The Ending

My chest twists tighter, like someone wringing out a damp cloth. I can almost feel the invisible hands squeezing my ribs until my breath becomes shallow and rough. Her knees kiss mine. The table is too small, but there isn’t anywhere else to sit. We’re pressed so close together that I can feel the warmth radiating from her.

She insisted we sit. So the succulents were moved to my desk, where they’ll probably stay for the rest of the weekend. It was a careful, almost ceremonial thing. Her hands were gentle and precise as she lifted each pot and arranged them in a neat row as if they mattered much more than the words we were about to share. She should probably take them with her, but she’d never suggest it. I’d forget to water them for days, their soil turning bone-dry, until she’d remind me, laughing sweetly as she tipped her water bottle over them. The sun would hit them better here anyway, and god, they needed it.

That’s, of course, if the sun comes back. Only the softest, weakest light sifts past the clouds through the smudged and dusty window, barely illuminating their little green spikes. Rain is coming next week, the kind that turns everything grey and unremarkable. Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe the succulents will do better in the shade, removed from the intensity of direct light. Just as I’ll have to learn to thrive in the absence of hers.

The reassurance and safety that used to accompany the deep brown sparkle in her eyes is so noticeably absent that it jars me, a sudden emptiness where comfort used to live. I search her face for that familiar glimmer, but all I find is a gaze more hollow and distant than I initially realised. Less shine and colour in her than I’d ever seen.

Even the carpet seems greyer today, as if my own mood or the looming forecast has bled into the fibres. Like I’d taken a sponge to the colour and scrubbed it away until nothing was left. Everything is darker too, the corners of the room swallowed by shadow. Despite the blind being pulled all the way up on the window, the room is still too dim, as though the world outside were playing a mimic.

"Why?" I ask, not realising I was interrupting her until after I spoke.

"I'm literally explaining it to you?"

"No, why agree to be with me in the first place if you were always just going to do this?"

She tilts her head, a strand of soft black hair sweeping across her face, and I flinch, resisting the urge to reach out and tuck it behind her ear.

Last week she joked about shaving our heads together. "Matching eggs," she’d laughed, her voice bright and unguarded. Did she know then what she was about to do? Inviting me to be part of a future she already knew wouldn’t last? The thought makes my stomach knot. Overthinking aside, it had felt like a promise that we’d keep inventing ways to stay tethered. Yes, we would be eggs together, taking silly photos with our awkward regrowth, sharing glances in the bathroom mirror, making bets about whose would grow out fastest. A small, ridiculous plan that made our life together feel real. I twist the end of one of my curls, willing it to remain in a tight spiral instead of bouncing back into a loose S shape, desperate to hold onto just one small thing that hasn’t already come undone.

“I can’t do long distance, we talked about that.”

Everything feels too tight. My jeans pierce into my stomach like they’re two sizes too small, the waistband digging in further every time I shift in my seat. The collar of my stupid, fraying graphic shirt chokes my neck, itchy and suffocating. I turn the pretty silver ring around my pinky until it feels like it won’t cut off my circulation anymore. The small swirls carved into the ring, which usually seem so whimsical, stare up at me from a new angle. Mocking. Or just unfamiliar in this strange new context.

When she came to my house with this ring, I’d asked her to stay. Indefinitely. I remember how her laughter filled the kitchen, the first person other than me to live in my dull little unit. It hadn’t felt so dull this last month. Her music would drift from the bathroom as she tried to sing along in the shower, the smell of her signature chilli wafted outside to greet me home after a long day, and her half-drunk mugs cluttering the sink with promises attached that they’d be gone by tomorrow. Did she buy me this ring knowing it was always going to end? Did she move here for me, or was I just convenient? The orange suitcase is still under our bed, stuffed with coats and jumpers never put away, maybe that was my clue to how temporary everything really was.

“I work remotely,” I utter, raspy, like I hadn’t spoken in years.

An offer, I guess. Silence settles between us. I continue to twirl the swirly ring around my finger. It starts to sting, leaving a faint red mark. But it doesn’t stop me.

With an inward sigh, I gather enough courage to look back up at her, bracing myself. I try to keep my face still, determined not to shatter in front of her in case she sits there as if none of this matters at all.

Recognition flickers across her features. Something accompanies it. Shame? Maybe. A shadow passes through her eyes so quickly that I almost convince myself I imagined it. Whatever it is, it doesn’t linger. Something else wins out. I don’t recognise it at first, because it doesn’t belong here, not between us. Her eyes dart away to the cacti perched on the desk, and a strained half-smile tugs at her lips unconvincingly.

It’s a look I’d only ever seen on authority figures before. My primary choir teacher as she told me I’d missed out on getting a solo, my volleyball coach as she explained I was moving down to C grade, my university lecturer as he handed me my failing marks in biological sciences. The realisation lands with a humiliating finality. Pity.

“Like I’d ask you to move? You love this city.” I’m sure she meant to sound reassuring, but I could hear the condescension leaking out underneath.

The sparkle is back in her eyes, as though my silence is all the confirmation she needs. Like she’s just scored a victory, her own private “gotcha” moment. The gold flecks in her irises catch what little colour remains in the room, for a moment she seems to glow from the inside out. The contrast is almost painful. Everything else around her dims into insignificance, fading into dust. I probably look like dust to her too, unsubstantial, easy to brush away. How could she ever see me clearly when her horizon burns brightly? When she’s already facing forward, eyes fixed on something I can’t reach?

“I…” loved you more than the city.

But it doesn’t matter. Nothing does. No more warm or happy moments were allowed.

Summer was over, and so were we.