Nathan's Porch

     I was amazed the last time I saw Nathan, how we didn't suck face. We were sitting on the porch in the dark when he asked me to hold his hand.
     "What's up?" I asked.
     "Nothing," he said.
     I gripped his palm tighter.It wasn't nothing. He hardly seemed to notice when my fingernails cut crescents into his flesh. His fingers did not fumble for mine, not at all.
     I said his name once, and then again. The third time he looked up from his feet with those eyes I always thought were made of melted chocolate. They were damp now, too.
     "I can't see you anymore," he said.
    "Very funny." I nudged him with my shoulder, and was a little surprised when he didn't spring back. "Ha, ha."
     He did not answer. I peered into his sideways face. "What's going on, Nathan?"
     He did not exhale. He barely inhaled.
     Only when I tried kissing him on the lips did he show any sign of life at all. His head recoiled, almost, and that stopped me by itself. His frozen hands were the other thing, hard as claws.
     "Don't make me say it," he said.
      I looked at his messy shoelaces. "You can't say why, can you?"
     He couldn't even say that. He stared at his feet again. I saw the profile of his lips and something inside me broke.
     "Tell me," I said. I added, "Please." But even as I gripped his cool, clammy hand it slid out of mine.
     He stared off, as if I was over there. Was he seeing the past? The warmness of that time had steamed away. Somewhere into the darkness, I thought.
     I put my hands together and squeezed.
    "I don't want..." He started to say what, but he stopped short. Frozen.
     "What do you want?" My own tone sliced into the night far sharper than I'd thought it would.
     He turned so that I could not see his profile. His figure loomed dark and cold over the warmer, moonless night. "This."
     "You want this?"
     "No."
     "I'm trying to understand."
     "I don't want this."
     "Nathan." My breath whistled as I sucked in. "Tell me what this is, maybe I can -- "
     "This is nothing."
      That something broken in me asked the questions that were bolder than I am. Was, I guess, if I want to be perfectly honest.
      "To you," I heard myself mumbling.
      "It's less than you and me. It's a subtraction."
       "Missing what?"
       "Substance."
       "This didn't mean anything to you? None of this meant anything to you!" I found myself shouting into the night. Lights came on above.
        "You should go." He sat with his head down. I wouldn't have been able to see his face even if light had touched it.
        "But this was something." I started to go.
        "It was." His hands were near his eyes, between his knees. Almost a sweet position.
         "But not now?"
          The only answer I got was when he stared after me in the dark. Maybe he had watched me walking away from his porch, earlier. Maybe in his mind it had already happened. But maybe it was nothing.