If he felt guilt and silence formed between you two, and the fact that this became a story, where you never even saw blue eyes again, the concept of opportunity and how the veracity of feelings can bring us to places we might later regret, or maybe not. You clearly wanted and got blue eyes, but you also sensed he liked an Irish girl even more. The lines in our relational lives are amorphous, until they are not. You were critical and hopeful of Ryan, but in the end Ryan got what he think he wanted, but was caught by guilt. Guilt alludes to an overall mistake, perhaps not a momentary one. I think you all felt that there was impossibility of commitment but still an eagerness to play. The event was judged as a special time to never be lived again.

But, even so I question my interpretation, my judgment, my passing glance. Those were times I too explored because I was young and wanted for nothing, because all I wanted was eventually mine. The problem became for how long and how would I recover from someone else’s new direction.

I loved three times, maybe four, and then as Paul Bowles said “we die.”

I lie awake remembering.