on the back of a motor bike
with your arms outstretched trying to take flight
leaving everything behind
but even at our swiftest speed
we couldn't break from the concrete
in the city where we still reside

He shows up, like he would.  She first sees him hesitating on a patch of asphalt that covers up a pot hole.  And it hurts a little, knowing that this is theirplace so of course he'd find her here.  Like he would.

She loves him in a respectable way; a way that says, yes we tried but it couldn't wouldn't work out so...  She assumes that he loves her in that way too, or pretends to, if he could love her at all anymore.  It's kind of her fault it fell apart but she's not to the point where she can blame herself totally; he wouldn't want her to anyway, she knows.

When he leans on the picnic table, it shudders.  The (almost) winter sun's low in the sky and if it were summer, it would still be bright.  But it's not summer so they're not the same- they can't withstand that constant nagging people call season change. 

"You're leaving?" he asks, looking at the clovers in the grass and the weeds growing up the legs of the table.

She nods but he can't see her.  "Yeah, for a few days.  I'm going to stay at my mom's because I just... need a little time."

"Yeah, me too."

The sun's still setting properly.  This could be the last moment of daylight for the rest of her life.  It's morbid, but it's true.  Thoughts like this always stay caught in her mind when she's really got no reason to be in Scranton anymore.

She presses her index finger into a knot in the table, looks at him.  "I really want us to be friends, Jim."

He turns away from her, let's her look at his back while the sun disappears.  His voice is muffled but it might be shaky.  There's still hope. 

"Yeah, me too," he says.

**

It kind of began in September, or ended in September.  She'd spend Sundays crying in the bathroom while he played basketball with his buddies.  When he got home, she'd be curled in a ball on the couch.

"You okay?" he'd ask every time, since the first Sunday.  She'd press her forehead into his palm and shrug a little, closing her eyes.

"I'll be fine."

She knows that he knows, because it's just something he can see.  When he comes home to see her like this for the third time, he has a pregnancy test in his hand.  It's sweet but it makes her cry until she can fall asleep.

**

That next Wednesday he takes her out in the car to the other side of town where the new housing development has started- it's a cookie cutter neighborhood, where each house looks like the one before it, before it, before it.  The lawns are mowed, the flags are out, the kids are riding their bikes.

They can't afford to live somewhere like this.  Yet, he says.  Yet.  Yet.  Yet.  It feels imposing, kind of like the seat belt across her shoulder, and instead of answering him, she looks at the gutters on the side of the road. 

It's nice of him, she knows, but she kind of wants to be left alone to sulk and nap and cry and wonder. 

**

It comes back negative.  He takes her out to dinner to get her in a better mood, but she can't help but notice he's down.  It annoys her, really, because four months is nowhere near long enough to even think about that and it's selfish, self centered. 

**

Way back in July, when she couldn't think of any reason to be without him, they found this little road past her apartment complex.  It's a patchwork of old asphalt and new asphalt and it's really bumpy, but at the end of it (just before it turns to stone) there's a clearing and a picnic table.

On their lunch breaks they make out while sitting on the top.  By August they've spent a few of their nights there, under the heat of the atmosphere, with the cool wet grass prickling their backs. 

He calls it theirplace.  She likes that.

**

In October he starts printing out job listings and leaving them next to her place mat at the table.  She smiles, shakes her head and reads, somewhat interested, until there's Seattle and Montreal and Boise under location.  She can't imagine leaving here because it's everything and nothing at all, but he tells her that it's easier than "you'd think."

Sometimes he forgets that they're not exactly the same and that she just can't pack up and go like he does.  It's okay to think about doing that sometimes, but it's just not going to happen.

**

Back at the beginning of summer, at the beginning, it always struck her how a girl like her could end up with a guy like him.  She could see the way women turned their heads to see him wherever they were- Target, bars, bowling alleys. 

When she was young, before Roy, she'd sometimes wonder about those good looking boys and if she'd ever have a chance with them.  Maybe someday, maybe at a high school reunion when she showed up famous, beautiful, glamorous, everything those other girls weren't.

She used to think that she'd finally ended up with one.  Now she just wonders why she's still with him.

**

He's talking about Maine, North Carolina, Washington.  She folds the clothes, folds the clothes, folds the clothes and tries to imagine hanging her laundry on the line in a place where it always rains, always snows, always something.

**

It's enough.  It's more than enough.  It's ridiculous(!). 

She sometimes talks to him when he's sound asleep, thinks that maybe he'll listen then.  It's worth a try, and it makes her feel better at the end.

I don't want to leave, Jim!  I don't want to and I won't! 

Once, she says that he can leave, she can stay.  It doesn't occur to her that things like that don't just slip out in the heat of an argumentwithherself.  It's good reasons that cause those things to happen.

From then on, she wonders what it would be like without him here.  Last time, she was miserable, but now that she knows that she's not happy-

She's not happy that she's not happy.

