DUST

It felt like he was finally giving me a piece of himself. After keeping it so tight in his grasp for these years, he was letting go of a piece of himself. And for once in our relationship, I was taking it.
As I drove across the bridge, it all seemed surreal, the fog, the headlights, the salty air, the soft kiss on the forehead. I knew what it all meant and I think he did too. He could always read me like a book, even when I wanted to keep him guessing. This time it really was like taking a piece of him. I knew how much that truck meant to him, almost more than I ever did.
He hadn’t been able to get me to the airport, so I was taking the truck and one of the guys would take him to get it after their morning run. It was cool, the way foggy mornings are, but with a warm salty breeze blowing in off the bay. He was dressed in his Navy-issued pants and a dust-colored T-shirt, appropriate after the days we spent in the desert, I thought. The black letters across his chest spelled out Lee, his last name, to distinguish him from the other guys, and in the fog, it would have been hard, even for me to tell. I thought about how it would never be my last name. It was the first time I had seen him dressed for action, even if it was just for his morning P. T. session. He looked like he was in his element, and for the first time, he seemed to fit in to his surroundings. It almost made me want to be a part of his perfect world, be the perfect girl, waiting for her brave sailor to come home to her. But I wasn’t, if I had ever been, I definitely wasn’t anymore. IT had changed, everything had.
He had told me that he would be picking me up at the curb. Being the diehard romantic, I had hoped for the hugging-at-the-gate-where-have-you-been-my-whole-life greeting. Being Mr. Practical, he said that it was much more romantic if he picked me up at the curb because then I wouldn’t have to haul my luggage across the parking lot. I told him he never could distinguish between romance and practicality. In the end, he gave in to me; he was waiting at baggage claim. He smiled a knowing and comfortable smile and then gave me a where-have-you-been-its-been-too-long hug. “I guess this’ll have to do, “ I thought.
He offered to pull my luggage for me, and uttered an entirely too nonchalant, “Hey why don’t we go fuck” comment. I decided maybe I should pull my own luggage.
Before I committed to the trip, I had explained to him that we weren’t just getting back together. This trip was happening because we were still close and before we broke up, I had said that I would come while he was in school. I had never been to California and I knew how lonely he was. I was always curious about new places, and never wanted to think of him lonesome, so I had agreed to come. It seemed to be understood that it wasn’t going to be us sinking in to our old roles. Him driving with his hand on my knee while I scanned the radio stations, breakfasts at IHOP, lunches of energy bars, and dinners at Outback. These things irked me now, while before I had become comfortable with them, they were a charming part or who he was, or who we were when we were together. Lately I had been realizing that they were really just who he was.
When we got to the car, he loaded my things in the truck, and opened my door for me. Chivalrous at best, he always knew when to give in to me, and when to push my buttons, at least enough to get what he wanted. When he closed his door, and started the truck, he took a few seconds to look at me, as if it was sinking in that I was really there. It was an awkward silence, and then he kissed me an abrupt, passionate, but poorly timed kiss. It only felt over-calculated, like he had been planning it from the day he found out I was coming. He often pursued me the way he thought I wanted to be pursued, instead of the way he wanted to be pursued. It only made me feel as though I were being duped. When I pulled away from him, he looked at me a few more seconds and said flatly, “I don’t kiss in airports.”
For the past two years, Ken and I had been everything the other needed. When I needed distance, he stayed away. When he needed someone to come to him, I did. It just worked that way. It wasn’t ever the love story type of love, but it was something. It was the first time someone didn’t try to pressure me into more of a relationship, and it was the first time a girl had wanted to take it slowly with him. It took me a year to introduce him as my boyfriend, and he rarely complained. Our relationship started out as basic long-distance, a two hour drive, but after the 9/11 attacks, he reenlisted in the military and we became a full-fledged long-distance relationship. After he left, we seemed to have a closer bond, absence truly did make the heart grow fonder, it seemed. We saw each other every month until he got the orders to go to California. It was always a fairy tale weekend of camping, beaches, concerts, movies, holding hands, kissing, laughing over beers, miniature golf, hiking, kayaking, fucking, flirting, driving, posing for pictures, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing at each other’s jokes, and enjoying each other’s company, all the things that were missing from my every day life. The things I had deemed unnecessary to have a normal life, but they made me feel so normal when we did them together. It was like I was playing house.
When he found out about California, I found out that he had refused to stay in Virginia. He had chosen to go to California, not because I wasn’t there, but he certainly wasn’t staying because I was closer to here. They only offered his school there, and that was what he wanted. We decided that it just couldn’t be, that since we had always been a practical relationship, it was practical to let it die at this. I told him he was the practical one, I was just a romantic. He said he just kept me grounded. We both cried, and with that, it was over.
He called me when he came home, on the way to California; he said we could go paddling, just as friends, just to enjoy each other’s company, just like old times, only newer. We fought to stay ourselves, and not become us again. As we drove, I ignored the radio, afraid I would instinctively press “scan” and wait for something good, or lose my attention span and just let three seconds of everything race by us. He leaned towards the door, driving with his right hand, fighting to keep it off my knee. We laughed at jokes, but not too hard, and we hugged, but not too closely. It seemed as though we were sinking into new roles, as friends. He thought we should have the talk, the one where we rationalize why we couldn’t be together and where we explain that we would always be close, we were meant to always know each other. We both cried, and seeing him cry in front of me let me see a side of him I hadn’t been shown. Leave it to him to start sharing as soon as it was over.