Well...
“Well -” she was losing her voice,
“Well we could just stand in this doorway and talk about change, we could kiss and cry and make it seem like we were the good guys, like someone was strangling us both but there’s nothing we can do now, no, there’s no more words we can say or desperate attempts we can make and we could swear that we saw it coming at us from so so far away, and that we shoulda’, coulda’ jumped out of its path before it hit.”
She said this without pausing for breath, rushed like she had rehearsed it only 10 footsteps away, pleading with the fold-down mirror please oh please let’s just cut this clean, okay?
“We could do that. Or you could close the door in my face. And I could turn around, and I could walk away.”
And so he did.
And so she did, slowly making the 10 footsteps backwards from the door, and ten minutes later, he was lying face down in the bathtub; The shower was hot and on; the thick stream beating on his back and his face was scrunched in to the disgusting tile floor; his tears were coming from a faucet as they dripped down over him, and he watched as they swirled down the drain and he felt each droplet as it kissed his back, and he remembered how he’d lay in her bed and how she’d wrap her arms around him, how she’d slide her hands up his shirt and drum her independent fingers on his shoulder blades ever so lightly, playing piano on his back, and he’d whisper in her ear “hey, what’s that?” and she’d reply “it’s Bach, you idiot.”
And 10 footsteps away she sat in her car with the lights off and wished that there was another way, that she could run back in to his room and say “I’m not going to college! I’m staying with you!” and they could go live together in the woods like they always wanted, with only trees and each other to keep themselves company and a stream would be their stereo and a bough of branches would be their bed where they would nestle warm and quiet and they’d never have to say goodbye ever again.
And she sunk in to the seat of her truck and all she could remember was that song he would make her listen to whenever they drove together: “…and now my love’s only ten steps away, what would disappointment look like today?”
And she turned the key in it’s old greasy hole and it snapped off in the socket and all she could really think was “oh fuck. Where do we go from here?”