Re: The lake: close to the water
She didn't care if he looked at her. It was like roadkill, it got hit, it expected to be stared at in the aftermath. She was roadkill and her world wasn't re-aligning. It was fundamental, it had rocked off its axis and she was going to have to wait it out. She refused to be miserable. Regret could hang around like a sulky child tagging along at the edges but misery didn't have an invite. Misery she could lock out, with the vice of her spine. She straightened and the cigarette's dull glow bobbed in front of her lips then away.
But she didn't know his deal. He sat, ribboned smoke and ash and the stillness should have done something. Switched on a button, switched off a button, she didn't know. She was paying rapt attention and she forgot or she hadn't paid attention to the expanse of time between one set of words and the next. Who needed words? He said a whole lot with the crushed butt tucked away for later.
"Thanks." She waved the cigarette end. "For this." She didn't say she was okay. She wasn't going to hurl again, Houdini had lost the key to the handcuffs. It wasn't polite, and it wasn't nervous, it was blunt. She didn't speak with measured hesitancy. She wasn't hesitant. "You're out here, you drank?" The question was blunt too.