A somewhat fictional like-story with mostly non-fictional emotions

I like you.

This is what he said to me, as soon as he looked at me.  “I like you.”  I took one step closer to him, my hands in the pockets of my hoodie, my heart separating into one million little pieces — not breaking, but rather making tiny bits of air and space between each piece for his words to settle into.  I took another step, and I tried to keep my heart from creating too much more space, but I could already feel the words weaving there way through and filling the new crevices. When my heart crystalized itself back together, the words and my heart wouldn’t be separate anymore. Stop, my mind told my heart.  Say it again, my smile told him.

“I like you. I really like you. I like you.”  His words expanded my heart instantly and expanded my smile uncontrollably. I looked at him, right at his eyes, right inside of him.  He had on white workout shorts and his own hoodie.  His hands weren’t in the pockets, they were down my his side. So few people have the confidence to just let their hands be – to not hide them, not cross them, not use them until needed. He does. His words got quieter and more powerful as I stepped closer.  His words pulled me to him, the quieter they got the stronger the pull and the more clear the sentiment.

“I like you, too.”  Somehow my hands had gone from my pockets to his face.  It was a power outside of myself that moved my hands (extensions of my heart and my smile).  Was it the telekinesis that my daughter had asked Santa for, on my behalf? What super power was it, that moved my hands so that now my palms were outlining his chin line? How did I get to him so quickly. How did I get out from behind the wall that I had been hiding – the bricks scattered at my feet – and to him without even realizing what was happening, when I was moving so slow?  Why were my hands on holding his chin, his ears, and not putting the bricks back up.  “I am so glad you are here.”  His smile is as equally bright as mine is wide.  I say it again, more quietly, more powerfully.  “I am so glad you are here.” I am not really saying the words, I am breathing them into the space between us.

My hands are on his face, but might move to his shoulders, his collarbone, his arms.  They can’t decide what to embrace.  His hands are holding my hips, are around my back, as strong as he is confident.  His lips brush mine slowly, timelessly, lightly. Immediately, I feel the hundreds of other times we have kissed.  The thousand kisses it has taken to get us here, to this very moment, a moment in which a thousand kisses are wrapped up into one light brush of our lips and that brush vibrates the truth of his earlier words.

“I wasn’t going to kiss you right away.”  He smiles, responds “Okay.”  Our faces don’t move more than 3 inches from each others.  “Okay,” he says again.  Kissing him is what made all those bricks at my feet fall down.  Is it what made his bricks fall down, too?  Now we have 3 inches between us, our words hanging there, filling up the space.  We’ve said 41 words tonight, but 41,000,000 since we said our very first word.  41,000,000 since I said “Hi.”   It took those 41,000,000 words and the space in between each of those words and the time in between each of those spaces and the events that all those words were about and all the words that had passed through our minds that we didn’t yet say to get us to this night, when he said to me, “I like you”.  It’s every single one of those 41,000,000 words that are filling up this 3 inch space and that are making these three words vibrate with honesty.  He knows the “I” to which he refers, well. He has reflected on him, he has grown him. He works on him. He has shown me many sides of him.  He knows that I know this person, this soul.  He knows the depths of the word “like”, an overused and misunderstood word — seemingly light, easy and fleeting given our ease throwing it around, but critical, important, miraculous, necessary, beautiful.  He knows the “you” standing in front of him.  It is not the idea of me, or the first impression of me, or a projected version of me.  It is all of Me.

I can’t let these million of words and the space and time and emotion that happened in between each and every single one fill up the space for too long, I only last seven seconds.  Seven seconds later I kiss him, not lightly, not just a brush.  He pulls me closer, I pull him closer. I don’t know who is pulling actually. The pull has built up power through the 41,000,000 words and all that square footage of space in between the words.

There are stories of love at first sight.  There are stories of love that lasts forever.  There are stories of love that grows slowly, love that fades fast.  Love that disguises itself with different masks.  Those stories aren’t this one.  I haven’t yet read this story – a story of a like that takes 41,000,000 words to get to. The story of a like that is so deeply rooted – even though it’s just floating in the air – that it will only grow, spread, blossom, evolve.  The story of a like that has shifted my composition, placed my heart slightly higher in my body, slightly deeper in my chest. A story of words that have roots of truth, branches of strength, evidence and evidence and evidence of accuracy.  A story of hearing three words that the deepest part of me knew to be true before I heard them, but which impacted those same parts when his voice said them. He did not love me when he first saw me.  He does not love me today, and I don’t know that that he ever will. I just now know that he likes me. I know what it is like to be liked, by him, and to like him, and that is this story.

