Names from my old stomping ground stump me, yet I knew that face, one with confidence, poise, and charm. Antonio Morelli. As teens, we hung in the same circles and enjoyed each other’s company but had never connected on a personal note, neither of us taking the time to invest anything beyond the group.
“Tracie, right?” he said as I walked by his seat. The train slightly turned, and my knees buckled under me as my body swayed back and forth, acting like a limp puppet. A tug on my shirt made my heart race as I looked down into Antonio’s rich mahogany eyes, eyes that locked onto me and drew me into his soul. Had they looked like that when we were kids, and if they had, how hadn’t I noticed? The train hit a rut, and once again, my body made a fool of me as it lifted and landed on wobbly knees.
“Sit before you fall on your face,” he said, laughing smoother than a salesman trying to pitch jewelry. His grip on my shirt pulled tighter, and I plopped on the seat with a thud that made me feel like a clutz as my body swerved into his. Instantly, electricity shot from Antonio and zapped me with a passion I had never felt before as it swirled and mixed in his musky cologne, hypnotizing me and making my head funny, like that time I had inhaled too much helium from a balloon.
“Tracie, Tracie, Tracie, Gramerly. How are you? What are the chances?” Bugs crawled in and out of my skin, yet when I looked, nothing was there. My eyes settled on Antonio, and I felt the bugs again.
He stared at me, waiting for me to respond. My tongue swelled to the size of a beach ball, and I couldn’t say anything clever, so I just smiled.
“Still Gramerly?” he asked, almost with a twinkle in his eye. Was that a twinkle of hope, wishful thinking that I hadn’t married? The beach ball moved into my brain, and now I really couldn’t speak. I showed him my bare ring finger and nodded again.
“So, what’s your story besides the cat’s got your tongue?”
A couple chattered over a newspaper as their toddler ran up and down the aisles, shoving his toy in everyone’s faces. I tried to ignore the toddler when he stopped next to me so I would appear to like kids if that was what Antonio wanted. The toddler smelt ripe, like he needed a diaper change, and I tried to pretend the smell didn’t offend me.
Antonio smiled at the kid, then said to me, “Well?” The toddler pushed his toy into my face one last time, then moved to his next victim.
What would I say that sounded interesting, that made the last four years of my life of value? What had Antonio done? I wished he would go first so I could match his accomplishments. I opened my mouth to speak, and while I did, he ran his tongue across his teeth in such a manner that my body shuddered and my lips closed. Antonio put his hand on my knee, and I figured I might just die right then and there of dopamine overload.
“Do you have PTSD, Tracie? No one could shut you up back in the day?”
Say something, idiot!
I envisioned myself popping the beach ball that blocked my thoughts and tossing it out the window. It worked, and I became the Tracie of old, talking faster than my mind had to process, but I had learned a few things over the years and mixed it with sultry flirting.
It just so happened that Antonio and I were headed to Manhattan; both had meetings Friday morning at the same time. After that, we had independently planned to explore the city for the rest of the weekend. To commemorate the good old days, we met for lunch at noon, and the pull between us kept us glued to each other for the entire weekend.
I couldn’t believe the magnetism Antonio had. He morphed into everything that I considered the perfect partner. He had a masculine and ruggedly handsomeness that put exotic dancers to shame. Every word he spoke, he spun into a witty antic, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Conversation with him refreshed me more than ten spa days could. He talked about respect for women like I had always wished men would. My jaw quivered when he mentioned his cabinetry shop back home, where he built custom-made furniture as a hobby. I imagined him out in the shop with little slivers of sawdust stuck in his hair and clinging to his face. I would carry a tray of tea to him, and then we would recreate the scene from Ghost, except with a sander or bandsaw in lieu of a pottery wheel. For his job, he was an everything man at a construction company where he custom-designed homes. He knew plumbing and electricity. He could do everything.
Antonio took my breath away when he talked about the future family he wanted to create with a wife one day. His ambitions were exactly like mine, and he wanted to wait for at least eight years before he took that adventure. Just like me! And then, when he retired, he would spend his days in a rustic cabin in the woods, making furniture.
Falling in love isn’t a strong enough description of what Antonio did to me. He was more powerful than a hit of heroin, causing an explosion in every cell in my body. I became addicted to him in a gripping, soul-binding way. He possessed me. I gave my whole twenty-two years of life to him in a second.
We found out that we only lived six miles from each other, and when we returned to our homes, he incorporated me into his world, which heightened my attraction for him, as I fit in perfectly with his friends. His routines, his desires, they were all mine. I wanted to be in his world forever. There was no place greater.
After a month, I did what I vowed never to do: I gave my heart entirely to Antonio.
But the sweet perfection did not stay like that. The Antonio that stole my soul in the city didn’t turn out to be the Antonio back home. He quickly drifted from me despite telling me on the train that I could turn to him for anything in the world, that he would never leave me, and that he would even love me when I became old and wrinkly. He had ensnared me with beautiful, powerful, sentimental words.
“I want you to come to me for anything. I want you to trust me and have someone you can talk with.”
I had never had that before: a confidant. And while in New York, he gave me that soundboard. But it wasn’t real. It seemed back home the only thing he wanted to discuss was sexual. All that talk on the train was just that: Talk.
But he became a rogue.
And so, time has gone on, like it does, and love has left me in the gutter. I had promised myself I would never become one of those love sap girls, but I had.
I had!
And for what? A dream. Antonio didn’t exist, not the one he had presented to me in the city. He shouldn’t have taken my heart if he knew he was a fraud. But he had. He had beguiled me. Used me. Lied to me. Filled me with false hope.
I haven’t been able to remove his tendons from my heart, where they still pierce in deeply today. I keep hanging out with Antonio, but only when it suits him, only when he calls. I spend months watching my phone, waiting for the vibration to say he sent me a text.
Just when I decide to walk away from Antonio, he gives a little; a drop of attention that erases my resolve to move on.
Pathetic, really.
It’s been nine years. Nine years of hoping. Of waiting. Of turning my life and happiness over to someone who doesn’t deserve it. He has ruined me. The most heartbreaking thing is that he was never real. He was an illusion, an ideal that I fell in love with during the best weekend of my life.
So today, I will lay his name on the altar in my parish and release his hold.
“I take back my heart, Antonio. Do you hear me? I take it back.”
I look around the chapel and see that I am alone. I put a slip of paper with his name in the flames and watch the orange and red fire devour it, smoke rising to the top of the beams.
“Goodbye, you son-of-a-bitch!”
At last, I have moved on.
I am free.
He never was real.
I hold my newly recovered heart in my hands and return power to where it belongs.
With me.
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He Was Never Real
by Stephanie Daich
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