The Stories We Tell / 002

It was 4AM.

There’s a saying that 4AM isn’t a time for lovers. 4AM is a time for broken artists to throw down their broken bottles and try again. It’s the time for the night owls to crack their knuckles and call it a day. It’s a time for hooded figures to roam and robed ones to wake.

But 4AM is not a time for love.

So when we found ourselves sitting there that night, in the front seat of your brand new car, I knew disaster was just around the corner. No aux cord, no FM, no conversation. Just us, the night and silence. An all engulfing silence that threatened to tear a chasm between your cloth seats. Eyes locked ahead, jaw slightly clenched, we sat- not together, not apart.

I watched out my window, as a squirrel burrowed it’s way through a pine.

It moved up the trunk with ease, dodging branches and thorns. As it reached the top it stopped and looked out for a moment, as if surveying it’s conquest. Then it turned and passed out of view.

And you passed into mine.

“Do you not have anything to say?” I remember you asking.

After a while, a too-long pause, after thinking through every potential response I remember I looked at you- and shrugged.

And that’s when I saw it in your face for the first time.

Defeat. Exhaustion.

A million emotions condensed into one look of tiredness and disbelief.

I winced inside. I know I fucked up. I should have held you. I should have told you that no matter what it felt like now, or then, or anytime- that I still loved you. That I always would.

But instead I looked away, out the window, eyes searching for that squirrel.

“I should probably go” I remember saying.

“Yeah you probably should” you said.

Ouch.

Another million opportunities to say something, anything, swept right between my fingertips. But instead I looked at you, nodded. You sighed a heavy sigh. It was resignation.

I left that night, tired by life. Happiness felt like a rare emotion. Reserved only for the best amongst us. Everyone else? Happiness was strictly confined to sappy Instagram posts and inspirational Facebook messages.

There’s no real conclusion to this story, it ends how you’d imagine. Eventually.