Tug of Wants

Sometimes, memories creep up on you when you least expect them. It's difficult to decide whether the nostalgia is sweet or sad - maybe, it's both. I sat on the crest of our driveway, elbows hugging my scarred, dark, tucked up knees. I smiled at the lines and patches where the skin was forced to grow back, each time getting rougher and splotchier as if in protestation of its numerous abuses. Even from up here, you can hear the Ocean pounding the shore, I close my eyes and pretend that its playing this harsh and oddly simultaneously mellow symphony just for me.

But then, the music disappears, and even the wind seems to still...and I find myself back to another time, and another place, on a hot summers day, in the back seat of a car. It seemed as if there was too much space, and too little all at the same time. I was oddly tired, even though my brain was hashing out a hundred possibilities all at once. Ssssh, the little voice in my head admonished. And everything went quiet. We were sitting in silence, not knowing where to look or what to say. It was the uncertainty of friends who felt a change they didn't quite understand. Eventually, I sighed and spread myself out diagonally, all that space may as well be put to use. So tired. So tired of uncertainty and unwarranted silences, it was the little voice again.
"Ssssh," I'd whispered.
"What?" he asked.
“Nothing,” I replied groggily. Berating that little voice silently.
I closed my eyes. I heard his breathing. A wave of sadness rolled over me. The tide was coming, but I was too tired to scramble out of it's way. It seemed okay to be swallowed up.
He lay back beside me. I liked him there, but didn't turn my head to look at him.
When I was nearly asleep, I sensed him moving beside me, and then I felt his head on my stomach. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? He let the weight of it settle on me gradually, asking permission in his own way.
Was he giving in to me or getting ready to torture me some more? Maybe both.
I felt a forlorn longing for sleep as it ebbed away. It was just like him to wait until I'd given up. I felt the sad acceleration of my heart, a misbehaving organ if ever there was one. I  knew he could hear it too.
I felt the weight of his head relaxing into me comfortably. Heads were heavy. I breathed it up and down. I reached my hand out involuntarily, let it rest on his ear, his forehead, his cheek. I wasn't sure if he wanted more from me, or if he wanted less.
Maybe it was both. Maybe it was always both.

I opened my eyes and inhaled the salty taste of reality. The memory lingered just long enough to remind me how much we used to be like the Ocean: always creeping up to caress the shoreline, then slipping away before it could grow too attached. Wanting and concurrently rejecting what it was not complete without.