The Knowing

NOW

Jaan

Underneath the orange glow of the candlelit hall he watched her sway playfully in the arms of her oldest cousin. The peek-a-boo game the bits of her exposed skin played with his mind gave him a foggy, distracted feeling in his head. He felt increasingly unclear. At his table sat other friends from high school, people he hadn't seen in years, the atmosphere was strangely jovial. People were excited to be at this wedding, excited to see each other, and excited to be in the presence of the ethereal Brown clan. A family, at times too strange to be believed, one so loving, so caring, so open that it made others suspicious of their motives.

In the small but open hall, Jaan could see each of them clearly commanding their own space in separate parts of the room. Sanchez, on one end of the room, near the floor to ceiling windows that lined the back wall and gave him the appearance of a backlit demi god, nearly floating as if he himself was the light he was emerging from. He was speaking loudly, sucking all of the attention on that side of the room towards him. Faces tilted up to watch his standing glowing frame, his long locs tied behind his head, his arms outstretched resting on the backs of two separate chairs in which women sat. He was slightly bent forward, almost as if telling a secret, save his incredibly loud voice. Jaan could only make out snippets of what he was saying. He was telling a story about Santiago from childhood. Something hilarious, no doubt, because Sanchez was a gifted storyteller and Santiago had been an utterly odd yet charmingly hilarious child. Everyone within an 8-foot vicinity could barely look away.

In the center of the room, seated at long table reserved for the wedding court was Santiago and his bride, surrounded by their family, yet alone, completely absorbed in their own world. Their heads huddled together, newly married. Jaan could see they were being closely watched by their families, each with the satisfied look of contentment, of having known if they had done anything right in their lives it was this. Bringing these two people together, the children of immigrants, hard pressed to find anyone else out there who would understood the particular confusion of having to be two people, two places, at once, they had found their way to each other. Jaan watched the families glance quietly across tables at one another, speaking the secret, silent, and safe language of understanding, over plates of their traditional food, while sampling a few bites of the new tradition of the other.

Then off in another corner, on the dance floor with her cousin was Santos. Her hair dreadlocked just like her brothers, long and flowing to her back, longer than it had been when he knew her well in High School. He watched them flow together to the song, the tinn-y sounding music of their island, her legs moved in sync with her cousin to a rhythm and step they knew by heart, one they'd learned in childhood.

Jaan remembered suddenly and intensely a feeling he had felt one night in her bed during high school. One that came to him suddenly as he held onto her naked waist and watched her sleep, their bodies still connected, her legs wrapped around him, the clammy feeling of her skin underneath his hand. The feeling of dread of knowing this couldn't be forever, the excitement he felt at knowing that he was experiencing a particular love, a knowing he would always feel for this person, and the total anxiety that all those things brought him. Jaan remembered how he shook her awake, still inside of her, and said.

"Why are you sleeping?" Her eyes drifted open and closed a few times before she answered.

"What's wrong?" she asked. And then he remembered feeling calm, hearing her voice, knowing she knew that something was wrong with him, even in the middle of her sleep, made him relax. He kissed her barely open eyes, pulled himself to her chest, and then drifted off to sleep with her.

He felt that feeling again now. In that moment watching her dance with her cousin. He felt so deeply for her that he began to sit up in his seat and move towards her.

"Where are you going?" She asked him mid chuckle. Her voice rose up to him like a hand, pulling him out of a fog, and into the moment. He had forgotten where he was, who he was. He looked down into her beautiful freckled tan face, her hazel eyes and flaxen hair, the mole on her lip. The mole that he thought of when her bought her engagement ring. He sat back down.

"I don't know." He laughed. She leaned her warm head on his chest, he passed a hand over her shoulder lightly and kissed the top of her head. He just needed to remember, he just needed to get out of the fog. He needed to get away from Santos.

Santos

There was a point in High School when she thought about Jaan obsessively. The second winter after they had started sleeping together, It was the winter of their senior year. It was, at this point when she had made it clear that she wasn't just ignoring him, she was going to pretend he did not matter. She was so cordial it bordered on severe. From the outside she had perfected the sincerity of casualness, it seemed as though they never knew each other in the first place, and never would. At times she even had to question herself if she had ever known him more. Her casualness and cordiality so convincing that at moments she forgot that he had lived in her bed for nearly a year.

