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Shimmering with red light from the bar's neon sign, your hands loosely hold the half-full cocktail glass. Water droplets race down the sides. It clings to your index, and then curves to the shape of your fingers as it continues its descent.
He dries off your hand with his sleeve, fingers grazing yours, and lingering just a second too long. He mentions how cold you are, and suggests you put on your jacket before the night's breeze drags your warmth out the rooftop window. But you just smile and say that his presence is more than enough to warm you up. Even with the hanging disco ball shining the neon sign's red fluorescence across the room, the corner table gives you both just enough privacy — to live in that bubble, detached from the crowd only an arm’s reach away.
He mentions that he saw you in his dreams again. The corners of your eyes smile, but no crease lines follow.
He repeats himself, softer this time, how he used to dream about you every night. Back when you were still his in the ways that mattered. So let him enjoy these last few minutes right now with you before he wakes up.
Take off the rose-tinted glasses and move on already, you say. Your voice cuts clean, but your hand clenches the glass tighter.
The floorboards creak to the footsteps behind you. Silence follows, hollowing out his chest with it. Even the music sounds so far away now. The red light throbs against his vision, each flicker clashing with the bass until the whole room pulses like an open wound.
He says you've changed. You reply that we're supposed to.
He mutters that people like to believe in change, but reinvention is just a form of avoidance. He’s been sober for a year. So today’s the day that ends. Don’t you cry for him. He thought he’d be a better man by now, but he lied to himself, and to you.
He wonders, is there anything more undoing than the bottom of a bottle? Fingers quivering, he lifts his third glass. He’ll poison himself again and again until he feels nothing.
You lean over, wiping his lips clean from the last drops of his drink, but the corner of your mouth tenses. The warmth of your hand lingers in the air, and he flinches. He doesn’t understand why you bother trying to keep a grown man sober.
His eyes lift to meet yours; you wear a face, lips pressed into a violet line. Dark circles frame your brown eyes. Your pupils stay fixed on his, unblinking, bloodshot, and he wonders what it takes for you to hold back, even when your hand reaches out. His mouth opens. Then closes. The questions forming on his tongue die before they find air.
A voice over your shoulder says that this is the last call, filling the silence between you and him. The disco ball scatters red across the table, its same unchanging pattern since the start — as if this night had already been written, and he was just rewatching the end credits, mouthing the same lines. He’s aware of the futility of his words, as he knows nothing will stop you from standing, draping your jacket over your shoulders. But he speaks anyway, and you interrupt to say it’s getting late.
There were no bodies left on the dance floor, music quieter now like it’s been playing in another room this whole time. You push through the exit, welcoming the cold air and the sound of rain on pavement.
—
Downstairs, low-hanging clouds bleed rain in erratic bursts. Puddles skim the asphalt, mirroring the traffic lights above. He only sees red shine through the surface as the droplets distort the reflection.
Before your taxi arrives, you say to him that it’s better this way. But you don’t look at him when you say that. Though you try to keep a brave face, the rain streaks down your cheeks, and he knows which are yours. How he wishes he could be closer to you right now than those teardrops trembling at your lashes.
He says he wanted to treat you right. And that he tried his best.
You say you tried too. But you choose yourself, and that you’re sorry. The traffic light flickers its red, the glow stretching into the empty street long after the taxi is gone.
The cab smells like stale smoke and cracked leather.
He tells the driver to take the long way to his place — he wants the scenic route.
The driver shakes their head and says it’s a busy Friday night.
He promises to tip well. Just be his shrink for the ride.
The driver exhales something like a laugh. That tip better be heavy-handed, they say.
Streetlamps drip pools of yellow sodium light on the asphalt. It extends only as far as the roads in front. Beyond the cones cast by each lamp, everything outside dissolves into streaks of green, red, grey — too fast for his eyes to hold.
He asks if the neighbourhood is always this busy. It’s his first time drinking here.
The driver’s mouth moves. Something about local antique shops, new condo buildings, trust fund kids — the words float in one ear but don’t stick. Whatever the driver is saying, he nods along anyway.
Take off your rose-tinted glasses and move on already.
He sees the driver’s mouth move, but hears your voice come from it. As if you were sitting across from him. He blinks.
The fuzziness and warmth that the cocktails provided have dissipated, leaving only a hard edge. He shifts in his seat, the leather crackles to the weight. The scent of smoke again — someone’s been smoking in here.
The driver admits to having smoked in the cab, and yet, can smell the stench of alcohol on him.
What of it, he thinks. God… is swimming in his veins tonight, alongside the bitter, bitter… taste of regret.
The driver clicks their tongue and says he needs prayer. But he’s tried it; all he’s ever met with is silence.
You choose yourself. Those words keep whispering in his ears, and he stops trying to find where it’s coming from. Your voice breaking at the touch of each word — he replays it, again, and again, until the whispers feel like a pattern he can’t escape. When did it all start going wrong? Was it when he ordered the third drink? Or before that, when he focused his attention away from you and onto work? Or maybe… it was always meant to end this way. Every step he took walked him deeper down into the familiar ending.
