Reignition

16:42, 05 June 2003

Like an animal, she caught his scent first. As she turned her head he was already descending on her; successfully ambushed, she became aware of the greeting kiss on her cheek barely before it had come and gone. His smell enveloped her now, familiar, overpowering, bypassing rationality and dragging her emotions out of the trash bin.

As he typed next to her, she tried to continue working, but her entire consciousness strained towards the seat beside her. She could not see straight; only peripheral vision seemed focused. While looking straight ahead, the human animal has an oft-overlooked ability to see form, colour and movement, the most sensitive able even to read nonverbal signals and sense changes in mood. And so it was that she could unwatch him as he checked his Hotmail, chatted on messenger, pulled up a Word document.

Her hand clicked her mouse idly on the research page links before her, but her mind raced elsewhere, planning, weighing risk/reward scenarios. But in this situation, she was an engine racing with the transmission in neutral, powerless despite her screaming strategies. The clutch was his to press.

She knew what the olive branch would have to be. The smallest, most tentative offering, the risk mitigated by its neutrality and a history of such offerings. She was waiting. He didn't speak. He just looked at her and motioned to the golden packet of cigarettes on the table between them.

This was the most he could give, perhaps, but she wanted more. She could get more, she knew, if she was careful. Nonchalance, precise timing and wording, distractions of laughter chipping at the walls, disarming, until... she got Friday.

Well, maybe I got Friday. I asked him if he wanted to hang out and he said, "Sure." And we all know he cannot be relied upon. My hopes, my hopes... the flames had been dying out. The fire brigade of rationality had been dousing them for days, weeks. Only embers had remained, the emotional residue Time would eventually stamp out.

All this... until he showed up, a delicious-smelling breeze fanning the flames up again so that now, again, I hope. I hope for Friday. And as he sweeps out of the room, I feel that familiar whooosh of the vacuum he leaves behind, and the rest of the day seems empty in his wake.