Categories > Original > Drama
"Hello"
She spoke first, eyes flashing up abruptly, cold black pools that meet mine and retreat again. Her voice is a deep smooth tremor, more calm than I ever remembered her capable of being. She seems strangely possessed of an inalienable peace, some innate and irrelevant calm that keeps her out of my reach. Always apart from me, as if caught down from a great height. Invulnerable, but I'd always thought she was anyways.
The fear in her eyes is almost enough to make me want her back in my arms again. She sits stiffly, arms wrapped around herself, refusing to look as I sit down. She won't see me, but her shock is too tangible in the way she bites her lip.
Nothing moves; we sit waiting for time to replace itself and leave us alone, back where we were a minute ago. I feel sick just staring at her, but don't get up- instead I grip the styrofoam coffee cup tightly and let it's almost suffocating warmth distract me.
"It's nice to see you Kayla."
My voice comes out too quiet, too weak in front of her. She doesn't respond.
So everything goes numb- you're always too hesitant right at the end. That very catharthis, taking it out into the open is too much. Finally, they must force you, thrust the break heavy on your mind, so it crouches over every thought until you can't help but spew it out at them like so much bile. The insane, deperate action, caught on the look in their eye as it stains everything, irrevocably. And still, it was this or poison yourself with it left internalized.
Her hand darts up and pulls her hair back from her eyes, rich with a dark shadow. I was pulled back to her again, still fascinated by the untouchable grace in her slightest movement. I can't bring myself to speak, wanting nothing more than to be repulsed by her, to be able to cast her out and go on forgetting. She hid her rage so well, releasing it in terrible abject violences that contorted her face into an unbearably grotesque caricature of the singular beauty she always seemed to be. At the end of it she seemed so twisted in on herself, screaming as she forced me out the door, and closing her eyes as she shut it. I could be wrong, I wasn't so sick of her then.
She stirs nothing in me now, that's the worst of it. If I could hate her it'd be easy to blow her off, to vilify her, or better, not to have met her here in the first place.
And if I could feel anything else, I'd let her back into me again wouldn't I?
Her fingers are twitching, she glances up at me through her eyelashes, pretending not to see anything. I don't think she knows what to say anymore than I do. There's no reason for either of us to have come, what was she expecting? To hurt me again? To try and reconsummate a relationship that meant so little to begin with? I idealized her. She was unreachable.
"Well, are you going to say anything or is this just a waste of my time?"
I hold my rapidly cooling cup and take a few swigs, not looking at her.
"If you're not, I'm going to go."
She stands up, I hear the chair screech against the floor as she pulls it back. She shoulders her purse and turns away from me, again.
Blindly I slam the cup down, watching as the splatters of brown liquid spread over the table.
"Wait."
I can't believe how desperate my voice sounds, whispered softly to her, almost under my breath as my hand reaches absently towards her. She pauses.
"Please, sit down. I want to talk, it's just hard to fi-"
"Alright."
Smirking, she lowers herself back into the chair.
"Talk then".
She thinks just getting me here is a conquest, I can read it in the absence of fear in her smug expression. Instead she leans back in the chair, self-satisfied with a contented smirk, having 'won' she can abandon her vulnerability, shove it back inside where it can't be seen. God, its disgusting. It's a look of ownership, of mindless domination. She always smiled like that. I preferred her nervous, anxious, screaming; anything but this domineering, asinine pretense.
I sigh, steeling myself to say it. It's easy to think you can abandon something, especially when you're possessed of self, free, separate, individual. Really, it's easier for all the mindless assholes like her; so hooked on being entertained, sated, but never feeling anything. For her to renounce anything means less. Rejection is like tainting a peice of your life, rendering each memory new, intrinsically repulsive, or traumatic. All pre-emptive of the climactic falling-out.
Closing my eyes I say it.
"Kayla, I don't know what this is, or why you wanted to see me again. There's just no reason to."
I can feel the sick, nervous laughter ridging up around my lips as I speak, coloring them mocking, cruel, cold and brutal flung towards her.
She goes still, staring blankly at me. I think I would have preferred her yelling again, or that damnable smile.
"You ended it. You threw it out with everything left open. I don't know why you did it, hell, I don't know how I felt when I walked out that door."
I close my eyes, remembering her contorted face taut with irrational fury, screaming how she hated me, how she couldn't stand my mind, how the sight of my face disgusted her. That she wanted me out.
Then, how she held me before and ran her fingers through my hair.
My voice was soft, almost a whisper as I spoke
"I don't know if I loved you, if I possibly could have. It doesn't matter."
Not looking, I'm sure she's still staring blindly at me.
The words mean nothing, they can't capture how terrible it is to say it or how sickening it is to have realized how cold she leaves me.
