A twinge in his cheek coaxes his mouth to frown, and soon his whole face is a grimace.
His eyes scrunch in a wince, and his teeth clamp together and grind. He closes his eyes for a moment as he plunges the accelerator into the floor. The car roars and he feels the force of movement pull him into the seat.
Stricken by a pang of self-preservation, he awakens and corrects his course into the middle of his lane. The road is otherwise empty, save for the mounds of dirty, salted snow built up on the corners of intersections.
The rivulets of melting slush are distorted by his pounding tires, which spray mist behind him and make the windows slick. Long and gnarly projections of streetlights decorate the wet road like ribbons of painted light.
He loses himself in the serenity of the moment, when the world is asleep, and for as long as a breath he is at peace. — And then he reminds himself of his pain, as a masochistic would; his heart was willing to negotiate, but his head wants to indulge in the attention he gives himself.
He passes the cemetery on the right, and on his left is the local airport. Both are asleep. Watching over them is the sweeping white and blue conical lights of the control tower.
He veers his car sharply to the left, into the lot behind the airstrip. He brings it swiftly to a stop, and the car settles on its suspension. He throws the gearshift into Park, but he leaves the motor running.
His headlights pour through the chainlink fence that separates him from the end of the runway. A colonnade of blinking red lights dance before him against the dark sky.
The moment is too peaceful for him to feel in harmony with the world, and he cranks the volume of the radio (previously unacknowledged) up until it drowns out his own thoughts.
He believed this was what he wanted: to drown himself in distraction. But as it is realized, it becomes too much to handle. It is like a storm being siphoned into a bottle.
He turns the volume back to low and he welcomes the silence as relief. In his mind, he replays the words she used against him.
He becomes lost in a haze of memories so vivid that he ceases to see the airstrip in front of him, or the blinking red lights. Time gets away from him.
He considers what he said to her, and the truth in it, and the sting; he said what needed to be said, and as the conversation turned into a battle, he said what he could to hurt her.
And there is regret. When the words were said, he knew he would regret them, but only now does he feel it.
Part of him says it's justified for her trying to diminish him, but the better part of him only wishes he would not have accosted the woman he loves. At the end of their exchange, regardless of the outcome, they would still have been partners and confidants — and in hindsight he feels foolish for letting his fire swallow her, so that he is left to soothe her burns while she weeps. It would have been easier to have tempered the flames, but he did not listen to reason in that moment. He had instead listened to the primitive and selfish voice in his gut that said to retaliate against any slight or provocation. He had obeyed the voice that men use in war, and he wielded it against his sweetheart.
She had been in the wrong (and he’ll admit that for her) but there was some truth in what she said. If it were not true, he would have only felt frustration and not rage. But he felt rage, and he whipped her with it. And she wounded him with her words, and he retaliated; and she retreated, and he left.
And now he sits behind the airport, alone in an idling vehicle, not sure if this degree of loitering is a finable offense.
He sees the blinking red light on his cellphone, and he learns that she had tried calling him some twenty minutes ago. He tries calling her but after six rings it goes to voicemail. After the beep, he apologizes. He had been childish.
He tells her he loves her, and he hangs up. With an exhale, he decides to return home. There is nothing for him at this airport. There is no valve to release a feeling of emptiness, such as there is for releasing fury.
With resignation, he looses the brakes and pulls out of the lot, and onto the road. His headlights reflect brightly upon small mounds of old snow. The weaving road handles with ease, and the solitude of the night makes him wish he had a passenger.
The journey home tenses him, in preparation for either another battle or a relinquishing of the sword. He is unsure which would be worse, but he decides an admittance of guilt to be the more difficult option nonetheless.
He enters their home and calls her name, but it is as silent as the rest of the night. Perhaps she is in bed, he wonders, but she is not there. However, fluorescent light trickles in from the seam under the bathroom door.
He turns the knob and finds her clothes on the floor, and her in the tub. The water is tinged red and something within him knows what has happened before he does.
Instinct leads him to shout her name but she does not respond to it. In that same breath, he drops to his knees beside the tub, and his arms reach out for her, and his sleeves are soaked by the colored water. It is rather warm, but she is cold, and she does not fight him when he pulls her up from the murky water, and she does not clamor when he collapses on the bathroom floor and brings her down with him, and she does not wince when he takes her face in his hands.
He calls her name but she doesn't hear it, and he slaps her face — lightly, at first, but harder when she ignores him. He sees the deep red crevice in her arm, and the jagged tear in her other. Both of them weep the red that poisoned the water.
He apologizes through sobs, but there are no words left to be said. All of it has been laid out on the table, and now the floor.
Her cold and damp body lies heavy in his lap, and he doesn't notice that his clothes are wet. Denial sends lightning through his skull and his eyes search the room for a cure. He sees a blinking red light on her cellphone, which lies undisturbed on the counter.
He grabs it and dials the first number he memorized, which he never thought he'd put to use yet always found reason enough to remember.
As he explains her state to the guy on the other end of the line, the situation becomes tangibly real, and he realizes that she will no longer laugh or ask him for back rubs or refer to him in precious monikers, and he will no longer bemoan the smell of her feet, nor will he caress the curvature of her ears. He will no longer hear her coo through drowsiness, nor will he see the light play in her eyes.
The loss of her bodily warmth does not cut as deep as the loss of such little details, and the permanence of their loss: how from this moment on they are only memories, and the last moment for everything was the final moment. And everything that could have been said was not, and she left, and he retreated.