It was at the movies, a Civil War epic — the large showers of skirts, the tightly buttoned, nearly suffocating collars, the nervous mustaches — that he let go of her hand.
Her hand: which had been warmly, presently within his. Softly, on top, a petal, and his hand like a small bowl beneath — resting on his knee. The intentional, miniscule movement of his thumb on her knuckle. He wanted to grip her hand, to fold his body over it, to kiss it, to run away with it. His palm weighed the movements of her palm, reading it: Did she love him? She was watching the movie. He wasn't.
He let go. He pretended to have an itch on his eyebrow and moved his hand, his lonely, single hand, to his forehead to scratch — a lie — briefly. Letting go of her hand was like sending a young child off to school for the first time: the heartbreak of watching a part of yourself walk away. The first of a lifetime of leavings.
She shifted her weight, leaning her body away from his, resting on the other arm of her seat, moving her hand, the soft, complacent hand, to straighten the skirt on her lap. He watched her outline from the corner of his eye. She watched the movie, never once looking away.
He slowly, deliberately, replaced his hand onto his lap, palm up and waited for her to come to him. To act on the magnetism of skin calling skin. To show — she felt it too.
He stared at the silhouette of the man in front of him.
And still waited.
His hand was like a man at a bus stop in the rain. Helpless. Able only to wait, alone, for the bus which refuses to arrive.
Did she love him?
She did not move. Her body stayed leaning away from his and her eyes — how cruel they seemed, how unaware — remained fixed on the screen. She was like a woman in a car passing by the bus stop, stopped at a light, the rain beating down on her windshield, who could so easily roll down her window and offer the waiting figure a ride, but never does. Never even thinks to do so. Who listens to her radio or talks on her cell phone. Why didn't she feel the extreme emptiness of a hand alone?
And so, for him, that was it. The sign. He loved her entirely too much.
He turned his palm down on his knee and vowed: he would stop calling. He would stop having her over to tumble and curl on his warm bed. He would forgo their carrot and apple juice outings, their window shopping, their Sunday night beers, and looking into her eyes behind her funny purple-framed glasses.