Author's Chapter Notes:
In response to a prompt given to me by lit_glitter.
I.
He’s leaving today. It’s her first thought when she wakes up that Saturday, Roy still sleeping beside her. Her mind turns to cardboard boxes with his new address written in thick black permanent (permanent) ink. She sees them piled in the back of his car- No, she sees his arms lifting the heavier boxes, his shoulder blades through the back of a worn t-shirt, a soft grunt coming from his throat as he sets it down finally.
If it takes him three hours to get there and he leaves at noon (a fact she’d overheard when he was on the phone with his mom the other day), then he’d get there at three. She wonders where he’s living, if corporate’s putting him up in a hotel while he tries to find a place. She wonders if he’s nervous about living on his own, because he’s always had a roommate and if she knows anything about him, she knows that he thrives on human interaction. Needs to connect like he needs to breathe.
She tries not to dwell on the thought of him alone in a new place, because it makes her do stupid things like look up driving directions on Mapquest and scrounges up change for tolls and check to see how much gas is in the truck and find a piece of paper to write a note to Roy that says something like, “Sorry. There are things I want that you can’t give me.” Or, “I’m not in love with you anymore.” Or, “Went out. Took the truck. Be back later.”
II.
It’s dark in their bedroom when she tells him. He’s just climbed under the covers and scooted over towards her, but she pulls the sheet up under her chin and moves back a little so she can look him in the eye. She can’t make out much of his face, but his eyes shine in the moon and she’s been looking at him in the dark for so long that his shape is just sort of implied.
She takes a deep breath in and tries to ignore his rough fingertips moving against the skin of her hip. She says, “Roy, listen…” His fingers cease their movements and he looks at her. “Um, I don’t think- I mean…” And then she just says it, “I don’t want to marry you anymore.”
There’s a silence then and everything is so still that she feels dizzy. Then the bed creaks a little as his weight is lifted from it and the bathroom light flicks on before the door slams shut behind him. She presses her face into her pillow, trying not to breathe in too deeply because it smells like them and she feels nauseous when she thinks about leaving.
Roy doesn’t come back to the bedroom. She hears the sink running for a while and she wonders what he’s doing, if he’s crying and using the sound of the water to cover. Then the sink shuts off and she hears the door click again, his feet on the hallway floor and then she hears his truck rumble to life.
She finds the phone in the dark and listens to the dial tone until it starts to sound like a long stretch of road and welcoming arms and his deep, comforting laugh. She’s halfway dressed, standing in her still unlit bedroom in jeans and a bra when she just stops and thinks and then she’s sitting on the floor with her back against her dresser, crying because the truck’s gone and she’s sure Jim hates her by now anyway and she’s ruined everything.
III.
After work one day, after he leaves, after Roy leaves, after she gets a new apartment and decides she wants to paint the walls light green or some other color that reminds her of spring (or his eyes). She does the stupid things again: reprints directions, stops at a gas station to fill her tank up, lays a cute outfit out on her bed, practices things she would say to him in front of the mirror.
It’s been two and a half months and she just wants to see him, is all.
IV.
She hangs up the phone as the warmth seeps back out of her body. She tries to quickly replay all the things he’d said to her over and over, trying to recreate the feeling she’d had when he’d laughed through her last name. But it’s gone and instead she feels hollow and more alone than before.
There was a pause before the goodbyes and she knows he was waiting for her to say something, say it, but she didn’t because suddenly she couldn’t breathe and she felt as if her entire throat closed up and all she wanted was to sit there with him on the other end of the line for a little while longer. She didn’t want to have to say things, she just wanted to feel close to him again, but it wasn’t enough and then it was done.
Then she gets in her car and the words are suddenly spilling out of her. “I love you,” she says out loud to herself and it’s easy. She imagines that he’s sitting in the passenger seat and she turns to face him and says it again, “I love you,” and then, “Please come home.”
She drives with all of her windows down despite the chilly air, the now crumpled Mapquest directions clutched tightly in her hand, but then when she’s about to merge onto 84, she hears the finality in his voice when he says, “Bye, Pam,” and she turns around.
V.
He’s coming home.
So on that Friday night before he comes home, she’s making plans. Doing the stupid things that aren’t stupid this time, because she’s sure now. She’s ready. She puts on the cute outfit, doesn’t need to print out directions because she’s almost done this so many times that she knows them by heart now. She curls her hair, checks her make up four, five, six times. She knows there’s plenty of gas in her car and knows that she has to go through with this, because he’s coming home and she wants him to come home to her.
It feels like the ending of a formulaic romantic comedy when she climbs the stairs to his apartment after waiting for someone to let her in the front door so it would be a surprise. And when she knocks on his door, she’s suddenly terrified because what if he’s with someone else now, what if he doesn’t want to see her, but these are the fears she’d sworn she’d gotten rid of. She isn’t afraid anymore.
He answers the door in sweat pants and black t-shirt and she’s kissing him before he even gets her name out of his mouth. Her arms are thrown around his neck and she feels his hands on the small of her back, pulling her into him.
When they part, he’s smiling and she’s all breathless and sort of laughing when she says, “You’re coming home.”
unfold is the author of 102 other stories.
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