Not Needed

Even then, though, there were moments when it seemed as though something could happen, at least when she moved slowly through the morning to come back to me as though she needed me.

I pretended to need her too. We both pretended that we had found something new, something with each other we’d – neither of us – found before. We, of course, were lying to each other. Sometimes, now, I think we were even lying to ourselves too.

She did not want or need me and I did not want or need her. We just wanted – for ourselves – something to fill a gap, some way of not being alone that would do until something better came along.

She, unlike me, had never got used to being alone. She came from a large family; she always had people around her, back when she was young and growing up. She had never known silence, quiet and solitude until she ended up here, and she ran from it – right into my bed.

Me, though… I have always been a loner, if not alone. I never seemed to find out what it was that I needed; which key it would take to unlock the secret of how to get along with others. Other people to me have always seemed alien, strange; unknowable and incomprehensible. I have learnt over the years how to be alone.

I thought I would stay alone until that day she fell into my arms, slipping and tumbling on the ice, all alone until I caught her and we fell into each other’s loneliness, like solitary explorers bursting into a treasure-filled tomb that has been lost and closed for centuries.