talisman

It must have been sometime in July. Maybe that night when he turned up at the dive bar down on the corner where we were, as usual, nursing beers and playing Photo Hunt. We'd been there all night, but he was a little drunker than the rest of us. Embarrassingly, he kept trying to kiss my neck, in a very non-PG manner. I was hoping my roommates would be too fixated on the screen to notice. Of course they weren't.

But later that night, we were lying in my bed, sober again. The walls in that apartment were paper-thin and everyone else was asleep. So he was talking right into my ear, low and soft.

"Don't answer. Just let me say this," he told me.

"You need to know that you're amazing. You are sexy" -- he ran a hand down the flat of my stomach -- "and funny, and so smart. And you have a good heart. I can tell." He was a deliberate person, but that night he spoke more deliberately, more earnestly than usual. "I hope you know that you deserve someone just as amazing. And...and even if that person isn't me, I hope you never settle. You deserve someone who appreciates what you are."

I was quiet for a minute. My instinct was to say something self-deprecating, deflect all the compliments. But he'd already told me not to answer. So eventually I just whispered, "Thank you," and pulled him closer to me.

That was Adam. There were any number of reasons why Adam was not the one for me, and vice versa. But eight months later, I realize how grateful I am for that little speech, even if I still don't know why he felt compelled to make it. Truth be told -- and what is this blog for, if not the truth? -- there have been one or two nights since then when that memory has been my talisman.

Sometimes I'm almost positive that the universe is making sure I have everything I need.