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Fourth of July. Fireworks. Sparks. Picnic lunches at the park. Children on their scooters racing, adults standing possessively over their wooden tables, marking their territory with checkered tablecloths and canvas bags. She sat at the edge of the table, at the edge of the family she didn't quite bring herself to move closer to. Her phone rang that day. Seemingly innocuous tinny notes of Coldplay's 'In My Place' broke into the warm July air. But then she realized she had set that particular ringtone only to one person in particular. And that person had left, weeks ago, left to a country to pursue his dreams. Most importantly, left her.


She answered it unknowingly, her reflexes moving faster than her brain synapses.

Hello?, she said, her voice tentative and unfamiliar.

Hi, he said slowly, like an exhale. A long pause of breath held in all this while, and she realized hers had stuck in her throat too.

She poured out in awkward stunted conversation. Stilted and intentionally casual, trying to maintain that it was still Fourth of July, lunches in the park, children racing with their scooters, adults protecting their picnic tables. But he had come back.


She didn't want to know what had happened over there, she hadn't wanted to know since she finally expelled him from her mind. Hearing him rain his decisions down unto her; his change of mind, his need to come back, to want her again; did not soak into her skin but trickled off her water-proofed skin. Her him-proofed skin.


The shape that he left, the outline of his body next to her had softened and faded, as many things do. Footsteps in the sand, a head on a pillowcase, a lovebite on her skin.



He arranged a meeting, she could do nothing but accept. Her body was a reflex, faster than her brain. She gravitated towards him, naturally, instinctively. When they met again, flesh to flesh, he embraced her, she inhaled his scent as she nuzzled her chin into the nape of his neck. Her eyes did not have to meet his, and she was glad. She did not know how to hide what was in hers, and she did not want to see what was in his.


She just wanted it to be normal again.