“Don’t leave,” he whispers, turning and catching my eyes through the haze of smoke. His scuffed Converse Allstars lay against the doorframe. Outside the window, the rain denatures and morphs the heads of passers-by, elongates and stretches the colours from a neon sign, until what once fit together in a perfect equilibrium of light and shape melts into a child’s messy paint palette. The rain begs entry, tapping quietly but insistently, on the car’s doors, the roof, the windows, the tyres. It knocks endlessly, tap, tap, tapping, lest a formidable metal machine should open itself, permit the rain’s cool, icy slide to tarnish its expensive leather seats.
He doesn’t care for leather seats: his shoes, the same ones I have watched trek beside mine to the ends of the Earth and back, rest comfortably, muddying the car’s interior.
His speech catches me by surprise, though I push down my hurt as I drag through the cigarette, my only response a caress of exhaled smoke against his cheek. His eyes droop ever so slightly, leaning his head hungrily into the fingers curling around his face as though they are flesh and not fume.
I am hurt that he’d suggest I’d leave him. I am hurt because he knows I can’t.
I drive the knife in further when I return his gaze, when I meet those beautiful eucalyptus eyes and remember why I fell for all of this, all of him…
