Car Park Picnics
Getting ready for you to pick me up, I felt clumsy, felt a bit of a fumbling fool. I brushed it off and painted over it with concealer, blush and a smile instead; I was trying not to think about it too much.
I wore my goofy-awkward charm on my shoulders like my favourite, slouchy winter jacket, with its best-fitting drape and breathed deep.
I wasn’t ready.
When you pulled up and I got in, you were glowing with a shimmer, had a midsummer sun-tan in January. I wondered who you had met and I felt happy for you.
Your hair fell lower than it used to and those loosely-curled locks looked effortlessly styled (though I guess they weren’t quite so effortless).
You looked at me with more shyness than you had before. I didn’t understand why but found it endearing.
As we caught up on each other’s latest news, we maintained occasional, darting glances. I slowly realised that our silences had become more uncomfortable than they had been before and was unsure if this was a bad thing or not.
Eventually the thickness, the strangeness that had been lingering in the air began to lift. After the initial small talk subsided, we switched to a few rounds of insults being thrown back and forth, as we always did, and there we were, back to our normal selves. It was our own creation, our game of vocal squash.
We could play it in car parks while eating McDonald’s, so we liked it better than real squash.
I left the car that day, when you dropped me back, half knowing it was one of the last times we’d speak. We couldn’t stop arguing before we broke up and nothing’s changed … we’ve argued again since.
I wish we could be something other than one of those experiments in secondary school, you know … the ones they rarely use now because they want to avoid getting sued when a kid ends up blinded?
The ones with the chemicals.
The ones that explode.
Things are fine, even calm when we’re apart, but together we create sparks. We start house fires, give each other third-degree emotional burns and call it love.
We both knew this would happen, and I think we’ve both accepted the situation now.
See you around.
