I can't think straight with country music on. It gets in the way, like a friend gets in the way on a date or an absent apology gets in the way of forgiveness. So I sit in the silence and prevent the music from taking control of my themes. I think we have heard enough about regret and disaapointment. Something that we have beaten into our heads without us even knowing.
I sat in front of her house for a least an hour waiting for the courage. She knew and I knew but we both didn't want to admit it. As if the defeat was a sign of our weakness. The heater gave off a faint scent of new car, despite the fact that the car was almost a year old, because it was the first time I had used it seriously. The rain added to the tension. Each drop a punction of the ending. We had met on a rainy day like this. I remember my thin work shirt clung needily to my skin, dependent on my form for structure. Sometimes I actually began to believe I was like that shirt, needing her to validate what I was. But it was just a shirt, wet, cold and not doing it's job very well. The flashback ended I shuffled reality back into place.
In the private, warm bubble of my car I was immune to the cold and the anger that was to come. This bred cowardice and notions of nicotine and Jack. But by now she probably noticed my car and was waiting for me to come and deliver. The anxiety I felt was eerily similar to the feeling I had before I picked her up for our first date and I was reminded what utterly simplistic creatures we were. What other feelings had I confused? What situations had been determined by mislabeled emotional responses? How many moments were spent deciphering, seemingly blindly "How I feel"? My thinly veiled procrastination came to its finish as I saw her standing at the window of her apartment. She had that look on her face, like she was bracing, busily constructing a defense. She was good at that; creating a sound argument out of next to no evidence. She even left emotion out of it which always amazed me. She would usually cry after, when the hurt of it all came down, like when the parachute catches up to the grounded skydiver and smothers him, sometimes even injures him. Seems ironic now that I think about it.
None the less, I unlocked my car door and tightened my body for the water.