"I'm really happy right now," he says.
My head is resting by his. We are sharing silence. It's nice, but I can't keep numbing myself.
I turn to him and ask, "Should we cancel those tickets?"
After I say it, I brace myself. I've pierced our denial. Our beautiful silence is gone. My phrase hovers above our bodies, it is stopped by the water-stained ceiling, trapped, it glares down at me. I immediately want to run and keep running till my heart explodes inside my chest, and I fall blissfully to the pavement. Or grass. Wherever it is that I ended up.
"Maybe," he says.
Red-hot heat explodes inside my stomach, torpedoing its hurt to every edge of my body till I'm filled. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. My hand resting on his chest strikes me as useless. I yearn for a knife, a gun, a hammer. Anything to destroy.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. It's bouncing in my head, bruising wherever it lands. I want to run. Oh god, how I want to run.
I feel it. What used to be so easy, is now so fucking hard. For several minutes I imagine the Eiffel Tower. Right now tiny Parisians are being gazed upon by foreign lovers. I imagine how right now, I'm sharing space, I'm sharing air, sharing time, with the Eiffel Tower. It exists as I exist. How is that possible?
"Okay," I say.
Until this moment, I hadn't been able to make eye contact with him, but I do now. Our eyes meet. I feel it eating away even now. I feel it multiplying. I get up and leave the room. I leave him. I leave our silence, and run into my own.
Abigail Elder is 18 years old. She loves to write, and is currently attending Purdue University.