**

November brings a cold chill in through the front door and he can't make it go away by holding her tight, giving her his coat.  They go to theirplace and for a while it's like summer again- the sun's brighter, they clovers in the grass don't look so dead, the way he looks at her makes her feel right again.

It was just a phase.  Everyone goes through rough spots.  She had her reasons, just like everyone.  Now she has reasons to stay, she thinks.

**

She finds the ring.  It's in the glove compartment of his car, has been for a while.  It makes her feel a rush of sadness for no reason, but she remembers now how it felt to be dissatisfied, sad. 

When they go to the movies that night, she doesn't feel connected to anything.  It's like she's just there and he's just there and they're just not together. 

He tells her he loves her at the end.  She doesn't look at him, squeezes past him and says, "I know."

He doesn't know that she goes to the bathroom to cry.

**

She appreciates that he tries to understand when she packs up her things.  Because it's kind of sweet of him to let her end it there, without argument or questions.  And he's got plenty of those, but he tapes the boxes closed, labels them.

He smells like frustration and exhaustion and disappointment, among the other things (Dial, spice, boy deodorant) and when he hugs her, he presses tight to her like he can't let her go but he does.  She's not as relieved as she should be, but she tries not to think about that.

He cries a little when she closes the door behind her.  She pretends to never know.  It's better that way.

**

Her mother leaves her alone for the first two days, which are hard for reasons she doesn't really know.  After that, she spends her days trying to figure out what happens next, but nothing really comes to her.

It's ironic.  She was so unhappy there but now she's even unhappy away from him.  She doesn't want to second guess herself, but she's spent so long wanting and needing and it's hard to remember what he did wrong.

Maybe it wasn't anything at all.  Maybe it's me.

She talks to her mom, and her mom has this look like she knew exactly how it would be.  She asks her if she wants to go back but she doesn't want to be wrong.  Because there had to be a reason she was so down and it's probably just the breakup that's left her exhausted, so... 

"No, I don't," she says, even though it's a lie.  She'd very much love to go back and want him and need him and talk to him.

**

It's a little weird at work, when she comes back from her mother's.  Everyone already knows, but people still ask, just to ask.  He's sitting in the same place but she never catches his eyes.  He works, like last year, without ever cracking a smile.  It's worse than last year, she decides, because then he'd at least had something to make him happy, no matter how miserable it left her.  It hurts a little, because he said they'd stay friends. 

They've had time.  Why can't they just go back to where they used to be, wherever that was?

**

It's not the going home alone that's bad, it's the being home alone.  It takes a few weeks to admit that she misses him, really misses him.  Frozen dinners and Lifetime movies just don't fill the void and she can't help but think that she's changed and he's changed and it won't work.  Again.

Maybe she just really stopped trying.  He didn't, she knows.

**

At work she traces the edges of manila folders with dreams and ideas and ways to get him back.  It's kind of ridiculous, what happened.  How could she just stop loving someone and start as soon as they won't look at her?  How could she be so selfish?

She starts writing on these pink post it's, and somewhere, sometime, she fills the entire front with things that say Come back.  I don't know how to be.

The ripped up confetti of the words sits in his wastebasket under his desk, from when she tore them up and put them there so it was almost like trying but not really.

**

She really misses everything about him so she goes to theirplace only to find a state trooper sitting alone at the table, looking into his coffee.  She feels alone and not alone at the same time, weightless and weighted down. 

For the first time, her tires track the dirt road just beyond theirplace.  The dust hangs low, hugs her windshield but when she finally stops, it settles.  The trees around her are silent, bare and the moon is tangled up in one of the branches.

The minutes have fallen with the dust back to the place they belong and she just doesn't care anymore, but she cares too much.  She really makes no sense, even to herself, but when has she ever?

Letting the dust settle is one thing.  Stirring it up again is another, she thinks.

**

She starts to think that she was settling with herself, not him, and that's why she was so unhappy.  She just got lost in the idea of him always knowing who she'd be, that she forgot how to make sense of herself.

It's early when her tires first touch the asphalt of the highway, but it's nice just to go somewhere and nowhere.  There's barely anyone out, even though it's noon, but the driving weather is right and the songs keep bringing him back.  She lets her hands hang out the driver's side window and feels the air curl up, around, past her fingers until traffic's at a standstill.  The white lines lead her halfway to Philly before she turns around.

His apartment door's unlocked, as always.  He'll probably be playing basketball until three, but she doesn't mind; she lies on the couch and thinks, thinks, thinks.  Her eyes close and she falls into the place between awake and asleep until his hands press against her forehead.

He's looking at her, full on.  It's the first time she's looked back in months.

"What are you doing here?" he whispers, hoarse. 

"I love you, okay?" is all she can think to say. 

He squints at her like she's the sun and touches the tips of her fingers, his knees sinking to the floor.  "Okay," he whispers on her lips.

The dust has settled.  They'll be alright.