Combinations
We didn’t have any time left, but I was scared to tell him. The weeds crept through the rocks and the night was aging quickly. There were dark clouds hiding the stars and streetlights that flickered on and off and on and I couldn’t say what I needed to.
“This is the most romantic thing we’ve done in months,” he said.
“I, um, I suppose so,” I said.
“What was it you wanted to say to me?” he said.
I pushed some rocks around with my shoe. They were smooth and flat and probably perfect for skipping across water like we’d done that first night. Seventeen months. “I just wanted to say that, um, that it’s the last romantic thing we’re going to do.”
So this is right now. Sitting on traintracks cold and raspy, not looking at each other, as ambulances drive into the hospital in the background.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll change. I’ll be better. We don’t have to give up.”
“It’s not a matter of doing better, Chris, and it’s not really giving up, either,” I said. A stationwagon drove down the street in front of us and drove back two minutes later: this is a time when everything feels like it must be significant.
“Maybe it’s lost,” he said. He’d noticed too. He usually noticed.
“And maybe it’ll start raining or something too and then we’ll have even more metaphorical significance resting on this,” I said.
“I was just saying,” he said. “That’s all.”
I flushed a little. Stupid, don’t get off track. That’s why we’re here. Reminder, stay on track, every little stupid bit helps, I hope. “I know, I’m sorry,” I said. “Look, I just wanted to be sure we’d have some privacy for this, that’s all. I didn’t mean to make it seem like I was being romantic.”
“Pretty easy to misunderstand,” he said.
“I said I was sorry, okay?” I looked over at him but he was staring away down the tracks. “Do you want to talk about this or not?”
“Did you have anything else to say?” he said. Was it my imagination or was he the one overreacting? It was really just a simple breakup (was there any such thing)? He was shaking his head. I’m not a bitch, am I? He brought this on himself.
“Be honest,” I said, “Neither of us was happy anymore.”
“I know we fight a lot,” he said, “And I know what I need to do to stop. I’ll do it, I promise.”
“Chris, I make you almost as miserable as you make me. Can you seriously say you want to stay together?”
He looked at me then, his eyes reflecting light from the hospital behind us and I wondered if he was near crying because he looked it.
* * * *
I saw her first in the icecream shop where she worked for the summer, smiling behind the counter as my friends marched me in and I waved bashful from behind a group of them. We went outside then, her on her break, and talked and smiled more and I felt so insignificant next to her a college girl and me so insignificant but she looked at me and smiled.
I don’t think your friends like me she said and I told her no, even though I knew she was right, just come in for a while, I said, you’ll enjoy it and they all want to see you of course. I don’t like it she said, I always feel uncomfortable around them, can’t we just stay out here for a while or something since they don’t even know we’re here yet? I couldn’t turn her down, could I.
We were in the back of her friend’s stationwagon with the windows fogged up it must have been thirty outside she said as she unbuttoned her shirt she said this is how this is what you do and I said okay I’ll try. Do or do not she said and I laughed, comfortable again but only shortly. Quick I said, here they come back put on your jacket and she did.
I’m just a jerk, I told her, and I’ll probably break your heart in the end since I’ve done it before. I love you, she said. Look, I told her either deal with it and drop this and we can go on or don’t and we won’t be able to, okay. She looked at me tears in her eyes and I knew it was true.
I can’t believe the things you say sometimes she told me, I can’t believe how you just disregard people like you do and make them into jokes these are things to take seriously. These are not things to joke about, these are things that affect our lives and I looked at her and felt very witty to say, that’s the best possible reason for joking about them but she said she didn’t think it was witty at all.
We were in her car huddled together in a blanket we’d started to keep under the back seat and I looked at her with her head resting on my shoulder and I smiled and though I didn’t think I’d made a noise she said What and shifted to look up at me. Nothing, I said, just looking at you and she smiled back up at me like I’d said the most incredible thing I could possibly have said.
* * * *
“So what do we do now?” he said, still making eye contact. I was surprised. He usually looked away when he talked to me about things he cared about.
“I don’t know,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about it. The rocks shifted under my shoes and I started to try digging a dandelion out with the tip of my shoe, which wasn’t really pointy or hard enough to manage. “It’s up to you, I guess.”
“Can I still see you?” He looked like he knew the answer already, but there’s sort of an order to these things, I guess.
“Yeah, I’d like that,” I said, not really thinking he believed me and knowing I didn’t. I stood up. “Want to head back?” I said.
“It’s pretty cold out,” he said, convincing himself. “Can we, um, can we maybe hold hands on the way back?”
“No,” I said.
“Can we ever hold hands?” he said.
“No,” I said. I walked a foot farther from him than usual, awkwardly keeping track of his distance from me while not going off the sidewalk. The night was darker in preparation for the new day, but I knew it would never come like it should. This is how it is and was and shall be, us in the darkness on the sidewalk staying a conscious distance from each other. I found myself living lifetimes in that night knowing any escape was impossible.