But she never really forgot.

How could she when she lived inside her head. A world where she could endlessly reconstruct and deconstruct every scenario in which she maybe, might of, possibly, or on the off chance, said something to him that had made him not want to be with her anymore. She built castles of the times when she had openly, unabashedly questioned him or laughed in his face, even when it was in jest. Over and over again she churned their time together. Was she wrong for finally confronting him as she did. Especially when it meant she had to be in this much pain? Or was she right? Was she right for finally telling him that he couldn't possibly love her like he said if he didn't actually try loving her, if he didn't want to tell her brother about them, or walk beside her in the hall. Was she right for finally saying to him, please don't visit me at night if you can't look at me in the hall in the morning.

But hadn't she too been complicit in this deceit? Wasn't she the one who insisted on keeping things a secret at first? Wasn't she the one who didn't want to feel the wrath of her brother, who wanted to keep experimenting, who wanted things to be safe?

She had, she was- initially- the engineer of their clandestine affair, the one who went out of the way to make things sneakier, to make things more exciting. So wasn't it ironic, that she was also the one to end things over the fact that he was reluctant to go public?

Now she watched him from the corner of her eyes. It seemed in the past 3 months she had bumped into him, talked to him, thought about him more times than she would like to count. After 10 years of complete silence, suddenly there he was. She remembered that obsession she felt the winter of her senior year. The way her mind couldn't turn or move without the thought of him. She remembered dreaming of him, her mind in such a constant loop that it wouldn't even stop thoughts of him while she slept. She remembered the phantom knocks she would hear at her window. How she would run to check to see if he was hanging on the edge of her shutters, only to be met by wind, and the strange feeling of missing someone. She was having dreams again too, Simple ones, ones where she would open her apartment door and he would be standing there. It never went further than that. But the fact that she had had this dream nearly a dozen times since the first time she first saw him 3 months ago was eerie.

She closed her eyes and thought about Peter. His dark skin, his soft pillow-y lips, the lull of his voice, the strong way he made her feel about herself. She opened her eyes and looked at Jaan. His hair was much shorter now, cut like one of those trendy barbers who worked in one of those shops down in Soho. He looked good, and not over styled in the way she thought most men who cut their hair in that way looked. There was always something very cool about Jaan, an offhanded way that he handled his inherit stylishness. The crease in his pants, the certain hang of his shirt, Jaan had always looked preternaturally cool. She remembered that he was one of the only white kids she knew who could wear jewelry and not look weird. He wore always two thin gold necklaces and sometimes a ring. Now he wore a slim cut navy tailored suit that had a slight shine to it and a crisp white dress shirt with the top two buttons undone. She closed her eyes again and tried to breath, but all she could remember was the subtlety of Jaan's two different colored eyes, one brown, one green, his chipped tooth and scared chin.

"Are you okay?" Santos was aware that she had started to hold her cousin a little too tight.

"Yea," Santos replied exhaling her tension. Her cousin held her back, moving her in double time to the beat of the music, making her feel giddy and childish. They laughed together, and for 20 seconds Santos forgot that Jaan was even in the room.

Jaan

Jaan cannot take his eyes off of her. Not because she is mesmerizing, not because she commands attention, not because of the smoothness of her skin, skin he can almost feel underneath his hand. But because it has been so long since he has been allowed to look at her. It's hard for him to look away, and he is afraid that he is upsetting Marlena, but he really can't help himself.

He leans over and kisses Marlena on her tan freckled cheek, I'm sorry, he wants to say, but instead he says, "I need to go to the bathroom, I'll be right back." She leans into his body and kisses him full on the mouth, her tongue taste faintly of strawberries and champagne. He kisses her back and closes his eyes, willing himself to put his entire being into this kiss. When they break away her mouth is glistening. A piece of her hair stuck to her lips. He pulls it off.

"I love you," she says. He smiles at her and stands, watching her turn back to the conversation before he walks away.

