Looking into the crystal ball.

"You know who you are acting like?..." he says with a smirk dripping with malevolence. It doesn't have the effect he hopes. I know I'll never be. Like her.

His face studies mine searching for some sign of irritation, but I remain slack-faced and unimpressed. The rising fury inside me is always quelled by the upturn of his easy smile. The spark in his eyes belies his furtiveness, giving into something completely innocent and uncomplicated. I am mistaken, malevolence is not in his vocabulary. I am bested. It never was.

It's the little things we do to each other. How its not completely understood why I call him at odd times, once on a random Sunday at 2 p.m. breathless, with an urgency only felt by me, overexplaining the reasons in our underlying circumstance. Like a sinner at the melodramatic hour of repent, confessing the depths of my soul to some dusty, draped velvet window. Sentence after sentence, not stopping for periods, devoid of brevity, I canter on and on. I do this to try to subjugate doubts only bouncing around in my head. Fears only gripping my heart.

He waits silently on the other end until I'm finished. He knows its more for me than for him. I know he doesn't have the answers and he tolerates me.

Things have become more unsaid than necessary. We've become characters in our own silent movie. A tragedy parading as a comedy.

He's the king of all things sidestepped. Nimbly he dodges in and out of the way of anything that he might have to answer to, to justify. I let him have this. A gift, from me to him. He's unaware of what I have sacrificed.

We don't understand the massiveness of us, yet we play around in it like boots kicking up rain puddles. Only one of us is aware of the consequences. And I just don't care that much. He's my past and assured happiness. To hell with future miseries. I am a hedonist at her worst. A junkie strung out on immediate gratification.

One day we'll realize that what we've cultivated is a habit of avoidance. I'll no longer be around for him to quip playfully to, "You sound just like her right now" roll my eyes and feign annoyance. I will have become too weary of the game, my rain boots buried deep in my closet.