There’s a special bond that arises when everyone is leaving a party . Car keys in hand, coat collar upturned, clutching their bags.
It’s the moment when all your attention is fixed on your parting guests. You forget the mess in the kitchen and the stains on the carpet. The pressed-clothes-&-perfect-lipstick small talk is long gone. You’re urging them to stay a minute longer, knowing full well that the only way they would, is if neither of you brings it up. Hanging around their car “wrapping up" last-minute conversation. You’ve both been standing out here for over half an hour now, and they still haven’t left. You don’t want them to. You’d do anything to get them to stay. A little more tea. An extra napkin. Some leftovers. Did they forget something? You need them here more badly than they want to stay. They have work tomorrow. It’s a long drive home. It’s just a party. But when they go, you’ll be left alone in a hollow house. Eerily quiet after bearing witness to so much liveliness. Neither the house, nor you, want to go back to being alone together. But we all tread on a delicate rope of socialisation. You don’t want to come across pathetic. They don’t to overstay their welcome. They need to return home. You aren’t home. You can never be home.
It’s in this moment when I think love runs the deepest. It’s late and social etiquette is on its last leg. Barely-disguised eyes full of slumber, eager to give into the temptation of vulnerability. Tiptoeing at the edge of discretion. Almost ready to say: yes, I will sleep at your house and throw all social facade out the window till morning comes.
Sometimes, this defines what it means to be “in love". The urgency and hopelessness of the scene. Always lingering on the cusp of ending, the fleeting goodbyes and broken promises of meeting soon — of staying in touch. As soon as they’re gone, the puzzle pieces of their face, scatter in your memory. You won’t hear from them for a while now, and you can’t ever revisit the conversation that just broke off. The hunger to hear their unfinished sentence, will remain unsatisfied forevermore.
That’s what keeps you inviting them over and over again. The shallow beginnings hold little value in contrast to the ending. When you know it will all end but you keep performing anyway. Your best performance is when their stay is at stake. Each extra minute counts. It’s when they’re finally getting up to leave, that you truly fall in love the idea of them. Not in the next time you see them — when you’ll make excuses to run to the kitchen to avoid meeting their eyes. No, there’s no thrill in that. There’s no longing in their absence. No chase. No tragic demise in the night.
