Time, only Time - Part 2

With the most peaceful smile of the world on his face he poured the champagne gently in both glasses. There was no music on yet and both of them stared quietly at the filling glass. The silence was as pure as it could be.
He thought for a moment, they could have as well been in love and nothing would change: she would still be sitting right there, he would still be pouring champagne in silence, they would still both stare at the glass and wait till they both had taken a sit with their glasses in the hand, they would still propose a toast the way they always did, she would still stay over for the night, they would still stay up drinking and chatting until the dawn broke out, she would still stay in bed till late while he would have problems sleeping, he would still watch her silently in her sleep, she would still mention that he was not sleeping. They would still get out of bed late for lunch…
He asked himself, what he was looking for, what did he really want from this woman?
There was a lot to come up to.
He was clearly attracted to this woman, to this very special one and this attraction was also physical. He did not care how pretty, good looking, beautiful or sexy she looked, to him, she was simply the biggest possible attraction. Everything about her body was the demonstrative answer of the gods to his expectations or somehow to his prayers, he formulated it to himself. He did not like perfect bodies, for they were too unreal to him, as if no one really lived in them. Sometimes he thought he did not like them because he himself was too lazy to have a perfect body, but that was not really the case; he liked bodies with traces of life on them; bodies, on which signs of life, time and imperfection of mankind were to be detected.
To him, her body was the most attractive feminine body; but maybe because he has never thought about any other body as much as he did about this one. This was not because he had been shy with woman before, on the contrary; he had had three serous relationships, had even fallen in love two and a half times before, had even got married in one of the cases which had brought him three beautiful years of friendship and cherishment, one year of altering between ignorance, love and misunderstandings and two years of extreme fights, the last passed in extreme hatred.
He did not hate her anymore, she had just been unable to understand his life. She was trying to sculpt her life on his all the time, instead of trying to live both. He had really loved her, but never felt secured in this love. It was not that he was afraid she might leave him any day; it was insecurity of another kind. With her, he never knew what was right or wrong. No matter what he tried to do, it always came out with a mistake, she always had a point to make. He had always said something wrong r had done it the wrong way, his intentions had always been the last which mattered. It had never been about what had been better to have done, but always about what he should not had done or what had been absolutely out of question to do or what had ashamed her to death. He had never felt that she had had any interests of teaching him something or helping him for the better, although she might have actually had. He had in fact loved her family, he still did, but back then he had done anything but to visit her family or invite them over. In case, then he would have to deal with hours of fear and insecurity. All what he said was wrong to her, all what he did out of respect and impolite. What he had always preferred to do was to go visit them or to invite them when she was on a long journey. That had always proven to be pleasant.
As to her friends, it had been thousand times worse. After a long day of arguing with his boss, sitting in a wonderful café relaxing with some really nice people around him, he had always tried to keep his mouth shut and tell himself that he was there on his own, which was since the third year, when he had had enough experience to how he could have never behave himself the right way. Three of these people had later on become his own friends, but…
With great satisfactory he paused his flashbacks to recognize that they were both already in a conversation. How come it was so easy with her? He rarely made second thoughts when he wanted to tell her something or make a suggestion or plan something they would both do yet he could seldom do any wrong. And if, they both knew he did not really mean it. It was the same with her, even the times he felt she was being unjust or wrong to him, he knew her intentions were pure and he could swear that she would do something in the next three days to compensate. He could guess the reason but he did not want to go any further than just guessing. For then he would make sure that she was really the one he had always been searching for in his dreams for twelve years - and deep inside, even though trying his best to ignore, he knew she was - and then he was to have her, to make her his and to be hers for all eternity which was for the time being not quite right.
She wanted him somehow, he could see it in her eyes right now and in the way she was sitting right in front of him and when he thought about it, he could also remember thousands of times when she cherished him like no one else. It felt as if she exactly knew what he needed or wanted. So many times she had said something which amazed him to death, for they were exactly the words he would have said with the difference that she was not supposed to know any of it. In fact, he strongly believed that had it not been for her ex boyfriend they would have already come together for all eternity long ago, even though they knew each other only for six months.
The jerk, he thought. How could he ever treat this woman the way he had?
He knew the story from her, he knew this story from lots of other women. It always sounded new, it always hurt. And it hurt a whole lot more when it concerned a woman you knew and you loved. But what she did not know was that her side of the story was not the only one he knew. He had to find that bastard, he had to listen to what he had to say in order to be able to make him pay for it without conscious problems.
Well he had; and she did not know anything of it.
The jerk had told the story as if it had been a casual romance story in which every thing ends after some certain time and the wiser one is to prove to the irrational one that every thing has to come to an end and that there is no possible future left. Well in such a situation no one would really confess what a jerk one had been in the past, for every minus point would cause one just more pain. He remembered, not unpleasantly, how this jerk had suffered and how he had unwillingly shouted every word out.
He asked for it, he thought. Was he really sick as the jerk had told him times and times again? He did not know; and even if he was, these people had made him sick, he tried to relieve himself. The point was that, deep inside, he knew why he needed punish - or somehow torture - this guy. It was not to defend the woman in the world, which he once in a while really did, neither to give him what he deserved in order to have somehow foolishly protected the woman he admired so much. It was none. Deep inside he knew he had a much more selfish reason for doing so. He was afraid, afraid of loosing her. He could put up with the fact that they were not really “together” as long as he made sure she would not be “together” with anyone else either. He could not even stand the idea, it drove him to madness just to think about her being in another man’s arms. He had felt unsafe as long as he knew the “ex” might come back to her some day some time. He knew she would not want to have him back, he knew that jerk did not really know how to treasure this woman and that he would not come to apologize or to beg to her to light his life up again. He also knew how irrational and silly it was of him to have such fear and to find the poor guy and to scare and torment him the way he had, he just could not help it. Maybe he was really sick but he could not help it. The idea of losing her to another man was way beyond his tolerance.
The champagne was over and they both looked exhausted and sleepy.
“I’d get you a towel, should you want to use the bath.” he told her.
She just nodded. He put his glass down and got up feeling a childish pride.
While she was in the bathroom, he carefully, making sure she would not surprise him, smelled her jacket. He just loved her scent.