text: It is 7:24 pm. I could see his lips moving but could hear no words escaping them. The silence was deafening and yet, I seemed to be the only one experiencing it. His head tossed back in raucous laughter at one of his own jokes, perhaps to elicit movement from my own lips. Nothing. The search in his eyes was palpable to an unsettling degree. His stubbly fingers curled round the glass, as if somehow trying to escape the last four failed seconds. His eyes flickered instantaneously to the other side of the room, subconsciously searching for the exit in a desperate attempt to escape the discomfort of the moment. He fidgeted in his chair, a whiff of last night’s cigarette mixed with a routine glass of whiskey found it’s way to my nostrils and, at last, a response from my face that was different than the statue it had become since we sat down. He blinked nervously, the realization of a stench coming from his person that perhaps was not there before. Everything about him had a nervous ring around it. The subtle beads of sweat now forming a linear trickle down the left side of his face, the way his legs fidgeted as he crossed and then uncrossed them. So many distractions were necessary for the two of us to get through these painful minutes, before either of us mustered up the courage to call it quits. He excused himself to go to the restroom, but not before using the cloth napkin with slight gold touches to wipe those beads of sweat coming down from the left side of his face, now competing against each other in some strange way. He stood and lightly paused as he fumbled with the buttons on his department store coat, his stubbly fingers struggling now as they attempted the impossible...buttoning his coat in front of me with some sort of poise that he picked up from a third-party vendor. I sat there, quietly observing the safe haven of memories that were being created all around me. The gentleman at the next table, caressing the wrist of his female companion. The girlish best friends in the corner by the door, excited plans and a refreshing giddiness about their faces. The proud parents of a college graduate, their hopeful faces staring into the moment and looking past it into their boys’ future at the same time. And then there was I, in the center of the restaurant. As If the cosmos teamed up with time to hold me hostage in an otherwise pity prison from which I was contemplating a dramatic and epic escape. I glanced at my watch, the seconds moved with relentless and stealthy steadiness. These seconds were my antagonist and my protagonist, mocking me at the realization of His return and at the same time bringing me pleasure as I reveled in his absence. It was a duality of emotions I never intended to experience, although they gave color to an otherwise blank slate of an already dulled and uneventful evening. I continued to sit, frozen in the test of my willfulness to escape. I could feel the jolting essence of muscle fibers screaming “Move! Get up! Walk out the door! Fast!” and yet, I stayed right where I was, like the stony figure this man had so desperately wanted to unmold me from. Suddenly, the stench I had experienced only moments before had crept up into my nose and I knew without turning around that the inevitable had been forced upon me. He was returning; my escape plan now a faded and distant memory. He muttered an apology, something in between telling your children you are sorry for their turtle dying and what you would hear in the middle of a conference after someone burps. He unbuttons his department store jacket, this time with a semblance of poise that was completely nonexistent before. Is it true? Could I trust what I was seeing and hearing? Could this man have changed from the few minutes in his absence until now? Could he represent the single most elevated thoughts that I clung to, a sense of fulfillment and a debonair status that was, with much certainty, never a part of this mans past? This time, I heard him say “What do you think?” He wanted to know what I thought. I could not tell you to whom or what he was especially referring. I can tell you that my reaction was nothing short of the statuesque demeanor I was so dutifully adhering to. I nodded, as if to imply a response rather than actually committing to one. He nodded in agreement, or something that resembled a nod. Then, as if the angels had flown down from the heavens to make a special trip to our time and our restaurant and our table, he looked at me and said with a half-weakened smile, “It was nice to meet you.” He stood up, then as characteristically as before he buttoned his department store jacket with those same stubbly fingers and that same whiff of cigarettes and whiskey filled my nostrils like clockwork, as if to bid me a sarcastic farewell. Without prior notice he snatched my hand, and it felt as comfortable as walking across fiery embers with bare feet. Without notice I felt a surge of hot breath on the back of my hand, and as he planted his slobbery wetness, I felt all the electrical impulses surge to my hand as if it were fighting some sort of infection. I looked up in a state of alarm, trying my best to contain the screams budding in my throat and attempting to escape my lips. I stared at his face, hard. As if trying to look through him, to find some deep sense of worthiness embedded in the catacombs of his psyche. As I continued to stare, motionless and statuesque, only the serendipitous of thoughts had come to mind. “I’m never going out with you again.” By: Melanie Veintimilla