He closes his eyes. The lights smearing against his vision are tolerable now, but the words aren’t. His tongue stammers, unable to keep up with the next topic, the next thoughts. Why did you - no. When did you - also no. Why…? He has become possessed by the same questions that haunted him after each relationship. He could ask the driver. About what, though? He doesn’t even know what the question is anymore. He bites his lip, forcing himself to cut off the rest of the words ready to spill out.
The driver asks if it was a bad night. He opens his mouth. Nothing creeps out. He tries again. White noise from the highway drowns out the syllables crawling from his lips.
The same traffic lights keep streaking past again. Yellow, yellow, yellow, red. He wonders if the traffic lights are conspiring against him. How long have they been stopped at this intersection?
The driver’s voice again, softer now, suggests to him an AA meeting that they also go to a few blocks from here. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7pm. And that they go themselves as well, so they can really vouch for the communal support it gives.
But he cuts the sentence off before the driver finishes; he says he’s fine. That one bad night doesn’t make him an alcoholic. The hard edge coating his words with a sharpness that he didn’t intend for, but he doesn’t retract it.
The driver goes quiet, and the silence that carries forward is different than before. Heavier. Their eyes follow him from the rearview mirror, reminiscent of your unblinking stare. You and the driver must have seen this before, and know how this story ends.
He reaches for his phone. Puts it down. Reaches for it again. The screen is too bright, but his thumb mindlessly leads him to his text messages he had with you. Instinctively, he tries calling you. All he hears is a woman’s sterile voice saying that the person he's calling is unavailable. Since when were his texts green bubbles?
He misses the feeling of you missing him. Or maybe just not this feeling right now.
The cab turns a corner, and both his stomach and mind lurches. Didn’t we turn here already? He tries leaning his head on the window, and the condensation from his breath blurs the outside scenery into a patch of gray against black.
The driver says something. What did they just say? You tried your best.
Hearing the driver say that made his brows furrow. What does the driver know about any of this? It all ended up being in vain anyways. When the time comes, it will be like he was never there. He can’t remember if you even smiled once tonight. Your face is gone now, and he doesn’t dare look for it — not even in memory.
Flickering lights outside suddenly become glowing dots to his eyes, the scene no longer a blur. The hum of the cab hisses in the air. The driver asks if this is his place. He blinks, realizing it is. And he just sits there, staring at the puddles of rain now laying still on the concrete. He didn’t even realize the clouds cleared. All that's left is the night encroaching on the yellow streetlamps casting a dimly lit pathway to another empty room, and the driver waiting for an answer.
The door gives way after the third try, keys clattering against the fake hardwood floor. Dragging his steps, he stumbles his way inside. The only sources of light come from the falling moon in the backdrop of the streetlamps behind the motel curtains. With how thin it is, enough pours into the room, so he leaves the lights off.
Jazz music seeps through the shared walls of the rented rooms, the trumpet dragging its muted notes into his ears. A welcome sound compared to the daytime cries of that family’s newborn. Arms raised, he sways to the beat — slow, uneven, the floorboards groaning like a metronome labouring to keep pace. Hidden in the symphony of sound, a faint creak of a door opens. He stops for a moment, breath caught, the sound feels like a signal he'd been waiting for all night.
Moonlight spills across the floor, wide enough to resemble the outline of a white dress. Hands reaching out, the fabric of light frays as he grips the air gently along its curves. Still, his fingers continue to cup the air, as it might solidify if only he believes hard enough.
He knows this dance. He’s performed it countless nights, step after step memorized, knowing it changes nothing. And still, he sways; his sluggish mind struggles to keep up, turning and turning until the rotations match his vision. At times his shadow splits across two walls, moving almost in sync. With the next step, the second shadow lags behind, half a beat late. It refuses to follow his lead, just as it always does. Amidst the charade, the blur of a shadow whispers his name.
The trumpet swells toward its peak — then cuts before the final note. In the sudden quiet, his foot catches on the bedframe. The dance collapses, and he falls — face-first into the empty embrace of the mattress.
Breath heavy, his chest rises and falls.
Not a vestige of song left in the air, he lies there with the jagged rhythm of his lungs filling the space where another heartbeat should be.
He manages to roll onto his back, eyes on the shadows beside him. One stretches thinner on the wall and staggers around like it lost its place to go. The other watched, frozen in place, waiting for the streetlights to fade and drag it to its grave.
It's too cold, even with all the alcohol burning his veins. He pulls a blanket over top himself, and both silhouettes flatten against the wall — the final step never landing.
No glimpse of you in the dance. He’s run out of time. But still, he engaged in tonight’s dance anyway. His eyelids droop to the weight of exhaustion, the red neon sign burned to the back of it. Somewhere, the bar’s door gives way again.
His heart beats slower, yet the rhythm remains. Remember when it would always beat for you?
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