Dayton

Dayton

         She stood, her ring glittering in the orange light, watching her own reflection in the car window. With a flick of her index finger, ash dropped to the cracked pavement and she moved her eyes from the borrowed Mazda’s window to focus on Alex. He was handsome, she thought but she knew she was leaving him. The decision had been made minutes before in the movie theater’s pale green bathroom stall.
         Her decision was reinforced while she finished her cigarette before getting into the little red car. There was a feeling in the parking lot underneath the artificial light that made life seem stripped down to nothing, as if the light waves were x-rays. Living felt strangely ordinary to her in Ohio on the highway strip covered in chain restaurants and gas stations. At her home, she never felt this way and with Alex, she never use to feel this way. Something had changed.
         Later that night, they stood naked in his dorm room and she told him what she had decided and as they laid down, he cried against her unclothed chest. Their passion had evaporated suddenly into the stale, hot air. And the whole time that he cried she held him close, smiling in the dark.