He has to cross the dance floor in order to get to the bathroom. The floor is not packed yet, just a few people, most from the Brown family dancing to the music and having fun. He makes sure he crosses so that he doesn't even come within arms reach of Santos. He keeps his eyes plastered to the floor, feeling increasingly anxious of his sins, particularly of the way he has been staring her down all night. At the wrong moment he looks up just as she is about to shout over her shoulder to Aaloka, her brand new sister-in-law's twin sister, to come join her on the dance floor. They lock eyes, only for a split second, but it happens, so quickly he can barely tell it's happened. He moves off the dance floor and he knows immediately that she is tailing him. He walks past the wall where Sanchez is still holding court and smiles at three little girls, one black, one white, one Indian, playing underneath a table, their faces covered in food. He walks down a long hallway lit only by the outside light pouring in through the windows. He pauses right before he enters what he knows to be a single bathroom and hesitates a moment before pushing open the door walking in. When he turns around she is right behind him, closing the bathroom door and then backing herself up against it, her hand still holding the door handle behind her back.

Jaan clears his throat surprised by her boldness, but ups the ante by zipping down his pants and peeing into the toilet bowl in front of her. The sound of his stream is comically loud, and he can hear her laughing softly and shaking her head. When he is done he zips up his pants and moves over to the sink to wash his hands. He takes a towel from the dispenser to dry his hands off and then turns to look at her, throwing the wet towel into the garbage can.

They stare at each other, unhurriedly for the first time in a long, long time. No one is there to distract them, they are decidedly officially alone together. She smiles at him. Everyone in the wedding party is wearing white, and she has on a white blazer dress with an asymmetrical hem, that makes her look chic and fashionable. He can tell from the times he's seen her that New York City has done wonders for her style, but she still looks essentially the same, a soft rounded face, her soft bowed lips, thick eyebrows and sparse eyelashes, her hair perfectly outlining her face, the ends fading into a light brown.

"Jaan?" she questions, then they are kissing.

It takes a blink for his mouth to be on hers, there is no second-guessing; they are now furiously kissing in the bathroom during her brother's wedding reception. Jaan takes his hands and slides them up her dress feeling her skin under them for the first time in a decade- she is just as smooth. Her mouth tastes the same, she still smells like peppermint. Grinding his pelvis into her stomach then hoisting her up against the wall so she can feel his hardness in between her thighs. She rocks into him frenetically, and Jaan's mind is buzzing still in a fog unsure of whether this is actually happening or if he is imagining it. He can feel her reaching for his belt buckle.

"Please." She whispers. She's not asking, it's a command. A 10-year dry spell, a reunion. Jaan nearly looses it. He can barely look at her as they kiss. He keeps his eyes closed as he lets his pants fall to the ground and she slides her panties to the side. When he enters her they both suck in air quickly and sharply, immediately aware of how easy it was for them to fall back into rhythm with each other. They move as one unit, gracefully. Her hips meeting his, the smack of their bodies together, the heat they generate as they become one energy source. She feels him sliding in and out of her and her body tingles all over. He begins kissing her neck and she grabs him even tighter. In her mind all she can say over and over again is

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

They are building up as one. Climbing the edge of a cliff together, doomed to fall off into the pits of an abyss. Jaan pushes into her deep, grinding his hips into her their frenzied movements reaching their hilt. They open their eyes to look at each other at the exact same moment. He watches her, and knows that same thing he knew when he met her the first time, and when he slept with her the first time, or when he watched her during math class working on a problem, or when she walked into his office that day three months ago; he will always love this woman, they can never be together.

They come at the same time, his body shooting into hers he rests his forehead onto her lips.

Jaan is panting heat rising out of his body, she kisses all over his face, and onto his eyes. She pulls herself away from him kissing his lips softly lingering before walking over the towel dispenser and cleaning herself up.

"Look," Jaan starts. She shakes her head and waves her had in front of her face and then her neck making the signal for cut it off.

She exhales very deeply, and then looks at him, she's crying slightly, and so is Jaan though he doesn't know it. "Don't," she says. And then she walks out the door.