Your Voice

I wish I could tell you what your voice means to me. How it brings me back to that magical summer. How it painfully reminds me of a fling that should have been more but never quite was. When you left, the last thing I expected was to ever hear from you again. But there it was, the little window on my computer screen that delivered a message from Kiko Lisboa. Two years ago, that window would send me into convulsions, panic, heart racing, flushed face. Two years ago, I was 10 pounds skinnier, dancing every night, drinking red bull vodkas. Two years ago, every time I saw you or touched you my stomach dance and my throat would constrict, mostly because I knew how very wrong of me it was.

After I went back to him, that little window was a reminder of what I gave up, and a reminder of what I shouldn't have given up. After I left him yet again, that window appeared less frequently, as you continued to see your little whore in H-Town E-Bay. But you couldn't stay away, could you? That last month, we saw each other twice, right before you left. And we...I...realized I was going to miss you terribly. I was going to miss that electricity, that feeling of heat and racing heart when you called or messaged me. I suddenly realized I would be very lonely without you. And where would I be without those occasional messages leading to "movie" nights? I said good bye and walked away and knew in my heart I would never see you again.

And then, when you were far away on another continent, something funny happened: that window reappeared. And kept reappearing. I tried very hard to understand what was happening. This was supposed to be a fling. An affair with a foreign hottie with the smooth latin accent. What was going on? I became friends with you. One year of IMing nearly daily, weekly text messages. Crying to you about my pothead asshole boyfriend, hearing about your two girlfriends (and your little American whore visiting you for 10 days). And the butterflies slowly went away whenever that little window popped up, to be replaced with the comfort of talking to a good friend.

Now you called. And I remembered the butterflies, and the movies, and the touches, and the size 4 jeans. The day-to-day waiting with held breath for a call that would usually never come. Your voice, with that smooth latin accent.

It was wonderful to talk to you. I missed your voice. You told me about your girlfriend and I told you about my computer geek. We talked about work and sleep and the weather. I desperately wished I had told you back then how even your IM name ignited every nerve in my body, and maybe we would have had something more than a brief fling. But now we do have something more. Without the butterflies and racing heart and trouble breathing: friendship.