"Are we in love?"
There was a break in the music and in that moment, out of the blue he asked: "Are we
in love."
We spent every day together, wandering the shabby fringes of the city in search of under appreciated treasures. We drove through the warm humid nights with the top down, listening to mixed tapes and the wind as it rushed to dry our damp faces. We worked on projects for hours, ending somehow always exhausted, and stuck together by a slurry of drywall dust, sweat and expended passion.
The ice sharply tinkled in its glass in the loud and sudden silence. I looked down at the bobbing limes, and up at him holding an identical drink, my drink, which he'd adopted that summer. He'd become almost a mirror, trying on my words and phrases, my tastes, as though lost in a game of dress up. He looked at me now with the
same broad face, slightly cocked head and wide set soft brown eyes, the face which sought my constant approval. Sometimes I felt those eyes would draw out and deplete me, and I'd be left expended, empty of my essence like the extra limes he dropped into our glasses of gin, squeezed by him of every drop of juice. Just the way I liked it.
The hooky intro of
Lovefool broke the silence, a song that had been everywhere that summer, over the airwaves, on my tapes, and running through my head when I watched him sleep, breathing deeply and slowly, on his side like a puppy.
I'd always wanted to be in love.
****
The Cardigans -
Lovefool (Mercury Records 1998)
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