cigarette daydreams

/20

"What?"

The words still hung in the air. Like constellations. Clusters of sounds. Because, Lydi Stern, I love you.

Lydi seemed lost. She looked at the floor. She was wearing hospital slippers on the cold white tiles. She repeated, "What?"

"I'm in love with you."

She frowned a little. "That's not how this was supposed to go."

Karden swallowed tightly. "That's not how you were supposed to react, so I guess we're even."

Then, before he could react, she reached up and pulled his head down to hers. Their lips collided.

Karden always imagined that, if he ever did kiss Lydi, the kiss would taste like that red lipstick she always wore. But this kiss tasted like vanilla lip gloss. Or maybe it just tasted like Lydi. And it was perhaps the best kiss of Karden's life.

He pulled back a little. "How was this supposed to go, then?"

Her eyes were right in front of his, dark as pools of tar. He felt like he was drowning in them. "I don't know. I just didn't think it would go like this."

"So you didn't have a plan on how to prove that life means something?" For some reason, where the realization should have hurt him, Karden felt a surge of relief. Lydi, all-knowing, hipster Lydi didn't know this time.

"I was hoping to find proof with you."

And then Karden realizes something further. He was in a fog. He had been in a fog for a long, long time, and he had only started to figure that out once he'd met Lydi.

And it turned out that Lydi felt the exact same way.

Lydi was cracked, and leaking, and broken. Only, Karden thought that maybe she'd been leaking for a lot longer, and there wasn't as much left anymore. And she had reached out to him like he would be her glue. But he was just the same as her.

"I'm sorry, Lydi."

These words didn't stay in the air.

They crumbled. Fell at their feet. And they stared at them for a long time, wondering what they meant. Because they didn't have anything left.

Nothing but cigarettes and a rickety old bridge.