Somewhere in central Europe...

My friend was dancing, she looked at me and in that moment, everything seemed to be one. The past and the present. Its been ten years since we danced with careless abandon together, ten years...yet, it was still her and I was still me...

We had always had an easy communication...our friendship came to us naturally. The fact that we were totally wasted and had no idea where our ride was did not bother us. There was really nothing much we could do about the situation.

"This guy is really good" she says

"He is fuckable" I say and she looks at me in mock disgust...

If I tell you that it was about five in the morning, you might not believe me...

We don't talk too often about the past. The mistakes. The regrets. The loss.

We know what we did. We know what we lost. We know very well....

But the people around us don't know...about those times, those nights...they don' know that on some days we had nobody but ourselves...they don't know that we had...what we have...

And so after all these years,  for whom, do we need to prove our friendship? Surely, not for ourselves. We have always known who we are...

Yet sometimes,...we find ourselves dodging others to be alone...making up excuses...we used to do that when we were 24...not wanting to hurt others...not wanting others to think we only preferred  our own company...

But we are 34 now...why we are still making up excuses to be together is beyond me......but she is nice and I am nice and we don't want to hurt people...so we make up silly excuses...so we can sneak away and enjoy ourselves...

"We still have it in us!" she says, her eyes shining, "we stayed up all night dancing!"

"Yeah...but I seriously need to pee".

What a woman!

Books always make me calm. He said he would be late. I looked at the shelves...past the usual serious fiction I would go for...nothing interests me these days. Everybody has the same melancholy thoughts. All these writers always thinking so much. I walked down to the "chick lit" section. Nothing there either. My old friend "crime" beckoned to me...Perhaps it was time to rekindle my teenage relationship? 

But he was going to be late...ten minutes, he said. I spent some time chatting with the book people, getting recommendations and asking about new books. They seemed keen on chatting. It was a slow day. I bought a cup of coffee and tried to look cool. How did I look? I had my "Diana Ross" hair. A hairstyle I was getting more comfortable in these days even if it meant more people looking at me.Suddenly, he was across the room, smiling in dark shades. Lord. 

I smiled back at him. I could not read his face. Was not sure if he was as nervous as I was.

"I hope you are not in a rush cos I intend to finish my coffee. I had to buy a book because of you" I said. 

"I'm really sorry I'm late. You can send me the bill for the book" he said. 

The conversation flowed easily from there. I am good with conversations and being "easy breezy" as Tina says. I know how to not talk about anything. 

I felt like a teenager. My friends had laughed when I said I was going to the movies with him. Seems adults dating was all about wine and chatting in restaurants and bars.

When he held my hand, I smiled. When last did anybody do that? Reach for my hand in the movies? It all felt surreal. I was already thinking of how I would describe the scenario..."suddenly I felt the warmth of his hand on mine. I looked at him and he just seemed so happy so I held his hand tight"...but what the hell was I doing? shouldn't  I be living in the moment? Just enjoying this feeling?

Then at dinner, he reached across the table to remove some strands of hair from my face.

"You know when I saw you sitting there, from across the room, with your hair, and your smile and everything, I thought to myself "wow! what a woman!"

...Maybe it was the movie, or the hand holding or the dinner afterwards...but I was feeling not like myself. Not like I was a woman...

I was feeling something else. Like the whole world had stopped and all I could see was him...

"Really?"

"Yeah...what a woman!"

Well...

What to say? Nothing much. Waiting for summer. Listening to music, reading, doing stuff. I am just living men, and I have nothing spectacular worth writing about. I might be losing my ability to write random stuff on my blog. Say it isn't so!