Hand
She knows it is coming. She's known it for the last fifteen minutes, but she's still holding her attention firm. She promised herself it would not happen this evening, not in this crowd. She had been looking forward to the night out all week, and this restaurant truly deserves all the reviews it gets. The balcony of the restaurant has a view of the city, and the summer evening rewards them with a gentle breeze. Her companions are polite and gentle, and a well-dressed gang. They are discussing something really important when she starts to nod off, their voices becoming distant echoes.
She can't fight the urge; it has won, so she simply lets go. Her soul would take a form on her own, lower her head, touch the edge of the table with her forehead, and just stand there. This wouldn't affect the conversation at all, because nobody would notice. The body is the old trickster - can stay upright for hours, and it knows when to blink, when to laugh, and even when to say: "Wow, that is amazing". But her soul is just not capable of that; she would always rest on the table edge, waiting for evening to come to an end. She would follow when the body left the restaurant and wait until it hugged everyone and told each person how lovely a night she had and how she can't wait to meet them again. And only when everyone's footsteps were far away, and she was alone waiting for the tram to take her home, would the soul come back to her.
But now in the restaurant, the soul is not sleeping; that would be a blessing. Sometimes she, the soul, would count breaths, sometimes she would think about the last book she enjoyed, and sometimes she would just look at the feet. If she was in a good mood, the soul would even tell the body, "Hey, your feet are dancing under the table. Relax, or they'll figure out that we're not there."
The soul's favorite thing to do is imagine that one day she would learn Spanish and travel all the way from Mexico to Patagonia. She would take big buses, the ones locals use to travel the continent, eat spicy food she generally avoids, and chat with folks along the way.
Or that one day, in the middle of counting breaths, his soul arrives. "Hey," she would protest, "this is my spot!" But he would be unfazed, and would say something that would make her fall in love with him immediately: "Yeah, I noticed, but I can't be there anymore - so I thought I'd come here and ask you how your week was". In her daydreams, he always says something kind and never something like: "What's a soul like you doing in a dump like this?" He can't say that - just the fact that his soul noticed her would be a sign. Once she even dreamed that he came, held her hand, and said nothing while everyone else upstairs was talking about recent crises in a place they had only seen on the screen.
After an encounter like that - surely they would meet again - the soul now following body all the time. They would always hold hands, and she would know what to say so that he would feel stronger than he is, and he would know when to stop talking or make silly jokes that make her smile. She would meet his parents and try to observe which piece of him comes from dad and which comes from mom. They would eventually move in together. Her soul would be there when they offload the moving truck, when they buy furniture, when they arrange things. The soul would always be there when they wonder what to eat this evening, and when they argue over which restaurant to order from; and she would not blink an eye when he orders exactly the same thing over and over again.
And for her, the true testament of love would be that in the midst of him telling a story she has already heard a million times, she would be permitted to let her soul rest again on the edge of the table, and he would not get angry or insecure. He would just put his arm on her shoulder, and gently kiss her soul on the back of her neck.
Her feet are now moving more than usual. They are almost running under the table. Ah, the body is triggered by someone's harsh argument; the soul will have to go into a rage, and she will spend the rest of the night arguing. Her companions will go home thinking, "Wow, she is passionate about that topic." They will never know that she is just angry because they forced her to stop thinking about his hand on her shoulder.
Part of the Dreams and Fears series.