The restaurant was filled with laughter. The kind that tumbles forth from souls that are content and minds that are happy. It’s a beguiling thing to experience up close – there is a heft to each rushed breath. An inertia to every exhaled outburst. A dreamlike fuzziness to the gasps of delight.
I was not entirely predisposed to join in the revelry. Yet I could not possibly find the lack of guilt required to inflict my soporific brand of misery on others. They did not deserve it.
Not when their hearts were so blessedly content. Their minds, so voraciously happy.
The conversation ambled and galloped in equal measure. Anecdotes from years gone by fought for attention with fables from mere days before. Decadent hedonism shared airtime with wholesome banality. The scandalous and the scandal-free walked hand-in-hand.
All were traded in a rush of tales and verbal tapestry, weaved out of words that were humdrum and high-brow – a confluence of human effervescence, a celebration of the ordinary and the obscene.
I glanced over to my companion for the evening. Kayla caught my eye and offered me a knowing grin. ‘This was your idea,’ was what it seemed to say.
‘This is your bloody fault for not stopping me’ was the slight grimace I offered in reply.
A chuckle escaped her red lips, her brown hair framing the delight on her face as it found tragic comedy in my obvious misfortune. I sighed, more for my benefit than anyone else’s, and stood up at the head of the table. Twelve sets of eyes and ears and everything in between gazed upon me, with Kayla being a proud owner of one of them.
I wondered if I was in possession of a collection that had any right to still be in relatively decent working order.
Here they are, I thought. Our closest friends from the past decade or so – confidantes and comedians that had shared our joys and japes as we celebrated the passing of time. So many memories. Some good. Quite a few that were bad. And untold more that weren’t recorded, thanks to a mixture of desperation and disaster. But this wasn’t the time for that.
Today was a happy occasion, of course. That’s why they were here. Perhaps now would be a good time to make sure they didn’t waste an evening out.
“I guess you’ve all guessed why you’re here. Well, I’ve got some news to share! And it’s-“
I never finished the sentence. The words hung in the air and lapsed into silence as the neurons in my hobbled brain failed to fire. A quiet had descended upon the table. The rest of the restaurant continued on its path of merriment. The world continued to spin.
Yet here I was, frozen, the ghost of sins past having walked in through the front door, staring back at me through the fantastically painful lenses of trauma and time.
Her face was a mix of shock and horror, a collage of emotions that moved too quickly for me to comprehend. Our eyes met. Torrents of history reamed their way from the ether into the here and now. For what seemed like an eternity, the air was still.
She was out of the door before I had finished one breath.
One breath later, I was running too.
“Solna!”
I didn’t even hear Kayla calling out my name as we both ran into the freezing winter night.
“My parents were showbiz people, you see.”
“That still doesn’t explain anything.”
“Okay, so get this. They loved being out in the sun, and they liked eating salty food. And since Dad was a TV producer who hated it when writers liked being too fancy with their titles, and Mum loved overly clever wordplay, I was named after the two things they loved the most with a spelling they could compromise on.”
“Sol… for the sun?”
“Mmhmm.”
“And na for… table salt? Sodium?”
“Two for two! You’re not as dumb as you look!”
“It still doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t. But what unnecessarily fun and over-the-top thing does?”
“You’ve lost me again.”
“Rollercoasters are almost-death traps, but people queue up for hours to get on them. They like the rush of danger and almost-dying. Why would anyone want to willingly put themselves through that? Because. It’s. FUN.”
“So you’re saying you’re a… a human rollercoaster?”
“Na-uh. I’m definitely a lot more fun. And I will almost certainly kill you.”
“Wait! Solna, come on!”
We had left the restaurant behind, as our sprint continued over icy pavements and slushy sidewalks. I briefly caught a glimpse in a shop window across the road of Kayla. She was standing in the restaurant doorway, a look of utter bemusement writ large. I pressed on, knowing that there was nothing I could do for her right now.
“Solna, just stop, please! You know I can outrun you!”
Up ahead, Solna slid to a halt in front of a coffee shop, its patrons looking slightly confused as her tall frame managed to prevent itself from falling over. I slowed to a walk, finally catching up to her as she turned round to face me.
With a slightly dishevelled winter coat and a beanie that was threatening to make a break for the pavement, she looked uncharacteristically unkempt. Two swift gestures later, and all was back to normal.
Black hair surrounded a face that was possessed of lines delicately hewn from marble. Her natural brown irises were hidden behind bright blue contact lenses, the edges of her eyes drawn back. Her elfin jaw narrowed down to a sharp chin that contrasted with the subtle curves of her lips. She was, and would always be, a stunning example of East Asian beauty.
She drew herself up to her full 170 centimetre height and nodded in the direction of the coffee shop.
“You idiot. You didn’t bring your coat with you. Come on, it’ll be warm inside.”
I hadn’t realised it had started to snow. I wasn’t even cold.
“She can’t have just disappeared!”
“There’s not much else to tell you. She left a note saying she had to go, and that was it…”
“Did she say anything? Like, at all? A hint?”
“You know how she is. All cryptic metaphors and whatever fancy similes she can think of. Annoying, really.”
“Kayla, this can’t be happening…”
“It is. You need to accept it.”
“No, I absolutely bloody well refuse to! Hell no!”
“Are you always going to be chasing fairy dust and pixie dreams when you know you can never have them? Look at your own two feet for a change… Please… Come back to Earth.”
“It’s just… I thought…”
“What did you think? That after all that’s been said and done, that she was going to stay here, with you? Have kids? Make a family? Settle for a 9-to-5?”
“No, of course not! That was never something we ever talked about…”
“But you fantasised about it, didn’t you? You let yourself dream. You know you shouldn’t have.”
“But she made it so easy. So… so easy.”
“The dreamers always make it look easy. The rest of us have to suffer for it, thinking we can do it just as well as they do.”
“But we can’t.”
“No, we can’t. And you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because dreams don’t die. People do.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She’s gone. How alive do you feel right now?”
“…You’re right.”
“Damn straight. Look, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to bring you back.”
It was a corner table overlooking the street. The window was streaked with water, as the snow fell upon it and melted. I grasped the coffee cup in my hands, belatedly realising that my fingers were ice-cold. My head turned away from the glass pane, to find Solna’s face tilted to one side, and an eyebrow raised.
“Kayla will understand. She’s always been able to.”
“I wasn’t looking for her.”
“You’re almost always lying when it comes to her.”
The eyebrow lowered itself to sea level as Solna sipped her hot latte. I found it ironic that she’d once called it the drink of the bourgeois elite.
‘A concoction of devilishly unnecessary indulgence,’ she had once declared. It’s easy to make proclamations when you’re on the other side of the fence. Especially when that fence is built with salted caramel and arabica beans.
Her eyes caught the light from the streetlamps; a dance of ethereal fire that transcended space and time. I shrugged off the reverie, attempting to anchor myself in the here and now. Leaning forward, elbows on the table, lips pressed into a thin line – I was a picture of pretend-focus, a caricature of pseudo-determination.
The truth was much simpler.
The fortress that was my heart disintegrated, as I regarded the herald of my destruction. The harbinger of my doom. The love of my life.
The resolve I had possessed mere moments ago as I had prepared to address my friends had melted away, replaced with a tired doubt as familiar to me as my own fingers. I was sent back in time, reliving the nightmare of being a shattered kid that had screamed at the heavens, anchored in the purgatory of my own broken dreams.
Minutes passed as we took turns gazing out the window, and at each other. The courage to speak wormed its way into my brain.
“We need to talk.”
“Yes… Yes, we do.”
To be completed. One day.
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