I need to start brainstorming titles for these… any suggestions?
One thing to note before I post the next scene – I’ve changed tenses. This story seems like it will have much more kick in the present tense, so I’m giving it a shot today. I’d love to hear your feedback!
When we left off, Sabrina’s boyfriend had just reappeared after an unexpected week away.
I roll over the next morning into the empty side of the bed where Johnny’s body should be. The sheets are cool – not the cold, never slept in temperature, but rather giving off the last throes of heat from the body that occupied them. I sit up, glancing around the room to reassure myself that his things are still here, when the door swings open and the missing man himself walks in.
“I made you breakfast,” he says, gesturing toward me with a tray in his hands. Coffee sloshes over the edge of the mug in the corner. I pat the space in the bed next to me, and reach out to take the tray as he clambers up.
“Thank you,” I say, rescuing a slice of toast from it’s precarious perch on the edge of the plate.
“I shouldn’t have left,” he says, before snatching the other slice of toast and stuffing it in his mouth. “I’m sorry.” He speaks around the crust, so that the words come out in a garbled M thary. I laugh and put a finger over his lips. I don’t want his apologies, I just want to know that he’ll never leave again.
“I had to know, Sabrina,” he says, after swallowing his mouthful of bread. “Wouldn’t you have wanted to know?”
“Know what?” Maybe if I act dumb, he’ll leave the matter alone.
“Know if you could disappear.”
“I don’t want to disappear.”
“But you can! And so can I!” Johnny’s face is animated, more so than I’ve seen in a long time. I think back to when we first met, both of us sneaking smokes behind the warehouse next to our high school building. He’d just transferred in; I filled him in on the hell that was Lakeside High, stole puffs off his cigarette and shared my hopes for getting out of all this and doing something with my life. I didn’t know what just yet, and we concocted mad ideas for world domination in those moments snatched in between classes. Had he been that animated then? I look at him, trying to make the memories as vivid as the man sitting next to me now. I can’t do it.
“Don’t you wonder where we’d go?” he’s asking. “Don’t you want to know what’s on the other side?”
“It’s awful, Johnny. It’s bleak and sad and empty, just like the process.”
“How do you know? Have you ever gone all the way?”
I don’t want to look at him anymore. Instead, I dip my fingers into the puddle of coffee, drawing abstract designs in caffeine on the scarred cafeteria tray we had stolen to use as a sled two winters prior. “No,” I whisper. “But you haven’t come close, Johnny, you don’t understand. When you’re half gone and alone and everything is cold and empty…” I trail off, and Johnny pats me on the shoulder. It’s awkward and juvenile, but I lean into it anyway.
“But you wouldn’t be alone,” he says, sincerity infusing every fiber of his voice. “I’d be with you.”
I don’t know what else to do, so I laugh. It was the wrong choice, and I see the hurt flicker across his face. “There’s no coming back from that place,” I say. “I don’t want to go if I can’t come back.”
“All right,” Johnny says, and leans over to steal my fork and a bite of the eggs he’d so lovingly let burn. He makes a face, and we both start to laugh. “I swear I watched them so closely, and then the toaster went off and I couldn’t find butter and…”
“I hereby nominate you king of the toaster,” I say, pushing the tray away. “I’ll take care of the eggs.” That wasn’t so bad, I think, as we head into the kitchen. Conversation over, boyfriend convinced, everybody’s happy.
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