Five am.
I'm receving guests in six hours.
I passed the sleep horizon several hours ago, curled up in a beanbag chair, hiding behind Jean, hiding from the scary "show me your breasts" man from Bretagne.
The man that started off hysterical, joining in Cedric and Brieuc's antics and having us rolling on the floor in spasms of laughter with a half-hour tirade about vaginal farts.
But the evening wore on. The paella was delicious, the crowd entertaining.
I should have left to catch the midnight train, though, rather than accept the offer of a ride later on, but Cristal pouted and that was that.
Later on, when things grew slow and my patience tried, and the frightening man spent just a little too long staring directly at me while the rest of the conversation circled lazily around him
and he announced
"You have beautiful lips"
I blushed, laughed it off, and put my head in Cristal's lap and she announced that she was coming with me to Toronto, and I saw the faces around her fall a second time after I announced having gotten my own flight confirmation...
And then he did it again. And again. Then it was "show me your breasts! Awww c'mon, why not?"
Then his wife called to check up on him and he was subdued for a while. A minute at most.
And the evening wore on.
We watched the video of the party two weekends ago, I was in it far too often. The chocolate fight was spectacular, but gods do I look ridiculous on film. Horrendously ridiculous. Malformed even.
But Brieuc and Cedric were sweet as all hell yelling out "look, who's that beautiful blonde?!?" the first thirteen times that Thomas caught me grinning inanely and gesturing wildly.
Curled up with Jean, it was safer, though. Half hidden by his six and a half feet of legs, basking in the warmth of someone I think I can trust.
Curled up and bored of the eighteenth repetition of this or that stupid story (we'd reached my limit for hysterics), I leaned back and envisioned webcams and beautiful grins.
And then it was all too much. Cristal and the pain she's causing her friend because of me. My own glee at the affection I was discovering in Brieuc and Cedric, people I've known since I got here but am only really beginning to connect properly with now, the twinge that I spent an evening getting too attached to even more people that I will shortly leave behind. Fear, at the fact that my ride home was still commenting on my lips and asking insistently about what blowjobs are like with my tonguering, and most of all...
A deep sense of need, hunger, wistfulness, I don't know what it was, all of them in some way, at the haunting visions from a webcam this afternoon, visions of far more beautiful lips, the sudden physical realization of how far away they are, how long three weeks is.
I am so deeply tired and drained and wet in the eyes right now, tomorrow will be a test in stamina and patience, no time to pine nor angst; I ashamed that for the first time in many years to find myself wishing for time to pass faster, rather than glorying in the time I have.
I am very tired, and unable to express precisely what this weight is which leans against my heart, so late in an evening of aborted time,
and when I see the sun in a few hours
I will be filled with the joy that comes with each morning
but right now I just wanted to mark this welling of emotion.
Two new friends that will leave a hole in my heart, the look on each one's face at points in the conversation when things we'd said touched each other and our glances sought each other out. Their smiles when they realized that I'd understood this or that, that strange foreign girl, understanding some little thing that they'd thought they were alone in.
Such smiles are precious.
Gems amongst hours of gossip, goth-mocking, pretentious discussions of bdsm games and things that M. ScaryGuy really shouldn't bother his overburdened brain with, moments and smiles that will stay with me after goodbye is over and healed.
When Jean said goodnight, he too announced that he was leaving for vacation.
"I won't be here when you leave. This might be the last time we ever see each other."
We swapped tears on each other's t-shirts so painfully briefly, and then I was packed into the car and trying desperately to turn the conversation to anything, anything else.
Tomorrow I will run and laugh and push my body beyond limits, and Monday I will begin organizing a shipment of my winter stuff overseas.
Tuesday I will do other things.
Wednesday I meet with the bank.
By Thursday, some other whirlwind will have swept me up.
Right now, though, this very moment, is rife with emotion.