After having just spent the last two hours telling me about his childhood, he arrived back at the hotel, removed his shoes, put on his t-shirt and went to bed. I imagined he removed his t-shirt to sleep with me and put on his t-shirt to build a natural physical and emotional gap between us.
I let him.
I watched him falling asleep. Within minutes he was out like a light.
I watched him for a little bit as he had fallen asleep, like I did not exist. 
I admired his delicate feature, his beautiful frame, his emotionless, dead-asleep facial expression. I watched him and then I went to the bathroom to remove my contact lens and to brush my teeth.
Last week I knew nothing of his past: where he was born, where he grew up, what his relationship was like with his dad and mom. This week I knew he was born in Nebraska, moved to Iowa and settled in Indiana. I knew he hated Nebraska, his mother was abusive, and he liked computer modeling ever since he was four or five. He was born in Stuttgart, and he spent his youth, sometimes a month at a time, in Germany with his mother and grandmother. I deduced that he was always a smart kid, a kid who perhaps did not have a lot of friends but he was good at creating a world where he was largely content on his own. He liked his place tidy, his world clutter-free, and he created his space away from others. He liked his alone time. His mother was volatile and beat him up for no apparent reason, sort of like my father, consequently he developed an attitude to stay emotionally distant yet he was good at charming women to bed. He bedded over a hundred women, and he managed to stay away from real relationships. The longest relationship he had ever had was with me, so he claimed. Even that he very rarely needed to see me, and he took break from me in between visits. I was comfortable with that in the past, in part I was afraid he might grow tired of me, and I him. Though I missed him more often than he did me. I knew because whenever the thought of him came up, I became severely emotional. My heart tucked a little and my eyes welled with tears: I missed him and I ached for him.
He was often very exhausted, he worked constantly, from 7 am to 7 pm. And then he crashed soon after.
He was lying in bed trying to make a reservation or checking his email on his phone, I sat next to him, and he jumped, "You are crowding me out." He said. I constantly wanted and needed his affection, but he dished it out very sparsely.
When he was away that day, I worked hard. I put him out of my mind because I knew he'd return back to me. It was the first time since I had met him, that I felt utterly content. Knowing he'd come back to me, that evening, gave me the solid ground to stand on, one I never had and never will.
When I was leaving for the airport, not realizing when I'd ever see him again, I put on this brave face, an emotionless version of me emerged from this, I said calmly goodbye as if he was a colleague and not the love of my life. In truth if my real feelings came out I'd be crying. I'd cry because I couldn't stand being away from him, to not know when I'd see him again, to know that if I did manage to see him again, I'd have to try very hard first for him to know that I needed him so, and he would not realize how much it hurt me because I had no idea how soon I'd ever see him again. How could he ever understand the extent of my love, my longing for him? And even if he did understand it, how could he ever feel the pain, the gut wrenching pain I feel when I part from him?
I have never felt this way about anyone in my life. I have never felt this level of intimacy towards anyone else. I have never wanted to take care of anyone like I wanted him.
I want to tell him that stop running away, stop pushing me away, stop explaining to me why you cannot be with anyone day in and day out, stop because he could and that person would be me.
In the middle of the night I told him, "I want to take care of you, when you are 97."
I have never figured out why. I just knew that I could not live without him. And to lose him is to lose me. I fell asleep shortly after he did. In my dream we'd finally find a way to be together, and I'd live in harmony with him, and he would stop being afraid of losing me, me stop loving him. He knew once for all, that I loved him, I'd take care of him, and he had nothing to fear or be afraid of. For once he knew to trust his instinct. I would always be there for him.
He knew all that because when I missed him, my heart tied a knot, and it hurt like hell, and this time, he felt it too.
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