"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"Everything."
"It doesn't matter," she whispers weakly, and I feel 0% better. What was I expecting her to say?
'Yeah, well you should be'?
'You're not forgiven'?
'Never talk to me again'?
Actually, yes, that sounds about right.
The letter, so waited-for and yet now so unwanted, crackles into nothing on the fire. She looks so weak and finished, I feel like I should be holding her. She collapses onto the cold grassy ground. Her legs cross; I always used to love it when she sat like this, it made her look so young and childlike that it made me feel like I was the older sister, and it gave me a feeling of such wanted responsibility and motherliness. Her face is towards the ground, her hair falls in front of her face, and in the orange glow of the fire I can see her eyes are filled with silent tears. My heart burns with guilt. Why have I done this?
Her quiet, breathy, breaking voice speaks once more before she bursts into a waterfall of hot, ugly tears: "I don't know why I thought I'd get in anyway."
My heart breaks, and for the next twenty minutes we collectively cry enough tears to dose the fire that burns destructively between us.
