Maybe, Someday

It usually happened on the night of the 23rd. It was never planned, but somehow it just worked out that way. 

"Well," she said. "What are you sulking about now?"

Zach's eyes met Lexi's. Each time she asked the same question, he had a different answer.

She began to pour a brown liquid into two glass cups that rested on top of a wooden patio table – the one they made together many summers ago. For her, drinking meant finishing half a bottle of Jameson together on a Tuesday night.

On some nights, they would play a lo-fi station from Zach's speakers and utter nothing but a few sentences between sips; other times, they would retell countless stories from their past lives – her life as a coffee shop barista and a summer camp counselor, and his as a soccer coach and bartender. They talked about his life as a new lieutenant in the military and her standstill career as a news correspondent. On rare occasions, they reminisced about the night they first met inside the University of San Francisco library, locked until the early morning with nothing but bags of half-eaten Life Savers gummies and a small bottle of cheap whiskey. 

That was almost a lifetime ago. 

Tonight was one of the silent ones: no lo-fi and a half bottle of Jameson sitting between them. A damp breeze drew in from the rain, gently moving the string of light bulbs that danced over their heads.

"Lex–," Zach started. 

Even in the dimness, he was able to make out her faded cherry lipstick and the distinct mole on her left cheekbone. She had on the green sweater he had gifted her for Christmas several years ago, and her hair was pushed to the right side of her face the way he always liked it.

"Yes?" she asked. Her drink sat untouched.

He felt the weight of the single word. The depth of her hate was incomparable to the depth of love she had for that green sweater. He felt the hate every time she looked at him, with sharpened tenderness, and in the way her arms protectively wrapped around her stomach.

"Why are you being nice?" he asked.

Her eyes stared back, blinking once, and then twice, before she broke eye contact and her lips curved into a smile. "Everything happens for a reason, Zach. You know this."

Zach winced in his seat. His stomach tied in knots before it dropped to the pit of his core.

Each time he returned to that moment, the moment he raced to her corner room in the hospital ER, it was her sweater that he remembered the most. Zach imagined himself gripping the edges of the faded sweater and tugging at it to wake her up. Although that green sweater had been worn out and oversized, she would tell him she wore it because it comforted her.

It was what he placed inside her casket.

"Can I ask you something? What happened to your dreams? That night in the library, you had your sights set on becoming a news correspondent. Why didn't you ever pursue it?" 

He knew the answer. He just needed to hear it. Again.

He felt her smile even with his eyes closed. 

"To be with you," she answered. 

"I never told you to!" Zach erupted, his whole body flying to the edge of his seat. "I never asked you to give up your dreams for me. I told you to go. I told you we were going to be ok." 

Zach's reaction neither moved nor shook Lexi. She sat unflinching. "But were we? Were we really ok, Zach?"

He wondered, despite her well-kept composure, how much he yearned for her to scream, yell, argue, or even fight back. He imagined her hitting him with her fist, and that he would have let her. He pictured her flipping the table and cursing well into the morning that the neighbors would wake. He wanted her to kick and scream, and eventually fall into his arms, where he could comfort her, so she could feel that he felt it, too. But regardless of his yearning and hope for a response, the conversation always started and ended the same. It was almost scripted, but he would rewatch and rewind the same tale, hoping for a different ending each time. 

"Why didn't you come?" she asked in the way he already knew she would. 

He was in the wrong bed, lying in the wrong arms. Those seven missed phone calls were the first things that consumed the first seven minutes of each morning.

The lights above them flickered momentarily, and another cool breeze blew between them. 

Zach finally got the courage to look her in the eyes. She was a warmth he wanted to touch, but was far out of reach.

"I can't let you go," says Zach. "You were my best friend, my partner, my life – and I know I messed up. I know I hurt you, I know what I did was unforgivable, but please…" 

He felt his words slurring and reached out for her hands to hold. He closed his eyes and felt her trace her thumb across the scars that were on his wrist from the night they had burnt bacon and the oil splattered on both of them. She had a matching scar on her elbow. He felt her then trace her hands over his ring finger, where he wore a wooden wedding band.

"Hypothetically…" 

Zach threw his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose with his two fingers, "Why are you asking me this?" he asked in frustration. "Why do you always ask me this?"

He knew it was coming – the little game they would play back and forth. 

"Hypothetically," she said, repeating in the same softness. "Can you love her?" 

Zach broke out into a short laugh with his hands covering his eyes. He couldn't look at her yet. 

"Hypothetically," he reciprocated. "Can you ever forgive me?"

He closed his eyes, not knowing if he felt her smile back. When he finally lifted his face for air, he welcomed the sweet scent of fresh flowers falling over him. He knew he'd see her again. Every month on the 23rd, and it would end the same way. With an untouched glass of whiskey