I force my eyes open, she's immobile, her face stiffly cold and vacant, sitting like a cipher on the wooden chair. But her eyes are open, wide with tense worry and spite reflected worse in her twitching lips. She blinks slowly, repeatedly, smearing her makeup as she waits for more.
"There's nothing left Kayla, if there ever was."
She jerks up, alive again at the sound of her name, glaring at me like I'd just slapped her.
"I don't want to hate you, I don't want anything from you. Not love. Not affection. Not sex either or anything 'better' that you could offer me. To try and revive any of this is meaningless, I just want to go on forgetting."
She's still silent, her mouth twisted grotesquely, vaguely between a grimace and a smile. My throat tightens looking at her. I swallow back the tears, I don't want to feel anything now. I can't let myself go, not here, not to her.
"I just want whatever we had to remain what it was, I want to remember it as it was left."
I pause, breathing in so I can form the words.
"It's over."
It comes out simply, coldly. It could have been anything.
She exhales, shuddering hard, her shoulders shaking. Looking away I stand to go, pushing the chair back into the wall.
Her eyes bore into me, I can feel it as I turn to go, asking something inexpressible, more desperately and more vulnerable than I'd ever seen her. It's incomprehensible how we seem to attain profundity in misery. I glance at her, she seems innocent, more beautiful than anything else, hiding her tears with her eyelids. But tomorrow she'll be laughing, moved on to another face, another voice again.
I stop, reaching out with my fingertips to brush her cheekbone, her smooth delicately warm skin curves gently to my touch. She stares off, looking beneath me as I lean in. I can almost feel her eyes close, relieved as we meet, gently, perfectly, finally for one moment everything deteriorates and resolves itself. Alone, without us here in this strange fog where she breathes softly, exhausted into me, tremulously letting her terrified self go, lapse for a single moment. Eclipsed in the singular motion of flesh we cling together, hardly touching, unmoving and freed of everything. Just for a moment. I close my eyes, healing the break for a final instant before pulling back again to see her, staring down, her eyes obscured by her lashes and shining immaculately with tears.
Dazed I walk past her, towards the thin light of the door, and step outside. From the sidewalk I glance back at her, beautifully solipsistic, surprisingly and devastatingly childlike, abounding with cool resentment and staring silently into her hands.
I let her go, and leave back into the morning, cleansed and inviolably numb.
She spoke first, eyes flashing up abruptly, cold black pools that meet mine and retreat again. Her voice is a deep smooth tremor, more calm than I ever remembered her capable of being. She seems strangely possessed of an inalienable peace, some innate and irrelevant calm that keeps her out of my reach. Always apart from me, as if caught down from a great height. Invulnerable, but I'd always thought she was anyways.
The fear in her eyes is almost enough to make me want her back in my arms again. She sits stiffly, arms wrapped around herself, refusing to look as I sit down. She won't see me, but her shock is too tangible in the way she bites her lip.
Nothing moves; we sit waiting for time to replace itself and leave us alone, back where we were a minute ago. I feel sick just staring at her, but don't get up- instead I grip the styrofoam coffee cup tightly and let it's almost suffocating warmth distract me.
"It's nice to see you Kayla."
My voice comes out too quiet, too weak in front of her. She doesn't respond.
So everything goes numb- you're always too hesitant right at the end. That very catharthis, taking it out into the open is too much. Finally, they must force you, thrust the break heavy on your mind, so it crouches over every thought until you can't help but spew it out at them like so much bile. The insane, deperate action, caught on the look in their eye as it stains everything, irrevocably. And still, it was this or poison yourself with it left internalized.
Her hand darts up and pulls her hair back from her eyes, rich with a dark shadow. I was pulled back to her again, still fascinated by the untouchable grace in her slightest movement. I can't bring myself to speak, wanting nothing more than to be repulsed by her, to be able to cast her out and go on forgetting. She hid her rage so well, releasing it in terrible abject violences that contorted her face into an unbearably grotesque caricature of the singular beauty she always seemed to be. At the end of it she seemed so twisted in on herself, screaming as she forced me out the door, and closing her eyes as she shut it. I could be wrong, I wasn't so sick of her then.
She stirs nothing in me now, that's the worst of it. If I could hate her it'd be easy to blow her off, to vilify her, or better, not to have met her here in the first place.
And if I could feel anything else, I'd let her back into me again wouldn't I?
Her fingers are twitching, she glances up at me through her eyelashes, pretending not to see anything. I don't think she knows what to say anymore than I do. There's no reason for either of us to have come, what was she expecting? To hurt me again? To try and reconsummate a relationship that meant so little to begin with? I idealized her. She was unreachable.
"Well, are you going to say anything or is this just a waste of my time?"