There are no words for a while, then there are some.  Just a couple.  I can’t remember what they were, but they were words that felt like opening your eyes after a yoga class, coming back to consciousness after a massage.  Words used like slow movements of my toes, the stretch of my arms, just to bring me back.  We looked at each other, again, directly, our faces five inches apart.  My hands pushing his hairline back as if he has hair to push back.  He is smiling, as wide as I was smiling earlier.  “I like your smile,” I tell him. It is flawless, with his dimples and cheekbones and the pronounced upward curve at both the very right and very left side of his lips.  A perfectly symmetrical smile, his lips even, curving upward to force a noticeable shine from his eyes.  A true smile, not a smirk. “I like when you smile.” When he smiles, I feel it.

“I’m happy.” He’s happy.  With these two words he says, we have layered ten more words onto our night.  Sometimes people take simple things and make them complex.  On the other hand, these words- I like when you smile, I am happy – took something very complex – unspeakably complex – and made it so powerfully simple.

A few nights before he walked through my door and said “I like you,” I longed to put my head on his shoulder.  A few hours after he said “I like you. I really like you. I like you,” just a few minutes after he said “I am happy”, my head was on his chest.  It is a strong chest, one on which I knew I could smile, laugh, cry, breath, rest, explore, lament, investigate, let my mind meander and wander and he wouldn’t grow tired of my presence there.  His hand on my shoulder, my hand taking turns on his chest, on his arm, on his collarbone.  Moving through the force of some power as gentle as it was strong.  We were adding more words to the 41,000,000 that had preceded, piling on the words after.  My head felt like it belonged where it was – it felt peaceful, warmly welcomed, it felt familiar with the territory upon which it rested. It was cushioned by a heart that had expanded itself with space so that my words could settle in, too, become part of him. I couldn’t see his eyes, he could not see mine.  The loud, well-projected voices of late night comedians was a distant white noise in the background, the sound fading from their jokes and audience laughter to the sounds of a strong, melancholy singer/songwriter, live on stage with ache in his voice, a power emanating from the instruments supporting him. He and I weren’t really listening; we were listening to each other.

41,000,000 is a lot of words, and not many at all.  There were hellos and goodbyes, questions and answers.  There were apologies, confusion and clarity.  There were words of curiosity, excitement, adventure.  There were words of caring and empathy and friendship.   There were words that caused laughter and words that caused silence.  Every word was true; most every one, anyway; mostly true.  After many many many millions, there were words of vulnerability.  There were simple words and there were the wrong words.  There were some words everyone in my life heard, some only he heard.  Some had seconds of space between them, some had weeks.  Some could be tracked and reviewed, some were forgotten once said out loud.  There were words we used hundreds of times: Amazing, Beyond, More, Please, Really, Yes, Strong, Loved, Thank you, Tomorrow, Can, Can’t, Goodnight, our names.  Some were followed by question marks and some exclamation marks and some periods and some ellipsis and some no punctuation.  There were things we never said and questions we never asked.  The space between these words radiates as significant as the words. The time between gave everything meaning, depth, outlined the impact. They gave us both an idea of how long we could go without saying any words to each other.  The space gave us a chance to better understand the words of the other, to know each other.  It gave us hindsight in the present.  When I think of all of our words, I know he knows me better than most but not as well as I’d like him to know me.  What do I with that knowledge? Let the words keep coming, keep piling. Let there be space in between.

“I should go soon.” Words I respect, but do not want hear.  “I know,” I tell him, “yes.”  He gathers his stuff, then pulls me close to him again.  The pull is magnetic, energized.  Quickly, before the words won’t come out anymore, I say, “Thanks for coming over.  It was so nice to see you.”  “It was nice to be here.”  Twenty three more words added, before we kiss for twenty three seconds or minutes, I don’t know, and he leaves.  He waves as I close the door.  I don’t want to let those be the last words for tonight or for forever, but recognize the need to give our words space. In that space, those first three words – I like you, I like you, I like you – keeping echoing.