Strange day for love

The man sitting across from me was not my boss, but a hollowed out exoskeleton of him. His eyes were tired and demeanor defeated. He sipped at his coffee begrudgingly, only sampling a little bit like a man committing suicide through bitter drink.

"Hey Evan you write a lot, right?" he said, his hemlock tinged breath seeping through cigarette yellowed teeth.

I said that I had.

"Well, my wife served me with divorce papers last night."

Shocked that I was hearing this, my heart sunk a little and I knew why he was such a subdued version of himself.

"She came in with a stone faced stare and handed them to me while I sat on my couch watching TV."

Why he was confiding in me was not clear. It was overwhelming and I didn't know what to say. He probably had children my age and to think that I could relate to him and sympathize on a legitimate level to match the problem would be incredulous.

"I'm so sorry Frank," I said staring at him directly. "That's terrible."

He smiled weakly, like an old dog straining to lift himself off of a backyard porch. "I've seen it coming for a while now, it was only a matter of time," he said.

"Oh, well... I'm really sorry," I said redundantly, searching for the wise sounding words I would give a friend in need but finding only simple, repeating sympathies.

"It's for the best I think," he said. "But that's why I asked if you wrote, I have to go to court to determine child support and I want to make a written statement outlining our finances and how they got to where they are now. I was wondering if I could send it to you so you could proofread it and clean it up to sound professional."

I didn't want to. Not because I didn't want to help him but because he was about to let me in on a very private part of his life and I don't know that I should take on that burden. But I didn't have the heart to tell him it made me uncomfortable. Imagining the humility it must have taken for a grown man to ask for help from me, his employee, made me realize that he must have had no place else to go.

"Do you have an attorney?" I asked, thinking maybe the responsibility for legal script would best be left to someone who passed the Bar and not a kid with an BA in communications.

"No. I called one up and he told me that him being in court would make no difference and it would just be a waste of a couple thousand dollars."

The last straw broken, I said I would help. Divorce was a strange thing to me. I could not understand how a married couple could split so irrecoverably. Maybe it's because I understood the nature of hate, but not so much of love. I always thought of them as opposites, but now I wasn't sure. Darkness is the opposite of light because it is the absence of it but a life without love is not all hate. Maybe I confused the definition of love and it's many forms but it scared me that two people so close would suddenly not want to be.

That evening I spent time with my friends, Tom and Sean. We drove to a hole in the wall Mexican food place and decided to sit on some grass by an intersection and eat, bypassing stone tables. The sound of traffic and people meeting at crosswalks always made me feel alive, apart of humanity and it's passively chaotic beauty.

"So what's up with you and Katelyn?" Tom asked Sean.

"Well we broke up." he said.

"Yeah but you saw her last night," said Tom. "You spent the night even."

Sean smiled. We were older now but no more mature in some areas than the 14 year-old us.

"Yeah I spent the night and we... well, we had sex. We've been doing that a lot since we broke up or split up or whatever. In a lot of ways it's better, less of an obligation than it was getting to be. That's why we broke up, things were just feeling stale, but I know that I don't want to be with anyone else. I just had to pull myself out of it for a second. Find out if we both felt that way."

"Clearly you do," I said.

We laughed and ate some more. A man whistled to another man on a bike on the other side of the street. He rode over to him and they high-fived a greeting.

Around 9PM we drove to an apartment near a university. Our friend Brian proposed to his girlfriend last week and invited us to an engagement party to celebrate. We arrived to a small living room filled with 30 people. Lot's of pretty girls were there, smiling and congratulating the newly engaged.

One girl in particular was absolutely gorgeous. Her skin was so dark, darker than mine could get with years of sun. She wore a gray top and fitted jeans with flats and though I didn't know her at all, I instantly felt her energy. It made me self-conscious and aware that my physical shape was only one of many obstacles I would have to hurdle in order to have the slightest chance to even speak with her. I thought it better to try and ignore her.

"Um, thank you all so much for being here to celebrate with me and Brian," said Brian's fiance, her voice rising above the din of conversations.

"We wanted to tell everyone here the story of how Brian proposed to me..."

She laughed nervously, flushed from the champagne and wine we all drank. She told the story like someone recounting it for the first time, still after a week, feeling the gravity of the event. Every detail was told and retold while she backed over parts to fill in things she missed. Everyone in the room watched with a grin. None bigger than Brian's. I had never seen him so red and beaming with happiness. I think what I was seeing was love. It had been a strange day but I felt it here more than anywhere else.

Tom and Sean wanted to leave early, so I glanced one last time at my tawny party crush and walked outside to say goodbye to Brian and his fiance.

"I'm taking off Amber, congratulations have a great night," I said to the bride to be and we hugged. Wanting to say it but not knowing how to articulate it, I tried anyway. "I thought your story was great - it was beautiful, really."

"Oh thank you so much Evan, I'm really glad you guys could make it."

In the car on the ride home Tom and Sean spoke out loud.

"I definitely wouldn't have told my story to everyone like that." said Tom

"Yeah standing up in front of everyone like that would just be embarrassing." said Sean. "Plus I hate having parties in honor of myself, it's weird to me. I don't want everybody feeling obligated on my behalf."

"It was so long too." said Tom.

"I thought it was cool" I said. "They were happy to tell it I think."

"And then the people asking questions 'what were you thinking when he did this?'..." said Tom, ranting over my words. I kept silent while they played off of each other's criticisms of the party. The moon lit the freeway up like a fresh snow and I stared at my own reflection looking back at me from the right rear passenger window.