I hold my rapidly cooling cup and take a few swigs, not looking at her.
"If you're not, I'm going to go."
She stands up, I hear the chair screech against the floor as she pulls it back. She shoulders her purse and turns away from me, again.
Blindly I slam the cup down, watching as the splatters of brown liquid spread over the table.
"Wait."
I can't believe how desperate my voice sounds, whispered softly to her, almost under my breath as my hand reaches absently towards her. She pauses.
"Please, sit down. I want to talk, it's just hard to fi-"
"Alright."
Smirking, she lowers herself back into the chair.
"Talk then".
She thinks just getting me here is a conquest, I can read it in the absence of fear in her smug expression. Instead she leans back in the chair, self-satisfied with a contented smirk, having 'won' she can abandon her vulnerability, shove it back inside where it can't be seen. God, its disgusting. It's a look of ownership, of mindless domination. She always smiled like that. I preferred her nervous, anxious, screaming; anything but this domineering, asinine pretense.
I sigh, steeling myself to say it. It's easy to think you can abandon something, especially when you're possessed of self, free, separate, individual. Really, it's easier for all the mindless assholes like her; so hooked on being entertained, sated, but never feeling anything. For her to renounce anything means less. Rejection is like tainting a peice of your life, rendering each memory new, intrinsically repulsive, or traumatic. All pre-emptive of the climactic falling-out.
Closing my eyes I say it.
"Kayla, I don't know what this is, or why you wanted to see me again. There's just no reason to."
I can feel the sick, nervous laughter ridging up around my lips as I speak, coloring them mocking, cruel, cold and brutal flung towards her.
She goes still, staring blankly at me. I think I would have preferred her yelling again, or that damnable smile.
"You ended it. You threw it out with everything left open. I don't know why you did it, hell, I don't know how I felt when I walked out that door."
I close my eyes, remembering her contorted face taut with irrational fury, screaming how she hated me, how she couldn't stand my mind, how the sight of my face disgusted her. That she wanted me out.
Then, how she held me before and ran her fingers through my hair.
My voice was soft, almost a whisper as I spoke
"I don't know if I loved you, if I possibly could have. It doesn't matter."
Not looking, I'm sure she's still staring blindly at me.
The words mean nothing, they can't capture how terrible it is to say it or how sickening it is to have realized how cold she leaves me.
I force my eyes open, she's immobile, her face stiffly cold and vacant, sitting like a cipher on the wooden chair. But her eyes are open, wide with tense worry and spite reflected worse in her twitching lips. She blinks slowly, repeatedly, smearing her makeup as she waits for more.
"There's nothing left Kayla, if there ever was."
She jerks up, alive again at the sound of her name, glaring at me like I'd just slapped her.
"I don't want to hate you, I don't want anything from you. Not love. Not affection. Not sex either or anything 'better' that you could offer me. To try and revive any of this is meaningless, I just want to go on forgetting."
She's still silent, her mouth twisted grotesquely, vaguely between a grimace and a smile. My throat tightens looking at her. I swallow back the tears, I don't want to feel anything now. I can't let myself go, not here, not to her.
"I just want whatever we had to remain what it was, I want to remember it as it was left."
I pause, breathing in so I can form the words.
"It's over."
It comes out simply, coldly. It could have been anything.
She exhales, shuddering hard, her shoulders shaking. Looking away I stand to go, pushing the chair back into the wall.
Her eyes bore into me, I can feel it as I turn to go, asking something inexpressible, more desperately and more vulnerable than I'd ever seen her. It's incomprehensible how we seem to attain profundity in misery. I glance at her, she seems innocent, more beautiful than anything else, hiding her tears with her eyelids. But tomorrow she'll be laughing, moved on to another face, another voice again.
I stop, reaching out with my fingertips to brush her cheekbone, her smooth delicately warm skin curves gently to my touch. She stares off, looking beneath me as I lean in. I can almost feel her eyes close, relieved as we meet, gently, perfectly, finally for one moment everything deteriorates and resolves itself. Alone, without us here in this strange fog where she breathes softly, exhausted into me, tremulously letting her terrified self go, lapse for a single moment. Eclipsed in the singular motion of flesh we cling together, hardly touching, unmoving and freed of everything. Just for a moment. I close my eyes, healing the break for a final instant before pulling back again to see her, staring down, her eyes obscured by her lashes and shining immaculately with tears.
Dazed I walk past her, towards the thin light of the door, and step outside. From the sidewalk I glance back at her, beautifully solipsistic, surprisingly and devastatingly childlike, abounding with cool resentment and staring silently into her hands.
I let her go, and leave back into the morning, cleansed and inviolably numb.
Sign up to rate and review this story