Alone

An excerpt from the novel that I've been thinking about for a while now.

I wanted to build up to the “I love you,” over a time of loving and lingering and savoring and knowing.  But the relationship did not lend itself to waiting.  “Hello Dylan,” “Who are you, Dylan?” “I love you, Dylan.”  Three solemn phrases were all it took, all it could take.  I had loved him for almost an hour before I told him so, had known him for almost two.  “How do you know?” he had asked a moment later, as the phrase hovered in a weightless dark.  I knew because I knew; I knew because he was lying next to me in the sticky warmth of the August midnight.  Because he smelled of smoke and mint, and because even with my eyes closed, I could recall the ocean in his.  “How do you know?” How do you know?  How does anyone know? 

I took his hand, exhaled.  “I know because I know.”  And there it was. And he knew too.  With everything I have, I believe that he knew. 

 

“Tell me a secret, Dylan.”  I whispered; I whispered a lot with him. 

“What kind of secret?” He did not whisper, but was gentle; he was gentle a lot with me.

“Something I don’t know already.”

He thought.  I was looking upwards, but I could feel him thinking in the grass beside me.  The clouds rolled in the almost-not-there way that they do in the nighttime.  They revealed not one star on this particular night, but I watched the hazy dark anyway.  “When I was young, I used to have this dream that I was nowhere,” he said.  “I was outside " or inside maybe " and it was dark, so dark that I couldn’t tell when my eyes were open and when they were closed.  There were no sounds and no smells, and every now and then, I felt the softest breeze on my cheek, but it wasn’t warm or cold, it was just there, and then it wasn’t again. 

“Every time I had the dream, I would stand there, in the middle of nothing and nowhere, and I would just know that somehow, this infinite nowhere was somewhere; it was somewhere that no one else could find it, and that was the beauty of it.”   

I looked hard into the night around us, and felt vaguely inferior to the perfection of Dylan’s nothingness.  The cooing of the nocturnal distanced us from any silence that could have consumed the night, and suddenly the light quiet was not serene enough.  “Was that your secret, then?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, his voice soft, “that and the realization that I don’t think I want to be alone anymore.”    

Reviews

[Eagle Cruagh]

I did not intend to read this. I swear it
just took me over. You instilled something
in this story that just grabbed me and drug
me down here and I did not want it.
I think I will write a story like that, butabout
a beautiful girl wanting to kiss me--- as though
I dont have enough problems !
I enjoyed your story very much. I had to enjoy
it . I was afraid what would happen if I did`nt.

---- John

[-musicfunk-]

this is one of a kind thanks
=]

[Michael of Gilead]

interesting little vinette of an idea.

[Rene Velez]

I liked this a lot, not much of a story reader but it held my interest, fine work and concept.

[emily joe]

Hannaaaaaah- so good. So flippin good.

[Mark]

Sri nailed it. This is well written but it is also well conceived.

[Dayran]

A great friendship expresses itself in a polite gesture of the platonic. Then, suddenly it feels itself rude and uncaring. However it is even harder to tell the other person that you love them. They just know. A great write but an even greater perception.