One Last Drink Before Good Night

“You were a bit of a bastard to me near the end.” She said it with unshakeable belief in the truth of her pronouncement.

He nodded, vaguely and thoughtfully, and stared back at her. “You had your moments, too.”

She winced. And then she smiled…a bit guiltily, a bit shyly, a bit angrily, a bit coquettishly…and nodded. “We were quite the pair,” she agreed.

“Breaking up will do that to you,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too cavalier.

She smiled again, more ruefully this time. “I try to remember all of the lies, all of the cruel things you said the last time we spoke…I try to keep hating you…but mostly I remember the times we were happy. Isn’t that funny?”

It wasn’t funny…despite the acrimonious way we parted ways, he mostly remembered the times when they were happy, too. “I never lied to you,” he said, trying not to sound overly defensive. “At least I don’t think I did.”

Her smile slid away. “You let me believe things between us were going someplace they never were going to go,” she said, just a bit testily. “Isn’t that a lie?”

He curbed a tart retort. He took a shallow breath and said, “I said what I said…you heard what you wanted to hear…maybe we were both guilty of lying…to ourselves and to each other…”

She started to say something but thought better of it. “Maybe…” she replied warily, as if the implications of that were something she’d rather not deal with just then.

His mind wandered, remembering the way she sighed ever so sweetly when they used to kiss…the way she softly arched her body when he ran his finger down the small of her back…the way soft electricity surged through his body every time she tasted that one spot on the nape of his neck…and then he drew himself back. It was nostalgia…sweet nostalgia to be sure…but mere nostalgia just the same.

“Think we could ever be friends again? She asked, quite unsure of the true answer herself.

“I dunno,” he said, though he had a sobering inkling that they probably could not.

“Me either,” she said, just a tad wistfully.

They tabled that discussion. They smiled at each other…full of things that would not, could not, probably should not be spoken…and then they ordered one last drink before “good night”.