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LOVE IS MY FAV ILLUSION

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I was living with my wife, who was also my ex-girlfriend, in a two-bedroom apartment we had just rented. Sleeping in the same bed didn’t make sense since the break-up, so moving into a two bedroom apartment was the sensible thing to do. Her boyfriend, Lucas, who was also my friend, was staying with us for a month or so. Having a friend around was fun, I had someone to play FIFA with and watch soccer games. The weirdest part is that it never felt weird. At least not for me.

He would always make breakfast, but that morning it was me and my wife’s turn. Birthday breakfast for hungover birthday boy. French toasts—like the good ol’ days—and freshly squeezed orange juice. We tried to wake him up but couldn’t. He grunted something. “Let him sleep,” my wife said as she rolled her eyes. We took a picture of the French toasts to later show him that we had made the effort, and then ate it all. We didn’t have time to waste, we had to clean the apartment and get it ready for the party that night.

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Hours passed. Eventually, he got out of the room looking as disoriented as a bear after hibernation. “Well look who’s up,” I said.

He stood there, yawning and scratching his head like a caveman. “What time is it?” He asked.

“It’s four,” my wife said and gave him a piercing look. She had planned to have a special lunch with him. 

He gazed at the floor as if thinking of something. He went to the fridge, poured himself a glass of cold water, and went straight to the balcony to roll up a cigarette. He rolled it in silence. 

My wife looked at me as if saying “do you see what I have to deal with?” I looked back at her as if saying “your choice darling.” 

“Come,” he shouted from the balcony. We went. He hadn’t done anything necessarily wrong, but the air felt a little thick.

“Should we drink something?” He said. 

“I’ll bring beers,” I said. I brought three Coronas. The day was lovely, bright and sunny. The beers were ice cold. The tension-meter went back to a tolerable level.

“So…how are we looking for tonight?” I asked. 

He shrugged. “I hope nobody comes,” he said with a smirk. Then he laughed. He was always walking a fine line between sarcastic humor and plain cynicism.

“You’re such an asshole,” my wife said. She sat on his lap and kissed him on the cheek.

“The only people who matter are here,” he said and raised his Corona. We raised ours, clinked, and took a sip. So damn good. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the balcony drinking beer, smoking hand-crafted cigarettes and making up songs on the guitar. The Sun blessed us with its company for hours, and before departing, painted the heavens in a gradient of reds, yellows and violets.

Most of the guests arrived at the same time. Our group of friends consisted mainly of musicians and witches; mind-in-the-clouds dreamers who lamented reality but had no other choice than to inhabit it. The evening looked a lot like any other Friday, with the exception of the chocolate cake my wife had baked for her boyfriend. 

An unexpected guest arrived at around 1 AM. She was interesting looking, you could see that she cared about the way she presented herself to the world; Oxford jeans, white crop-top shirt with a black and white picture of Keith Richards, bangs, gypsy eyes, Spanish accent. An old friend of the honoree, I later found out. “You stole my wife, throw me a bone here you son of a bitch,” I joked with him. 

“Bro, go for it. She just broke up with her boyfriend,” he replied. 

I wasn’t sure how to approach her. There’s a healthy balance between making things happen and letting things happen, which has always been difficult for me to strike. I lean towards the former. The latter, I leave for the prettier folks. I approached her as any host should. I would have done the same even if I hadn’t been attracted to her, but it so happened that I was. “Make yourself at home, let me know if you need anything,” I welcomed her. 

​We hugged. “I love your hair,” she said.

“That’s how all my relationships start,” I replied. She laughed. We were off to a good start. We exchanged a few more words and I left before I’d have to face silence. Any silence is an awkward silence to me, which leaves me with the option to either be creative or want to die. If this is the reason why I’m quick to come up with jokes, then I welcome it. 

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At twelve o' clock my wife brought out the cake and lit the candles. I dimmed down the lights. Two of my friends grabbed guitars from the guitar rack and we sang a super extended version of Happy Birthday that included a Flamenco verse (sang by Lucas), an improvised rap, and at least twenty versions of the chorus, at first in all the languages we knew, then in the languages we didn’t, then in poorly executed Pig Latin, then in Robot, then in Meow. The whole thing ended with a toast that rhymed and a huge round of applause. More than the celebration of an individual, it felt like a celebration of friendship. 

At some point, Lucas collapsed on his bed and there were only a few guests left. I had barely interacted with the mysterious guest, so when I saw her going out to the balcony for a cigarette I offered to join. We leaned against the rails next to each other. She lit mine before lighting hers. 

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“So…” I said. 

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“So…” she said. 

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And that was it, really. A whole conversation was contained in those words (that word). We still had to unpack it. To unzip it if you will… but that was easy. First conversations are always easy; it’s second conversations that are hard. 

“Your friends are so cool; please invite me to things,” she said.

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I removed the key from the keychain and presented it on the palm of my hand. “You live here now,” I said.

Her fingers traveled through my hand longer than what was needed to grab the key. “Just like that?” she asked.

“Well, you can’t be worse than Lucas.”

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We smoked four cigarettes in a row while people abandoned the apartment with Irish goodbyes. The second that the last person closed the door after his departure, she wrapped her arms around my neck and put her tongue in my mouth. We had been waiting for that moment for too long, or at least we acted like it. We spent the night in my bedroom. There’s nothing like those initial moments. Those where you delude yourself into thinking you’ve found “the one” because she had a Keith Richards t-shirt on. I love those moments and no amount of rationality seems to be capable of killing them. Thank God!

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