She woke up with a start. For a moment she forgot where she was, and instinctively she became alert. She could feel the tension building up in her muscles, and the blood rushing through her veins. She never liked to be surprised, and she had learnt that it was better to be over defensive at the risk of coming off as offensive, than it was to be too trusting and risk being hurt, torn apart. Always be prepared, specially when you're navigating new terrain.
Shaking the trailing dream from her head, she tried hard to regain her focus. "Pick one thing and start from there," the voice in her head instructed. She saw the bedlamp, and while she remembered the shape of it, she failed to recognize it. She scrambled through her memory, with scenes playing in her head in fast forward mode, desperate to find a clue. Then suddenly she became aware of an unfamiliar warmth under the sheets, behind her. It was of a different temperature from her own, and panicking, she rolled over and found her there. Angelina. She exhaled a sigh of relief, not realizing that she was holding her breath all along until now. She felt her heart beat slow down, and her mind was grateful for the comfort of recognition.
It wasn't always like this. More often than not, her heart would sink at the appearance of a face with a name, or the glimpse of a familiar shadow. Everywhere she turned, the feeling of knowing and of recognizing had been coupled with a paralyzing fear she could not escape. She got used to it, and while she was haunted by the ghost of her memory, she found a way to cope. She abondoned all that she had known, got on her feet and moved. Moving, endlessly, aimlessly, and knowing only what she was moving from, but never what to. She moved, when the unfamiliar became familiar, when she could no longer count on the company of strangers, and when the old feeling of the fear took hold of her again.
But Angelina was different. She felt an inexplicable serenity when she looked into her emerald eyes the first time they met at the bookstore. She liked going into bookstores, because then she could get lost in all the micro and macro worlds and parallel universes, look at the world from the bird's eye view and explore the underwater world. She could forget that she was a person, she could forget where she was. Angelina found her in Tibet. "I've always wanted to go there," she startled her. She looked up from her Lonely Planet Guide to Tibet and learned her name before their eyes even met. "Oh I didn't mean to scare you, I'm sorry," she went on, and stole a few glances sideways before continuing in a whisper, "but working here is so fucking boring I think I might go insane."
She had no problems meeting people. Making aquaintances, that is. Before they came too close, before they knew too much, before she felt trapped and intruded upon, before she ran away. She was familiar with the pattern, and she was counting down the days until the moment would arrive with Angelina. But weeks went by, and the growing comfort only became stranger by the day. It was making her uncomfortable even, but it was a discomfort she enjoyed. She had already been there for too long. It was past her time to move on, and if it weren't for Angelina, she would have run away long ago. Everything else around her was closing in on her.
She laid still and looked at her. She was moved by the vulnerability of her, peacefully asleep. Like a reader halfway through a novel, she couldn't help but imagine what the ending would be like, for her, and she was caught in the dilemma of wanting a tragic, heroic ending, or the simple, unexciting happy ending. It would be too easy, if things have ended well, too normal, too much like what everyone wants. A story that ends in a devastating heartbreak destroys you, but it makes a better story. Happiness was a concept she never learned to grasp, and comfort an idea she was never really comfortable with. And love. She didn't even dare to think about love. Love to her meant obligation, betrayal, anger, pain and fear. Love is a trap. Everything has a price, and the price of love was more than what she was willing to pay. More than what she had to pay.
Suddenly she was wide awake. The room seemed alien and she felt oddly naked. This was the moment she was waiting for. She found herself smiling, but she knew it wasn't because she was happy. Quietly she slipped out from under the sheets, and while she got dressed she contemplated leaving a note. But what would she say? Nothing, really. So she bent over and kissed her softly on the cheek for one last time, and breathed in the last of her fragrance. Her bag was already packed; she was always ready. She picked it up and walked out the door without even turning her head.
What you don't have, no one can take from you, she remembered. She stepped into the street with lighter footsteps, and she congratulated herself for regaining her freedom. She came to the station, counted her money and boarded the bus that could take her the furthest from here. There were no footprints, no horses to ride into a sunset with. "Fuck romance," she thought as she sat down, and gazed into the distance where the sun was slowly rising above the horizon.