Hermosa

A Conversation Between Acquaintances (Part 6)

Someone's Apartment Part 4

(Sunlight has vanished from all corners of the apartment. Someone has left the kitchen light on, decorating the hallway with a fat strip of orange. The cats are chasing each other in a circle on the living room floor as the someone and Jules have just finished watching election coverage on the nightly news, having settled back into their spots on the couch. Someone mutes the television.)

Jules: I knew that the relationship would never be the same when that New Year's Eve, the ex and I tried to re-live the previous New Year's Eve. We went to the same event downtown, ate at the same restaurant. When we got our receipt for all the chips and salsa and burritos, the total came to $20.12. I took a photo of it with my phone so that I could remind myself. The world was supposed to end that night one year before, and in some ways, it did. The world looks different after you've been discarded by someone. You can't go back to trusting the same way, to loving the same way, to thinking the same way. Everything shifts. You grow up, you grow tough, and you might even grow weak. You do all of these things in different areas of your person. Then you move on, and you move on as this person with all of these new hopes and old resentments. I guess you could say, you start over as your adult self.

(As Jules finishes her sentence, her age is showing across her face. The dim lighting in the room has darkened the circles under her eyes, has exaggerated the small creases on each side of her mouth and the corners of her eyelids. She looks tired as she rests comfortably for the first time all day with both feet on the floor and her arms at her side. The oversized robe that she changed into after dinner engulfs her body and makes her look small and thin. She has said enough for now. She is ready for bed.)