“Kyle, I’m leaving you for another man.” Kyle pondered. “I hope his name isn’t Wyatt, because he’s the guy I’m leaving you for.”
Tag: breakup
Fiction: Pants on Fire
A quick, gentle tattoo sounded on Don’s hotel door. He left off icing the champagne and all but danced across the room. He pulled on the handle.
“You’re early, my dear Mel— Erin!” A flash of surprise crossed his face, but he kept his smile in place. “Erin! Why, I’m so glad to see you, honey!”
“The hell you are,” she spat. “You’re expecting Melanie, here, even though you told me you were flying to Calgary for a meeting this weekend.”
“Well, it was canceled, but my colleague at work, Melanie, and I decided that we could go ahead and prepare…”
“Shut up! I’ve had enough of your lies. You’ve lied to me from day one. We’re finished.” She started to walk away.
“But, Erin, I love you!”
Erin stopped to glare at him. “How appropriate: your first and last lies are the same.” She turned and walked quickly to the stairway, which offered a more immediate exit than waiting for the elevator.
Don closed the door and went back to icing the champagne. “It’s all right,” he told himself. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t miss her.” He picked up two champagne glasses and swirled some crushed ice in them. He watched it spin. “It’s all right. Really it is.”
Moments later, another knock came at the door. Don opened it cautiously.
There was Melanie, all smiles, and Don smiled too.
“Hello, my dear Melanie!”
“Hello.” She hugged him. “Anything wrong?”
“Nothing at all. What could possibly be wrong? We’re here together and … I love you.”
Fiction: Rain
The rain fell, because it could not rise to the occasion.
It fell, and fell, and fell, and did not hurt itself although it did not get up again.
The rain rained and would not be reined in, and it reigned over the night and the day and the next night, and the next day.
Tyler sat at the window, his chin resting on his hands resting on the back of a chair turned backwards, thinking increasingly soggy thoughts. At first the rain had merely been outside, as was proper. But the longer Tyler watched the rain – watched different segments of it, the uppermost part he could see from his second-story window, the middle part straight in front of him, and the lower part where it smacked into the pavement and individual raindrops joined the great wet – the more the rain came inside where he was and moistened his brain with raindrop-shaped thoughts and his brain soaked it all in like a sponge. Occasionally his brain could hold no more rain and some of it leaked out through his eyes, which he did his best not to notice.
Tyler was not immobile. He would occasionally get up, make and eat part of a sandwich, get a drink (because the rain both outside and inside parched his throat), go to the bathroom, feed his fish — all those things that sheer necessity forces upon a person, even one who wants nothing more than to sit stock still while the rain and life both trickle toward the storm drain.
But as much as he could, Tyler sat on his backward chair, looking out the window and feeling as gray as the clouds and the days.
Sometime during the rain a key turned in the lock of his apartment door. Only one other person had a key to that lock, and that was temporary because her absence, she had told him, would soon be permanent.
The last box of her stuff that had once been stuffed here and there throughout Tyler’s apartment sat on the coffee table, which was black with cream-colored highlights. From his bedroom where he watched the rain, Tyler could hear her open the purple envelope he had laid on top of her stuff where she could ignore it but could not help but see it. He could hear the card being slid out. Pause. She opened the card. Longer pause. Long sigh. He heard the card slide back into the envelope and the next sound made Tyler’s heart beat fast with fear because it was the sound of a card- and desperate plea-filled envelope landing on a black coffee table, perhaps near a cream-colored highlight. It had been signed, sealed, and delivered, then read, rejected, and returned.
An apartment key clanged as it hit the same table and Tyler winced. Then the contents of a small box jostled, the door opened, and the door closed.
Later, the rain tapered but did not gutter because the gutters were full of leaves, just as Tyler’s life was full of leave-taking and leaving him alone.