The Last Night

I’ve known Derek for 6,056 days. That’s 16 ½ years. I count our time in days because the expanse of time that I’ve known, and loved him, feels infinitely longer than the number 16 ½. And on a warm July evening, 2,308 days ago, after returning home from a Friday night at the Brooklyn Museum and Trader Joe’s, I received a text from Derek that read, “Hey, how are you?” It had been months since we spoke. How many days? I actually don’t know.
I placed my grocery bag on the kitchen floor and began to empty it. I placed the pink spray roses I bought myself in a vase next to my bed, then I sat on the edge and replied. “Hey.” Two hey’s turned into 9pm cocktails and snacks at a local bar near my apartment. As I approached the street corner, I could see him waiting outside. We got close. We stood at almost the same height and were physically proportional. He hugged me and whispered “Hi.” His embrace swallowed me whole, and months of not seeing him couldn’t erase the familiarity of his touch. I smelled his neck, his hair. That night, he was everything I needed to know. I’d never seen Derek more dynamic than he’d been that evening. Usually quiet and somewhat sullen, I was confused or maybe surprised? During the course of our night together, we appeared to be that couple. We talked, he talked, I talked, other people in the bar talked to us, we made jokes about one another, the bartender bought us back drinks, and laughter filled my entire being. I felt seen and not hidden. I was that woman, unlike so many nights when he’d come over with wine, his familiar touch, wandering eyes and then leave.
Without the exchange of a single word, we walked back to my building, and we didn’t say a word to one another as he followed me up the stairs to my apartment, through the hallway into my bedroom. He unbuttoned my silly avocado printed button down shirt. He looked in my eyes and mumbled, “I’ve missed you.” He touched my stretch marked stomach and said “You’re beautiful.” 
When I opened my eyes at 8am, he was still there. We began to kiss. An hour later, I got out of bed and put on my pajama bottoms, the pink ones with the silly little orange print on them. I slid a soft gray sweater over my head. The neckline crept down my shoulder and, as I made the bed, I watched him get dressed. He made his way to my living room couch where I stood in front of him, his hands on my waist, his eyes incapable of meeting mine, “Being here has me feeling some sort of way.” He stood up and kissed my shoulders - then my forehead. I don’t know if it was love for him, but I know what I felt all night. Our only evening and morning sharing a bed 2,308 days ago. The last time we ever slept together.