My novel Mud Valley, once a serialized release on Substack, is available on Amazon: Mud Valley
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Overture. Dim the lights. This is it. The main feature.
Leaving; Maybe
Klara Kulikova on Unsplash
A NIGHT FOR shop-bought romance.
Clouds rolled through low, shrouding streets with mist, lanes damp, picked up scents of dandelions and damp grass, while dogs howled far off and laughter bounded out from backyards. In the recesses, and on full display under porch lights, lips pursed, mouths leaned in, faces flushed.
Betts and Simon roamed the perfect night, touching down amid the neighbourhood timbre and din to link fingers by Old Bob Crane’s fence, kiss beside the mailbox in front of the school.
They were carefree of destination, whispering, rubbing shoulders as they strolled along the anywhere suburban street.
Betts glowed. She let it radiate and reach out to merge with Simon. Surely, he felt it too and she sensed the passion coming from him and thrilled in the warm embrace of possibilities.
Betts had found her soulmate, the missing parts to herself. A soul to bulwark her own.
She felt safe with Simon, not because he could save her, although he may well be capable of that very thing, but because if she died at that moment, she was comforted by the knowledge he was by her side.
Six months ago, it was a different story. She liked Simon well enough for a weekend or two, a family wedding, but he was a closed vault to sharing.
When they were alone together, Simon played it close and talked about sports, computer games, stuff he’d heard at the office. Nothing precious.
“I don’t know what to say,” he often said in answer to her probing questions. Or, “I dunno. I’ll worry about it when I have to.”
After the first month, Betts thought him boring, a guy too self-involved to take an interest in anything she was saying.
She planned to dump him. But then, out of the blue, Simon asked about her day without being prompted.
Maybe he was somebody she could work with after all.
She resolved to try harder. He was handsome enough, smart enough. She just had to impress upon him to put in more effort.
They talked late into the night almost every weekend they were together. As the relationship bloomed, they sought one another on work nights as well, and Betts quarried at the edges of Simon’s hurts, his commitments, his passions — not to shape him, but to understand him.
Simon took to it, as though he’d been waiting his entire life for Betts to come along and unlock him.
He brought her little gifts, thoughtful items like chocolate, department store statuettes and movie tickets. He fawned over her, made special dinners, wrote love letters and left them around the house in strategic places. Betts became the envy of her friends.
The silences between them were fewer, or perhaps those moments stopped being important. Once, a walk with on-again, off-again silence would have distressed Betts into a crisis acute as death.
But now, Simon’s quiet strength radiated security and melted her core. Six months into the relationship, she loved him more than her dreams.
• • •
Simon loved nights like this. The moonlight sheen on the smooth bark of the linden tree, millions of tiny stars on the brown-green trunk, raindrops clinging from an earlier rain.
A roar of cars raced down a far-away street, reverberated through the air.
Sounds and moods travel like they’re going into orbit on great nights.
He wondered if Max was close to completing the work on his ’69 Dodge Dart, the one he was giving a complete work over, hoping to log a 13-second quarter-mile at the next drag meet.
He inhaled. A guy could really breathe out here and he realized he hadn’t thought about Betts for even one second since they’d left her parents’ driveway, except for when she tugged at his shoulder for a kiss by the mailbox.
A bare hint of mist enveloped them and gave Simon the feeling they were alone, sheltered in a deprivation chamber in which everything they perceived sprang from their own thoughts. They were gods and nothing would be out of place.
In fact, the only thing out of place, he judged, was their relationship. It felt unworthy in this fantastical world.
Thanks to Betts, Simon often stayed awake at nights excavating his heart, and he now understood he didn’t love Betts at all. He only wished he did.
Even now, reaching this cold, fateful conclusion, Simon sensed only the sadness of finality.
He felt Betts strolling next to him, noted her gentle breath, smelled her soft perfume. She, like him, had been strangely quiet through the walk. She must feel the emptiness too, probably squirming on the inside.
Relief washed over Simon. A weight lifted from his shoulders, the tightness in his chest eased, and he knew his conclusion was correct.
He wanted to laugh, and for the first time in his life, he wanted to sing. “Have you ever seen the rain, coming down, on a sunny day.” Just thinking the tune, snapped him free of the chains.
He developed a plan to tell Betts his true feelings. He’d ease into it. Tell her he wasn’t feeling himself lately and though he admired her and all that she had done for him, and even though he was a better man with her by his side, he thought it best if they spent some time apart.
Yes, that ought to do it.
They rounded a sweeping curve. Ahead, the line of houses ended and a park began.
He’d tell her when they reached the hedge that marked the beginning of the park.
She wouldn’t be stunned or taken aback. How could she? She must be rifling through the exact same thoughts.
The tough part now was spitting out the words. Simon knew they would both fall to the ground in relief the instant he spoke them aloud. Oh, she’d understand.
They passed the hedge.
Simon cursed to himself; made a new plan. He’d tell her at the next corner just ahead.
Betts flinched away and sneezed.
She wiped her nose with her back to Simon. They were stopped in a dark hole between street lights. A warm romantic radiance crept to the edge of where they stood.
She faced him. “I feel very close to you right now. Closer than I have felt to anybody in my life. I am so happy I met you. I sometimes feel like we share the same mind.”
Simon cleared his throat. He coughed to buy time, then mumbled.
“I love you,” he blurted, and swore at himself for being such a coward.
Self-deceit on both sides, perhaps.
And that really was the end.