Reunion

17:03, 17 May 2003

He called while I was in the shower this morning. I was in the shower this morning at 5:30 EST. Which is 2:30 PDT, which is when he was coming home from a night on the town. My mother answered the phone. Ha hahaa. I laughed about that when I called him back.

At LAX, I got my baggage just as he was pulling up to the curb. Short kiss hello; idle chatter in the car. My superspeed anxiety-machine of a brain was, of course, reading all sorts of nonexistent horrors into every sentence, every silence, every flip of the radio station.

We stopped at the Grove on the way to my apartment; he needed a white shirt and I needed black shoes. On the way from the car to the parking structure elevator, he put his arm around me and I looked up at him coquettishly and said, "You're glad to have me back, huh?" "Yeah," he said, and smiled.

At times like that, I know he likes me. I know I'm his girlfriend, I know he's going to miss me when he goes home. But those times are few and far between. He just doesn't show his cards too often. All I get are tiny little glimmers of how he feels. Granted, too much would not be good; too much makes me distrust the whole thing. But just a little more-- just give me a little more to counteract all the times you joke around and say things that cut a little more than they should.

My therapist has said that he probably likes me a lot, a lot more than he even admits to himself, and that freaks him out a little bit. The sarcastic comments that slice into my very thin skin--they are more to make him feel less intimidated than to make me feel less worthy, she said. Greeeeeat, I think to myself. So these little glimpses of what he actually feels might hint at an iceberg of emotion below the surface.

The problem is that I don't like to overestimate. "Don't set yourself up for disappointment," my father always said. Accordingly, I always assume the worst. I assume silence is displeasure, silence is criticism, silence means he's hiding the fact that he doesn't like me. So when I don't get any hints to the contrary, I writhe in uncertainty, I convince myself he hates me, I flail, I cry, I lose my mind. Please, Piyush, please: let the mask of stoicism slip now and again; give me a foothold so I don't slip down the slippery cliffs of your expressionless cheekbones.