The One

A recent past affair wrote this on a goodbye note*: "Really thought you were the one for me..." Reading it, my mind couldn't help but voyage backward.

Some time in late August 2004, I told him on chat there were times I just wanted to pack my suitcase and go somewhere quiet where clocks didn't work. There, I would be writing a book in an open air study facing a sea or a lake or anything with water so wide in front of my eyes, as well as drinking wine and smoking cigar in between completing the book.

And he replied: "I hear you" (which I imagined if we were talking face to face, he would have said it attentively with his eyes so brown looking straight into my iris so black), before he continued: "And I will be there in the evening."

I was pretty much intoxicated. Someone is including me in his future plan!, I said to myself, gasping. I felt some imaginary breeze suddenly caressing my face. Minutes later, he sent me a picture through email having "Is this lake big enough for you?" as the subject. It turned out to be a picture of a house by the sea owned by his friend, which he had showed me earlier and kept telling me a few times that he also wanted the same house.

All that conversation must have taken place long before all those unexplainable fears and changing feelings of his. Before he confessed, burst the words out that he wasn't ready for commitment and not sure if he's the marrying kind, for he could never picture himself stuck with one woman for the rest of his life. I only wished he would've slapped my face with the truth earlier, not at that first hour we arrived on paradise island - the occasion we had been waiting for long to get away ... together again at last. We? Well, maybe it was just me who looked forward to it!

His confession has wiped away his dream of owning a house by the sea (with a lotus pond at the front yard) and mine of writing a book in one of the rooms inside. He, of course, would still possibly buy that house by the sea. Only I'm not gonna be there in one of the rooms finishing my book. I'm not even gonna be there around him to drink my wine or smoke my cigar in Hemingway's manner. His words had to make me bid a farewell to arms. His arms. Those strong arms I once felt safe in.

And yes, I could really picture myself being with him in that house by the sea with a lotus pond at the front yard. Happy together in our borrowed heaven. Let alone forever.

Hey, isn't The One the name of the resto I went to dine on New Year's Eve with him? Could he mean 'the one' on goodbye note as 'The One' the resto? If he did, the sentence won't make any sense ... but who knows! Anything is possible. And I shouldn't have been too big-headed interpreting what he meant by 'the one' with another meaning it could have!

* a goodbye note is a sort of thank you note sent when someone has finally decided to be adult then have a clean break up.