I was just catching up to her, she somehow ran faster. I cursed under my breath for encouraging her to join the soccer team. She had managed to train those legs to run and to run fast. By the time I got to a gate, she had already boarded and I could see her tear stricken face staring out the window at me.

Shaking in bed, you've got the feeling you've been followed under your skin, it will be weighing on your shoulder. You’ve got that seed in you, you've got that seed in...
I'm letting you in, you have the feeling you've been followed. Are you listening to any thing I say, say? To anything I say..You’ve got that seed in you x2

As I lay in bed that night, wondering how I’d find her in the morning, I realized that not a single word I would say would sink in her. She loved me. I loved her. But logic was always her weak point. She had it in her mind that it could never work. We could never work. As long as that thought was planted in her mind, she’d keep running. As apparently she was fucking good at it, too.

She came in bed chicken in bed it was the hardest thing to swallow, pretending you don't miss me. You've got that seed in you, you've got that seed in you. When I’m letting you in, I'll be thinking of tomorrow, and every time we crossed those lines. You've got that seed in you, you've got that seed in you...

I knew she was lying in bed right then, crying, lonely, scared. But this was another battle I couldn’t fight for her. I couldn’t just kiss her tears away, as I did before. Besides, that backfired tonight anyway. I let her in my heart and all I could think about was how much we wanted to be together.

“I love you. I hope you know that,” I cried into my pillow, praying to someone out there, that she’d understand that.

Hope, now, as I walk away
that you'll never wanna find me out...

It’s just as I was boarding that train did I realize that I was going to keep running. And until I planned to stop it, I was going to keep hurting him. I wanted to stop it, but it was like a drug, running away. I stopped at the station closest to his house and walked to his apartment. I stood outside his door, two thirty in the morning, just standing there. I saw him pacing back and forth in the window. And I knew exactly what he was thinking. I knew exactly why he was doing it. I knew that everything running through his mind was about me. He also knew that he couldn’t kiss my tears away anymore. That I needed to suck it up. But I also knew that it was going to be one hell of a battle that not even he could help me on. Around three fifteen, I slowly started walking to the hotel where I left my car. I opened the car and hopped in, popping in an old The Academy Is…CD and fast forwarding it to my favorite song. I let the lyrics rush over me as the tears slowly subsided. Then I remembered another song and I quickly pressed a button or two…and the words slowly sunk in… “If we know the way we're gonna die/Through everything else we will survive.”

I turned my car on, made a u-turn in the parking lot, and parked across the street from his apartment. By then, it was four twenty and I knew he was probably asleep. I got out of my car and knocked on the door…