A more lovely drink in Inman Park

“I love you.”
The most profound words in the English language.
The words we crave.

The words we search to hear as we move alone through the beats of the city streets into our Uber and make our way home—searching, looking, listening—
The streetlights passing out the window like a slow turning film reel.

Just us.
Alone, in our living room at 1:28 A.M. on a Saturday morning.
—

The bar scene was lively tonight on Mari’s birthday.
People meeting, moving, first dates, 25th dates—friends, lovers—all were gathered for craft cocktails in Inman Park.

I haven’t seen Mari in a few months. It’s funny how friendships are like that. How they can be separated while we live our lives but move right along as though we just ended a commercial break (maybe for Frosted Flakes—“They’re Great!” Lol.)

Mari asked how I was. How’s life. We moved through the usual topics.

So, I told him the truth. That’s what you do with people you’re close to. The ones with whom you’ve been in the trenches.

“I’m good. I’m doing well. I’m alone, but I’m learning how to do that. How to sit with it. How to be grateful for it,” I told him.

“I’ve gotten where I love that,” said Mari. “When I think back to the calm of that alone. But I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t have done it. Not how you do.”

“Ah, well— I don’t know how well I do it.”

Then he said it. The thing that supersedes “I love you.”

Mari looked at me—not intensely, not passionately.

He said it casually, as a truth.

“You saved me,” Mari said.

I just kind of let that hang on me for a few seconds—

The loud rap continued in the background.
The bartender rattled his shaker.
The door opened and closed.
People laughed.

But I just sat with it.

I know the gravity of what it means to say that.

I was back in the ocean.
The waves crashing.
The shark circling.
Hands thrashing.
Tired.
So tired.
You can barely keep your head up—

But then that hand grabs the neck of your shirt in the cold wet.

It grabs you. And it pulls you up. And it says, “We’re not done here.”

You don’t know what’s happening then.
You can’t.

But later, when you look back—when you look back at how you almost lost yourself beneath the black cold depths where the jaws are lurking—

Waiting.
Waiting to snap.

You know—

You know that hand that grabbed you. That pulled you. That hauled you up into the boat. That saved you.

The arms that held you when they could have moved on.

That grabbed that T-shirt and said, “No. Not yet.”

You just know.

That was M for me.

A group at the bar leaves.

And I look at Mari, my lips bitten, and I sit for a moment.

I exhale. My eyes on his. Then shifting down.

“I know what that means,” I tell him. “I’m honored I was there.”

I look at Mari.

And he looks at me.

I reach up and rub his shoulder.

And we just know.

And the bar moves on.

“Another round!” says a voice in the crowd, in the bar.