Older Now

"Do you think it's just that we're older now," he asked her.

"Maybe. I'm not sure if it's because we're older, or because the world has actually gotten worse," she said.

He paused for a moment. Overhead, three large crows were circling the sun. Where he sat the grass was soft and green and the air was warm. Stroking the hair on his chin he started to speak but then stopped, searching for a reply.

"What if it hasn't gotten worse," he said, "what if we've just gotten more sensitive to it?"

She didn't say anything. She leaned back onto the blanket, so the sun splayed over her chest, and looked up at the sky. He could tell she was thinking by the way her jaw clenched gently two or three times.

"I was reading an article the other day," he continued, "about baldness. Have you ever wondered why men start to bald on the top of the head rather than the sides?"

She shook her head and sipped her drink.

"Well, as we age, the hairs on the top of the head become more sensitive to a chemical the body produces, called DHT, and the hairs fall out."

"So the body produces more of the chemical as they get older, then?" she asked.

"Nope," he said smugly, before sipping his beer, "the concentration stays the same."

"I see where you're going with this," she said, "but you can't compare a person's worldview to a balding head."

"Can't I?" he asked, smiling, "I just did. It makes sense. The world hasn't changed that much since we were kids; we have."

"Bullshit," she said as she leaned toward him and lowered her sunglasses, "technology has changed everything. It's made us more connected and more alone, and you know it."

He liked the way she flushed slightly when she got excited. Or maybe it was the sunburn. But between her reddened cheeks and her sharp eyes, her bright blonde hair, and the way her shirt slipped slightly from her skinny shoulder revealing a gentle splash of freckles there, he knew she was everything. All it took was her smile and the sound of her laughter to disarm him. Even now he was lost in her eyes.

"What, you've got nothing to say," she asked, "no clever remark?"

"None."

She hit his arm and laid back down. He looked over her, out around the park, at the young children playing and waving bubble wands in the wind. He watched the little circles float delicately on the breeze while the children laughed and chased them. All it would take was a sudden change in altitude, or for something to get in the way for one of them to burst. Love was like a bubble, he thought, existing magically, held together by some invisible force, barely there, somehow slow and light and empty, yet full. Neither bubbles nor love are built to last very long at all. And neither can be helped very much. Both seem a fading, fickle deceit, suspended somewhere between the thinness of our imaginations and a dream.

"Let's get ice cream," she said brightly as she sat up.

"Ice cream?"

"Yeah," she yelled as she grabbed his forearm. "Come on, let's go."

He'd get ice cream with her, of course. Not because he wanted to, particularly, but because right now the weather was warm, and it wouldn't be forever.