A Lost Love (un amour perdu)

By Emeline Follet (Tours, France)

There he sat watching her. Her brown skin glowing under the club’s lights, her green eyes  shining while watching her friend and her long brown hair falling down her back while she  dances to the beat of an old Latin song. 

They had been growing apart for a while now, walking up to her would have seemed  desperate. Therefore he sat in the back of the nightclub, blending into the darkness of the  room.

It was a late Friday night in downtown Seattle. The atmosphere in the club was thick and  heavy, with hundreds of sweaty people glued to each other and an unsettling sexual  tension. His friends had dragged him there talking about how “you gotta man up, pick up  those feelings and go out partying”. As soon as they entered the club he was hit by her figure  standing out in this crowded area.  

Loud noise, bodies grinding on each other, the strong smell of alcohol and weed, not even  five minutes after entering he had lost his friends in the crowd yet his eyes always ended up  on her when he scanned the room. 

He couldn’t take it anymore. He had to breathe, it was becoming too hot. He felt sweat  dripping down his forehead, his shirt sticking to his skin. He went outside and sat down on  the sidewalk. He immediately cooled down. The late-night breeze, the moonlight, the echo  of sirens, the noise of the nightclub, the smell of concrete recently drenched by the rain and  then, light footsteps...  

“You okay?”  

He turned to the provenance of the voice and there stood one of his friends. The question  sounded ironic because if he saw her that meant that they saw her. 

“I’m okay, just you know...it’s a lot.” 

That was partly true, half of him didn’t know what to feel while the other felt emotional  and weak. To be honest he was feeling a bunch of emotions at once. The memories they  made brought up to the surface just by this one night that was supposed to take his mind  off of everything...  

“I am pretty sure it’s normal in this kind of situation. But why don’t you come back inside and try to enjoy it! It’ll eventually all go away.” 

He wondered how everything could go away when he’d spent more than enough time  feeling whatever he was feeling.  

“How could two people as close as we were just grow apart that fast and for no reason?”  

He tried deeply to reflect on their last days spent together, how they laughed until their  stomachs hurt and their eyes cried, how they spent 4 hours at this Asian buffet just talking  without realizing that they had a course to attend right after. 

Despite all his thinking, he went back in to try to please his friend and ease his worries.  Once again the one person that his sight caught was her in her silver fringe dress hugging  her body to a T making her look like a literal goddess. 

How was he supposed to move on when everywhere he went she was here looking thrilled?  Why does he seem to be the only one caring? Why can’t he move on? Was it all because of  him?  

After sitting at the same spot for what seemed like forever he decided to go out there and  enjoy his time. His mind was fuzzy as he drank more and more, he found himself  surrounded by lots of bodies, each of them escaping the real world. He couldn’t think  straight and enjoyed that feeling for a while, his thoughts were clouded by the alcohol and  the weed he consumed as time passed. Though as one said: “a bad penny always turns up”.  Right when he was about to blackout and entirely forget why he was brought here in the  first place, he looked up and for the first time that night caught HER gaze. Memories  instantly flooded his mind, the emptiness came back, he immediately sobered up and let his  wonders towards the what ifs.