She looked him…her face a study in piety and pity…and nodded plaintively. It was a hollow gesture. “We were good once,” she said in that condescending voice that she slipped into when she was doing something that she didn’t want to be called on, “and we’ll always be friends.”
He suppressed a snicker. “I don’t think so,” he said with more bluntness than he had usually given her during the course of their carnival ride of a relationship.
She winced but then composed herself. “We will…you’ll see…” She opened the door and stepped into the gathering twilight. The big yellow taxi was waiting at the end of the walk. “I will always love you,” she said, pausing first for effect and then for his reaction.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
It was her turn to shrug. She closed the door and went down the walkway, her pinched heels making a familiar clipped click-clack until she climbed into the taxi and drove off towards the airport.
He stood there listening to the sound of the car fading into the distance and waited. He waited to feel the crushing sensation of loss to bend him to his knees and bring acid tears to his eyes. You don’t what you got ‘til it’s gone…Joni said that (and she’s a poet so she should know)…and so he waited. And waited. And…
He shrugged again. Nothing. Hmph, go figure. And then…lightness, not heaviness, surged softly through him and he grunted a bemused laugh.
He realized that he was hungry and he turned towards the kitchen singing idly…”…you don’t what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…” Joni was right (of course she was right…she’s a poet)…but sometimes the revelation is not a bad thing.
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