The Trickster Diaries/Chapter 80

Strange. I never even stopped to think what a beautiful arrangement that would be: a come and go as you please friend, lover, muse. Sweeter yet if we could make it work in bi-coastal…
Instead my mind went straight to — WHAT?! She can’t possibly think I’m serious. Is SHE serious? It was obviously just a clever way of phrasing my channel share idea. She was joking. Had to be. Still, I now had countless options as to a response. I chose the worst. I sent her the username and password for my new channel.
Juliette: I always say the wrong thing. I’m deleting everything I just wrote and going to bed. Goodnight.
Everything disappeared. Just like that.
No no no no no, I thought. Then I wrote:
“Listen, my fault. All of it. I love you, if that helps.”
Juliette: Even if you don’t mean it, it helps.
Me: I DO mean it.

And I did. I really really really really did. I felt elated I’d finally said it and that she’d stuck around and answered despite the lunatic way we’d arrived at the threshold. And from there, like two wide-eyed children — giggling, holding hands,
we gazed up from our little wooden boat into
black, pulsating space.

The next morning I wrote on the same thread: “Btw, I’m holding you to that shaved Umbrian truffle breakfast.” Her, keeping the thread alive:

“Have to fly it in!”

Had I not caught that train into the heart of bohemia so long ago; had I not ditched Banff for a stupid floozy; had I not burned my credit cards, ran out on my plant and flower business, neglected my eyes and teeth or if the coin I’d flipped in 2001 had come up heads and instead of landing here I’d gone to live and work and study at Spirit Rock Buddhist Center in 2001…
If any of that had happened I’d have said to Juliette what I so longed to say:
“Or we could fly to it.”

Sadly and sickeningly it was too late.