Those Last Ten Minutes

            This poor life. This thing that feels like it’s broken, but it’s not. This should be the end of something, but it’s nothing. It’s really nothing, I swear it is. But while I swear, I’ll be standing in the middle of a highway, screaming at the top of my lungs. I’m still well. I must be. I can feel the blood pulsing through my head and the sand underneath my toenails.

            And then I’m back, and you’re staring at me. Your head is tilted to the side, one of your eyebrows is lifting into an expression of disbelief. Your eyes are harder than I remember them. I want to reach up and touch your temple, touch your chin, touch any of your features so that you will be kinder to me. But I can’t. You’re not here to be comforted, you are here to hurt me. You don’t want to be, but you are.

            “Olivia,” you say, “are you listening?”

            “Of course, John. Of course I am.”

            You shift your weight. You know I’m lying. “It’s important that you listen,” you say. “I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about what I’m saying.”

            “No,” I say, “how could there be?”

            Your eyes soften a little. I feel the pity streaming through me and, as much as I want it, I want you to feel the way you are hurting me, resentment starts to bubble in the pit of my stomach. “We’re not together anymore,” you say, “and we won’t be.”

            “I know.”

            “Do you?”

            “Yes.”

            “But . . . you didn’t before?”

            “No, you didn’t tell me before.”

            “I thought we understood each other.”
            “You assumed we understood each other.” My left hand pulls through my oily black hair.

            “Which is why I’m making sure now.”

            “Right. That’s good of you.”

            You take a deep breath. “So we’re clear?”

            “Yes, I think so. I think I get what you’re saying.”

            “We’re not together,” you repeat, “and we won’t be.”

            “Sure.”

            “I’m not saying these things to hurt you.”
            My eyes flick up to meet yours. “But you are, anyway.”

            You step forward and I step back. You turn to your right and walk to your kitchen table. You carefully press your fist into the cheap pine finish. I get the urge to cross the room and take a seat. The familiarity of this place is distracting. I feel at home here, and I shouldn’t.

            “Look, we had fun, didn’t we?” you say. “We had a good time?”

            “Sure,” I say. “Sure we did.”

            “So can’t that be what this was?” You turn around to look at me, and I shrug. “We’re not right for each other anyway.”

            I wonder about the moment you decided that. I wonder if it was a gradual falling away, but for some reason I hope it was quick. Because if it wasn’t quick, then everything we did together will be tainted with paranoia. I will continue searching through all our memories to see if I can reread your mind. And I can’t.

            And then I’ve fallen backward into something else. I think about the first time this was tangible, when we went from two people who were together more than usual to more than that with the grasp of one hand. We were lying on a beach at night, side by side, but not touching. All the effort taken towards building a romantic place, and we weren’t touching. I raised the red cup of wine to my lips and took a sip, watching the galaxy-ridden sky and stealing glances at you. Your eyes were trained upwards, and I could feel the thoughts run through your head. Nerves, and expectation, and fear, and it was all there between us.

            And then your left hand raised and reached out to me, and my fingers greedily snaked through yours. Your thumb ran along my hand, and that was it. We weren’t waiting to cross the threshold anymore, we were there together.

            Several minutes passed of us lying there, my breath steadily quickening, the cold night seeping through my skin. My right hand was wrapped in yours, but my left hand was still clutching the red cup, letting it rest on my stomach. The sky was the most beautiful it had ever been, and I couldn’t see it at all.

            Your right hand reached over, took the cup, and set it aside. Your body turned toward mine and the night was gone.

            I hold this moment in my mind as you look back at me with distaste. Who am I now, that I am not as important anymore? My stomach lurches, and I want to leave, but if I leave I know I won’t have another chance. The things that I need to say, I need to say them now. I need to think through all the ways you have wronged me, and all the regrets I have about our time together, and I need to say them aloud so that you will know. So that I won’t have to say them when I replay this moment in my head. But it’s so much harder than I thought it would be.

            “You . . . I shouldn’t have . . .” My thoughts tumble out like marbles. I wait for you to pick them up and make them look like something else, but you give me a moment. Your eyes rake me over the coals, but they allow me a second to gather myself. “I’m glad I didn’t talk. I’m glad I didn’t say what I was thinking when you asked me.”

            You shrug. “That was for you, not for me.”

            I feel like I am standing somewhere dangerous, and I can’t help but wander forward. “What do you mean?”
            I want some signal that you are uncomfortable, but your gaze is steady as you look at me. “It didn’t bother me that you didn’t talk. I just thought it would be good for you to learn to open up.”

            My throat goes dry. “Good for me?”

            You shrug.

            My left hand rakes through my hair again. I want to grab it at its roots and pull until I’m not thinking about your words anymore, but I resist the temptation.

            “You didn’t . . . how could you have . . .”

            “Look, can’t this have been a good thing? Can’t this have been the casual thing we talked about? That was good, but now it’s over?” You say it, but I wonder if you mean it.

            I make an attempt at nodding, but really it looks more like swaying.

            “It’s what you said you wanted.” I see the girl that I was leaning across the table, whiskey in one hand as she talks about her desire to stay unattached. I guess I had to find out eventually that it wasn’t true.

            “I didn’t know.” It’s all I can manage.

            Your right hand raises to your temple and you gently massage it. You didn’t see this conversation going on for as long as it is and you wish I would leave.

And suddenly everything’s moving inside me. It’s tearing at the walls of my skin and making my head feel like it’s about to crater in. I can hear the sound of crystal glasses smashing against a stucco wall, overlaid on the constant whine of sirens. The blood is draining from my face, and I desperately want to pool it in my hands so that I can see it and know that I am still real. The words rush over my thoughts again and again. Fix it, fix it, it can’t be too late to fix—but . . . there’s nothing to fix. Our relationship isn’t even a shell of something.

            I can hear myself start to gasp so I clear my throat. I clench my right hand into a fist and look down at it. My fingers are red and splotchy. I feel the words as they bubble up.

“I shouldn’t have stayed here. I shouldn’t have spent the night.” Neither of us is expecting this, and I watch the pain travel through your expression.

            And then you nod. “Well, I guess that’s up to you.”

            I turn and yank the door open, step out, and make sure that I don’t close it too firmly behind me. It’s important in these last few moments that I don’t appear crazy, that I don’t resemble a woman who is resentful and furious. Truthfully, I don’t really feel any of these things. I feel like I can’t breathe, and I gasp for air as I hurry back to my car. If I can get inside, if I can pull away, if I can drive down the street, I will be okay. I do all of these things, and I’m still weeping uncontrollably. My hands tremble where they rest against the steering wheel.

            I need to be angry with you and all of this will stop. I need to burn down the memories that woke me up every morning before this one. You led me on, and led me away. I should want to rip out your fingernails, patiently, one by one as I watch you scream. But I don’t. I can’t pull the fury up from my core. Not for you.

            Because, in the back of my mind, it’s four in the morning and we’re lying in your bed. I’ve woken up to readjust my sleeping position, and I can feel your arms wrapped around me. I move, and I feel the brush of your beard as you sleepily kiss my back. It’s a memory that happens again and again, and I don’t want to give it away.

So I don’t. So I race down the highway, staring through a blurry shield of tears and screaming that we were wrong and that you were wrong and that, worst of all, I was wrong.

And I don’t regret it.