You Stranger Me

“I didn’t think you would come today,” Henry hands me a shallow cardboard box stuffed with stained t-shirts, several packets of floss, and a mug. I don’t point out that my most expensive possession is missing, a box of condoms. Rather, I hoist the box onto my hip. It's one of those fruit boxes, the ones that come stacked with oranges. This one smells like citrus and dust and me. Or well, what was me. The me before the breakup. 

That isn’t right. It wasn’t a breakup. It was a breakdown. A corrosion spanning four years, eight months, and two days. 

“I just wanted to get it-” I stop. I shouldn’t say what I want to say. That I want this over with. It's petty and that's not how I want him to remember me. Because after today, there will be no more opportunities for remembrance. Hen leans against the doorframe, forcing me to look up from where I stand on his front porch. He’s three inches taller. We measured. 

“I’m leaving,” I say instead, and regret it instantly. I feel his exhale through me, the way his body bows to the realization that we are truly done. Anything would have been better to say. 

There's no reason for him to know. I may live two doors down. He would realize it on his own when he showed up on Tuesday night smelling of hops and cheap onion rings to beg back into my bedroom. 

He never drank before the breakdown but neither did I. And I’d be lying if I said I regretted our Tuesdays. If anything they were what finally drove me from him. A thin sheen of sweat over his outstretched limbs, his body lax, and all I could do was count the seconds until he left with one excuse or another. 

His hand shoves in the pocket of his jeans. They’re old ones. Ripped at the ankle and with a paint stain near the knee. His white t-shirt sticks to the bridge of his stomach, outlining his rusted belt. Imperfect, dirty, unshaven, unkept. He hated those words with a passion. He never had stubble, his hair was never not imprisoned by gel. His body didn’t smell like alcohol, but sweat and rubber. 

His green eyes are rimmed in red. From crying, lack of sleep, or a high. Don’t know. Can’t care. If I care I won’t be able to do this. And I need to do this. Because at the end of the day, what we made, what we cultivated over nearly half a decade, was stifling us both. 

“Where?” One word. Two syllables. I shouldn’t tell him. It's an opening, a chance I can’t give him. 

“India,” His bushy brows hike upward toward a wide expanse of pale forehead. 

“India,” I hear the second his voice detaches on the ‘n’. The ‘I’ comes with an intake of breath. The rest plateaus until ‘ndia’ is nothing but a group of letters absent of worth or meaning.

“India,” I say and take a step back. He looks like he might topple forward at any second. His bubblegum lips pucker into a familiar expression. He’s trying to hide it. Hide what he feels, and quite frankly, I don’t give a damn what that is. 

Liar. 

“I don’t know you.” A sentence deserving of passion is left helplessly coy and blase. A simple fact, uncontested. 

“Yeah, Hen, I think you do,” The edge of the box drives into my hip. I move it. He steps forward like he might take it from me. I step back. I regret my words. They are a betrayal to the feelings I must feel. I focus instead on him.

The shirt hasn’t been washed in some time. Daisy yellow splotches bloom around the v-neck, and there's a paint stain on the shoulder. I lean forward despite my better sense. It looks more like lipstick, but that wouldn’t make sense. Henry doesn’t wear lipstick. I did, but my umber skin could never hold such a frail color. I like my lips to be robust. Crimson, scarlet, violet. The colors of royals and power and my own strength. 

That isn’t my lipstick. My chest tightens in a way it doesn’t deserve to. I open my mouth 

to ask. Not caring it ruins the fences we have strung since our last meeting. 

“Whose is that?” Henry’s eyes show nothing. The girl material zig behind him does. I don't recognize her, but she has the most delectable wide brown eyes and thick black hair. She steps forward and wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her breasts against his chest. 

“This your buddy, Henny?” Buddy. Buddy. Me? His ex-fiance a buddy. 

“Nope. George is just leaving sweets,” Sweets. Sweets. Him? The man who could hardly stomach calling me honey? Babe? Even my own name. 

My heart beats to the pounding of words in my head. 

This isn’t the Hen I knew. 

I need to leave. 

Don’t say bye. 

Go. Go. Go.

The girl snickers behind my back. I stop. She knows and she is mocking me. I start to turn. 

This is petty. This is wrong. He deserves to love whomever he wishes. 

Except he says bye. With my hand on the handle of the car. He says bye. 

I heard it. I don’t know why, but I turn and I coddle his eyes with my own. Maybe I want to feel that pull, the one of remembrance, of tied love and strangled self. To feel the memory of myself in his face, of our memory. 

The girl is there and the plane awaits. I get in the car. 

It rumbles beneath me, reassuring and yet disapproving. 

Are we strangers now? Is this how it happens? I wanted this. Didn’t I? I have a plane ticket in my pocket. A foreclosure sign on my front lawn. There's a girl with her arms wrapped around my lover's waist. This is goodbye. But not a goodbye between friends of any sort. 

This is not jagged nor painful. It's empty. Disinterested. 

Goodbye stranger. 

Goodbye. 

This can’t be it. 

And yet it was.