Dead silence

“I have something to tell you,” I said to Flame, nerves rattling in my vocal cords.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I spent the weekend with my ex-boyfriend and he wants to get back with me.”

Flame looked off to the side as if to retrieve a look of no concern which he shot at me.

“I told him I want to see where this is going first,” I continued.

“Where what is going?” Flame asked as if it were asinine for me to assume we were getting somewhere.

We had been locked in what felt like an endless embrace for nearly two months. I had never asked his intentions; he never questioned mine.

“Um, this,” I said pointing between the two of us. “So, there’s nothing? Okay.”

When I replay this memory, which is often, the 19-year-old version of myself spends only one more night with Flame before deciding that she is too new to the world to settle for his offerings. In my revision, I always leave. I mean, she always leaves. She tells Flame she was hoping for more; that while she has never felt the way she feels with him, she’s going to cut her losses before she loses, and she leaves… again and again, I leave.