simon, part two

[Sorry. I’ve been busy. And my mind has been cluttered. And the other writers just don’t seem to be picking up slack. And various other excuses.]

The pair sits, across from each other, separated by a faux wood table. The faint scrape of chopsticks on porcelain interjects the silence; the pair looks at each other for a brief moment before looking away once more. She looks down at her food, scattered throughout a smallish bowl, and looks up towards her counterpart, slightly confused. He notices the intricacies of her visage, something he had yearned but wasn’t able to do until that very moment. Her hair fell to the halfway mark of her neck, the color of it a shade of brown akin to strong coffee beans; her eyes the same color, accentuated by the light of the room. She smiles at him, revealing dimples on the sides of her cheeks. He is entranced, until she speaks a single word. “What?” She looks towards him, her wide eyes slightly obscured by free-flowing hair.

His eyes widen for a split second, before he proceeds to nudge the gray, rectangular frames of spectacles up the bridge of his nose. He loosens the tie he had been wearing for the day, rubbing his right eye with his free hand. He clears his throat. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Seriously, Simon? I’ve known you for just about a month now, and already I know that when you say that there’s nothing, there’s something.”

“There’s always something on my mind, Mia. You should know that about me too. I think too much, remember? Excessive paranoia? Neurotic no-good excuse for a man?” He says, with something else clearly on his mind. Simon takes a moment to notice her apparel, how it clearly contrasted his slightly formal uniform of a loosened striped tie draped over a pressed light blue shirt wrinkled by the day. She was wearing a gray cowlneck blouse, draped over dark jeans that seemed to create a mellow air that enveloped her.

“I don’t recall.” Mia replies, after a beat. She sets down her eating utensils, now becoming interested in the growing conversation.

“My name’s Simon, nice to meet you.” Simon says, in a somewhat jesting tone, in an effort to jog a memory.

“Oh!”

“Yeah.”

“How you introduced yourself to me. Wow, I feel kind of dumb.” The pair found themselves in this situation only after Simon had been a fool, after a very rare instance of initiative on his part. The memory of that night was still imprinted in Simon’s mind, as was merely a memory floating in the ether of Mia’s idea-filled brain.

“Interesting story behind that introduction.”

“No shit! But at least I got to meet the ‘real’ you. Sort of. So what’s on your mind?” Mia leans forward, expecting his response, her body language encouraging him to speak.

“I’ve just been feeling, for lack of a better word, sad, lately.” Simon sighs, a growing knot of emotion brewing in his chest.

“How so?” She asks, the back of her mind knowing what was to come from that question.

“I really don’t know. The only feeling I seem to feel right now is sadness, a pure, unadulterated sadness caused by my inherent paranoia and precise ability to know just what exactly I had lost because of my own inability to take action. See, I was with a friend of mine, that same friend, actually, that was with me that night we met- Wait, no, that’s a different story.” His brief moment of lucidity was interrupted. “I had an opportunity to meet someone that was absolutely beautiful in my eyes, see? I could have gotten the chance find out that the beauty of their minds matched the beauty of their bodies, if only I had made a single decision, taken that one opportunity.”

“What was it?” Mia asked.

Simon continued, ignoring Mia, “I could have lived somewhere I know nothing of! A city, and just engross myself in it. I could have met someone new, you know? I could have seen the sights, watch the city lights coalesce in the night sky with someone that I could possibly know for more than mere moments. Wouldn’t that be amazing? See, that’s all I really want to do, meet people in the efforts to find those that would be perfectly willing to spend every weekend or so just doing something, holding conversations over food or drink, lazying around or acting on spontaneity. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“I’ve just been lonely, is all. I want to meet a girl that I can truly love, or at least one I can truly befriend, but here’s the catch: I can’t, I’m fraught with trepidation, fear of taking a single chance that could possibly lead to something better, something I wouldn’t regret because of my own self-consciousness, my own fear. All I feel now is regret, the regret of my decisions to while away my time with simple things when I could have done something different. I’m the kind of idiot that yearns for something more while within the security of something I find serenely familiar. Robin, you know Robin, right? She and you talk more than we do! Anyway, that girl is about five years younger than me, and already she’s lived a life that I can modestly describe as batshit insane. She has no fear, no trepidation, and all I can do is watch her do those things because I’m too much of a pansy to join in on the adventure. I just can’t take the first step.  I want to do something new, I want to meet someone new, a girl, perhaps, who could fulfill a desire that has gone unquenched for far too long, but I can’t take that first step.”

“You know, for someone who describes themselves as a bumbling mushmouth fool, you’re pretty eloquent.” Mia takes a sip of a drink that had been standing still for far too long. “You know, if I were Robin, I would just say that you need to get laid.”

“Sadly, that eloquence only shines through when I’m complaining about something.” Simon replies, ignoring her addendum. He stares down into a surprisingly empty bowl, surprising because he hadn’t realized he was eating, to bathe in the catharsis of unleashing what had been bottled up within himself. That jealousy of finding a love lost to another, the envy of a missed opportunity, the anguish of unspoken, unrequited love that has gone unconfessed, the anger of his desire to interact being impeded by his inability to act. It lay, just below the sternum, wedged between the right lung and esophagus, centimeters away from the heart, that growing ball of empty emotion, of what is repressed, of what is not expressed, forced out from an inability to shut up. “I should really learn to stop doing that, my god, I’m sorry that you bear the brunt of my emotional throwup.”

“That’s a funny way to put it.” Mia replies, with a sly grin. “That’s what I’m here for, otherwise I’d already be creeped the fuck out. I’m here to help you out, because that’s what friends do! Sure, it’s a month-long friendship but shit, I already know a lot about you.”

“Hah. Sorry about that.” Simon retorts, and proceeds to act as if all was normal.

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