You pretended to know the names of trees and I pretended to care. There was a lot of pretending in those early days.
“Someday I’ll have my own place and I’ll cover it with these.” You pulled at the leaves of an old eucalyptus that hung over our heads, like the anxieties of youth on our backs. Grabbing a leaf for myself, I held it in both hands. One eye studied the greenery, the other studied you.
Our knees were touching, whether by accident or purpose it wasn’t yet clear. I re-crossed my legs on the picnic blanket and feigned a shift for comfort. I wanted to be closer to you; I wanted my knee to touch yours with purpose. It was the end of Summer and I could almost count on two hands now the amount of times we’d hung out alone. “Even if it’s not romantic,” I remember telling my mates, “I’d be happy to be just friends.” But in truth, I had enough friends, I didn’t care for many more.
A lemon tree is what I told you I wanted in my own backyard. I meant it more as a pipedream, a someday-wish, but on my twenty-fourth birthday a few Autumns later I came back to our place to find a pot of greens and yellows on the doorstep.
We had lemonade that night; we had lemon, lime and bitters that Spring, lemon-squeezed sparkling water that Summer. Lemon in our gin and lemon in our teas. When friends broke glasses on the kitchen tiles, all you could say was, “When life gives you lemons.”
Now it’s Winter and the lemons are all gone. The grounded swallowed the ones your cat didn’t first, and my tea is tasting cold and grey without you here making it. My fingers are swelling from the cold, puffy pink stumps that lay naked around your mug. I can’t help but think maybe now the ring would fit. Ironic, you would say, that my finger is now large enough to hold the promise I only just refused.
I wonder if you’ve told your mum yet; did you let her be disappointed in me or did you make her understand? I wonder if I’ll miss her, although I know I will. I hope that after all the hurt rolls back with the tide, she can miss me too. I hope the same for you.
“You know, you don’t have to miss me,” I can almost hear you saying. But you’re gone like the lemons from your tree and maybe I don’t want them to grow back.
Soon it’ll be Summer again and you’ll find someone new, and the place where I hurt you won’t be a fresh wound. And then it’ll be Winter and you’ll miss me again, and I will miss you but you’ll never know how much. And then Summer again, maybe one or five more, and you’ll hear my name in passing and wish you hadn’t. But all you can do is grab her hand and squeeze it tight enough to forget that it doesn’t belong to me.
“When life gives you lemons,” you’ll say, and maybe you’ll believe it.
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