At the end of the day..

<I found this in my files today. Dated June 22, 2012. Obviously never published. Slightly unfinished. I tried to round it out the best I could. Anyway, here it is.>

They Tend to say a lot of things.. For example. They often say, “All’s well that ends well.” I may have, on another day, offered a rebuttal for this trite, overly simplified, excessively generalized blanket expression. However, I think that today, I’ll instead offer only this on the subject. I feel, that it’s more of an “I before E” type of thing. (Which, let’s be honest, I’ve never used the rule because my favorite words are the ones that break the rules… But you catch my drift.) In life we’re all somewhat trained to base everything on it’s ending. Books, movies, whatever have you.  And With this. I give you a story.

All’s Well That Ends Well

The day started out like any other. Sun shining bright and cooking the Earth to misery. Sweltering heat trying it’s best to ruin the lives of all it could. And all those ignorant, annoying drones talk of how beautiful a day it is as they gaze every now and again through the windows of their air conditioned offices. Knowing little of the true nature of the beast. It’s always easier to call the tiger majestic when it’s on the other side of a the fence. Aside from the heat settling in, it’s foreboding presence not giving much hope of a mild summer, It was a fairly normal day. It was a Thursday.

This  boy, we’ll call him our main character if you’d like, isn’t like those other pencil pushers in their climate controlled lives. He works in a large open building with no respite from the hell that those drones call beautiful. That, in itself, makes his every day a little rough. And therefore each day has a much steeper pit to climb out of to reach the end well. But as with most days the time passed; slowly, as per usual when one isn’t comfortable.

Arriving home his first instinct was to just collapse into the floor. Which he aptly did. Long, black shag carpet itching his face slightly. He rolled to his back, balanced his phone on his chest, and closed his eyes. Much too soon, he began to heave himself out of the floor. Following orders in a text from her. As much as he’d have liked to stay in that floor forever; there were, in fact, more important things in life.

Shower. Dry. Fix hair. Find clothes. Out door. In car. To the place they’d meet. Forgot book. –The one which she’d given him.– He knew he was early. He intended to read until she arrived. No such luck. Decided instead to head to the store. Bought a few odds and ends. Filled car with gas. Drove around. Much too fast. Sliding through hairpins. –A favorite pass time of his.– A Text from her. Almost there.

Arriving back at the place they meet. She was sitting in her car.  Gorgeous as always, her long hair flowing, modest attire hinting at the evening which she had planned. She hardly ever made plans. Neither of them did for that matter. She beckoned him to her car. The same argument they’d had too many times only without words here.  He sat in his own car and waited for her to join him. He prefers to drive place. Reasons his own.

They set off. In the direction he knew they would. He knew exactly where they were headed this time. And it happened to be the exact place he refused to go. You see. The boy is a bit the jealous type sometimes. He wasn’t always that way but life has a way of causing people to be a little envious sometimes. It gives those little nudges and jabs that make the greatest of men fall. And our protagonist here is no great man. Just a normal one. The reason he was jealous in this case, I can’t say was necessarily justified but he felt it all the same. She had been to this very same place the day before. With another man. This man though, Was much better, in every way than the boy. And he, also happened to be in love with this girl. So, as they drew nearer and nearer, he allowed her to tell direct him around each turn, knowing where their destination all along, until the point where she said “Pull over here,” and he drove straight past. She was fussy for only a second before she sank into her seat. The boy thinking she was doing her typical fake pout.

The case was far different though. The boy began to notice that these emotions were real. He saw the wall of water springing up from the  bottom of her eyes. She was truly hurt. The boy was unaware he held such sway on her emotions. Like most things in his life he was blind to the facts. Think she (and everyone else) didn’t really care about anything in relation to him. Believing himself to be only a pass time when more desirous events and people were out of the question. She had actually made plans this day. Against the fact that she hated planning things. The girl had made plans for them. She wanted this to be something special that they could do together. But the stubborn, pig headed boy was far to oblivious, or perhaps simply lacked understanding of self worth, to see the truth ahead of time.

He drove on through the curves; the music barely audible. Afraid to move a muscle outside of shifting and steering. He stared blankly ahead of him at the road. Just following the lights of the vehicle in front of him as the grew more bright against the darkening sky. Less and less light shown through the trees. He finally found a clearing and pulled over. Asking if she wanted to see the sunset. Still to hurt she just sat, face in hands. He drove on. Eventually, she worked past it, clearly rebuilding walls she had let down. Making barriers that he would never get past again. She finally returned to a semi-coherent state, at which point she decided she would make herself feel better by teasing him. This practice eventually resulted in releasing certain precious belongings of his out her window. She knew this upset him, but who among us can claim they’ve never felt a little vengeful after being hurt.

The evening progressed. Happenings unimportant to the story at hand. Eventually they made it to the end of their night.

Returning to their point of origin they sat in the car talking as was usual happenstance ending their time together. After a while she got out of the car and he followed suit. A general response of his as he always stood to see her off. They continued talking until she found herself sitting in the road. Him standing beside her. She lay flat on her back gazing up at the stars. The boy began to lay down and do the same. “No, you have to lay the opposite direction of me.” she instructed him. So of course he moved until he was facing opposite her and lay down. “No No No. That’s all wrong,” she chastised. She just smiled as he stood and glared at her. “Put your head here,” she explained, patting the ground immediately beside her head. “And put your body out that way.”  “That’s better,” she breathed long into the night air. So, they lay in the middle of the dark deserted road, only slightly adulterated by the faint glow of a street lamp in the distance, his arms outstretched on either side, her’s with hands crossed at the top of her stomach, staring up into the cloudless night sky; gazing at the stars. He thought to himself, ‘Maybe today wasn’t so bad afterall.’