He met me for coffee one morning. We sat on the patio, lost in our own thoughts for a while.<\/p>\n
He was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. \u201cSo, now what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stick it out. We\u2019ll take turns sleeping on the couch. There\u2019s a lot to do here. We can avoid each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, that\u2019s rich. A dead relationship and you want to stay.\u201d He was quiet for a minute. \u201cAlthough there is that water skiing class. And pickle ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSee? We can do different things. We paid for everything. I will not be a spoiled sport and leave. I\u2019m not tossing our life savings since we\u2019re already here. And we wouldn\u2019t get any sort of refund.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another uncomfortable silence followed.<\/p>\n
He couldn\u2019t look at me as he said, \u201cI don\u2019t love you. Hell, I don\u2019t even like you right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe feeling is mutual. Put on your adult panties and deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glaring at me, \u201cWhy do you make everything so difficult?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I\u2019m a snippy bitch and hold a grudge. It didn’t work. We had some good years, didn’t we?<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate it when you\u2019re right. But yeah. We did. How did we screw up?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBy getting married.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t mind going outside. I smoke less when I do. But I hesitate to venture outside at night anymore when I do want a cigarette.<\/p>\n
There are things out there. Only my fellow smokers can see them. And it\u2019s only at night. During the day, I see nothing. They\u2019re waiting for nightfall.<\/p>\n
At night their eyes glow. They watch me. And they wait. I know what they are waiting for.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m getting worried that one night I won\u2019t be able to come back. They won’t allow me back inside.<\/p>\n
The door going back in is sticking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are things out there. Only my fellow smokers can see them. And it\u2019s only at night. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-kim-hayes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22025"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22620,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22025\/revisions\/22620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}