Another Time

He ran his fingers through his cropped auburn hair.  “I don’t get what you’re saying, Jessie.”  He sighed.  “I don’t think I want to.”

Jessica sighed as well, studying his profile: slight bump in the nose that turned up ever so slightly at its end, piercing grey eyes, reddish-brown locks approaching the longish side.  She looked away.  “I don’t want to say it.”

His cool palm gently cupped her chin.  By reflex, she flinched; he turned her head to face him again, fixed her with his gaze… turned to stone once more by the male succubus.  Her eyes sidled away again.  No; that was unfair.  There had been nothing more physical than third base, that and when he had...

“Jessica.” Her eyes started from her reverie, she unwillingly forced herself to return his even gaze.  “Why?” he asked, his voice cracking.

She stood up, her long skirt catching on the table.  She could hear its tiny rip as she strode to the window, her hand on the glass, gazing out into the stars whose light came from centuries away, from another time.  Her mahogany hair slid down over her eyebrows; she flicked it back into place with an impatient movement of her wrist.  “It can’t work out, Luke.”

“But--” he feebly started, then died off.  He shifted in his seat, a rustle of denim on cotton.

She fingered the bracelet that once fit her forearm snugly, now sliding down her bruised and much thinner arm to rest in the crook of her elbow.  She closed her eyes, stating, “Another time, if we were different people, it might have.  But it won’t, it can’t.. not now.”  An unwelcome tear rolled down her cheek, also impatiently brushed away.  She wouldn’t cry, not in front of him, again.

Luke didn’t try to interrupt her; she turned to face him, vowing to actually fight back this time.  “I’m not going to let you control me any longer.  It’s over.”  She drew a shuddering breath.  “I’m going to do what I should have done the first time you….”

She still couldn’t say it, even after all this.  Her hand fluttered to her right eye, the first place it had happened.  She unsuccessfully tried to mask the movement in tucking her hair behind her ear.  Grabbing her handbag off the coffee table, she fought her urge to run back to him as she slowly but deliberately walked out.

Surprisingly, he didn’t stop her.  She had half-expected some violence on his part.  A glance from the corner of her eye revealed him huddled in the chair, shoulders hunched over.  Was he… crying?

“I never realized… I never meant it,” he whispered before she closed the door, making her pause.  Did he mean it?  Would he change?  Maybe if she just went back, gave him one more chance….

She mentally traced all the bruises he’d given her.  She shut the door gently as she heard the apartment’s creaking floorboards reveal his moving to the bathroom, a muted metallic rustling as he rummaged through his cabinet.  He was probably searching for Advil, if he had a headache anything like the one she had.

Jessie didn’t want to think about it.  Her booted toes mechanically walked down the stairs out to where her compact waited in the parking lot.  Her hand shook as she inserted the key into the lock of her door; she almost tripped as she entered the car.  She wouldn’t think about it.  She placed her handbag on the passenger seat, shut her door, let her head slump back against the top of the headrest.  She couldn’t not think about it.

Her cerulean gaze opened once more, lighted on him.  Luke remained motionless at his window where only minutes before she had stood, his hand where hers had been.  Something silver, rimmed with shadow along one edge, glittered in his left hand.  Darkness unhurriedly rolled down the windowpane from his wrist, as he stood looking at the starlight from another time.