The Day Is Done

And she said, “The day is done”
I watched her, as she walked slowly out my door into the pounding rain. I watched how her hips swayed, and her skirt danced about her ankles. I watched her hair, limp from a days torments fall down her back in a soft cacophony of fighting for a view of the outside world. I watched her. I watched her and I was jealous. I was angry. But most of all I was sad.
Nothing really important ever came out of my mouth when anyone was paying attention. I never said the right thing at the right time because I never said anything at all. That’s why she was leaving. That’s why she stopped in the doorframe, sighing before she took that last step from my life. She looked back at me, and there was a lonely misery in her eyes. “We could have been something” they said. But we weren’t, because I didn’t say anything. Because I never said anything.
She stepped out into the cold, rainy night and something inside me snapped. “Wait,” I whispered. My voice sounded harsh; unused and foreign. “Wait!” I got up from my chair and ran to the door. I ran up to her car shouting, “Wait! Wait! Vannessa, you can’t leave!” I had no idea what I was doing, I just couldn’t watch her pull out and not do anything. She rolled down her window, a sad and protective look about her eyes. Before she could speak the words came tumbling out of my mouth, “Vannessa, don’t go. I’ve never been anything without you. You mean so much to me. If you leave now I don’t know what I’d do.” But I hadn’t said everything yet. With a big breath I said the one thing that really mattered, that would change my life forever. “Vannessa, I love you.” For a moment Vannessa sat there and stared at me, not hearing, or not believing. “She can’t be serious,” I thought. “I never say that. Never.”
As a person, I simply don’t talk much, but when I do, I say important things. For example, the last car trip I took with my father was four hours long. The only thing I said the whole way up to Wisconsin was “Dad, watch out for that deer.” He didn’t listen to me, and we haven’t gone on any car trips since for obvious reasons.
I put my hands on the window frame of her big blue van. “Vannessa?” I asked softly, because her face was a mystery. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Get in,” she said. I went around the other side of her van and got in. I was soaked to the bone, but it wasn’t the first thing on my mind at the moment. Vannessa pulled out of my dive way and made to go towards the city, but apparently changed her mind and went toward the more sparsely populated countryside instead.
She sat, driving along for some time with me just sitting there, staring either at her or at the rain-pounded road ahead of us. “Nate,” she paused, “I just don’t know what to say.” “Say you love me back,” I whispered hopefully. She looked over at me smiling sadly. “You know I can’t do that.”
I nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” she sounded pained.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“I don’t want you to be sorry, I want,” again, she paused, “you to be happy.”
“I don’t want to make things complicated for you; I just never had the courage before. I know you’re involved with Brandon, but he’s never been good for you, and you know that,” I added before she could say anything. “Just the thought of never seeing you again, it was too hard to even think about.”
Vannessa stared at the road again.
“I’m sorry Nate.”
And she was.