The Unforgettables

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Snowfall

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Most, she realizes practically the moment she starts, would think it pointless. It probably is, but she does it anyway. She shovels the driveway because she doesn’t want to start her homework, doesn’t want to bring back that wave of stress. She clears the snow because it’s manual labour; it’s a physical distraction from the pain inside her head, inside her heart.

It’s pointless, really, because even as she divides the driveway down the middle, tiny white crystals cling to her eyelashes as the snow keeps falling.

She collected on a promise the other night. It was late, too late most likely for either of them to be up but she had to try because she just couldn’t hold it in any longer and most of all because he’d promised. If she ever needed him, his cell would always be on.

-

“Hello?”

His voice is rough and thick with sleep. But even as she apologizes frantically for obviously waking him, the comfort she draws from the sound of his voice for the first time in months brings a knot to her throat.

He insists it’s okay, that he’s used to not sleeping anyway. A part of her; the sensible, logical, nice part of her is pointing out that she is a bad, bad, mean person for keeping him up, but this part of her is overruled by the desperation screaming from the depths of her heart.

“What is it?”

She barely knows where to begin. Such is the ridiculous drama that her life has become. She tells the story—or rather, the latest episode— in as bare detail as possible, but she’s not sure if he’d understand the bare minimum, without the tiny little things that make this situation all the more insane. And at the same time, she’s always been a horrible storyteller. At one point she has to stop, because it’s gotten too hard and she can’t speak and the condition for allowing herself to call him in those seconds of painful confusion is do not cry.

Do not cry.

She doesn’t cry. She pulls herself together and forces herself to swallow it; that feeling of her heart trying to force it’s way out through her throat. The ranting and raving stops and he speaks. He offers her advice, consoles her in the impartiality she’s never seen in anyone else.

Deep down, she realizes that he must have known. After all, it’s the exact same tired, desperation; the premise that he made his promise on. It’s the fear and the sadness he heard in her voice.

They change subjects. They take about menial things, and eventually they find themselves laughing over the phone. She feels better. Better than she has in a long time, it feels like.

“Thanks.”

She wishes she could express it, this softened weight on her heart. She can’t, and yet she has a feeling he knows, just like he always does.

-

The driveway is clean, done in an almost unfortunately meticulous fashion. She knows that it was almost for nothing, that no one will notice, but somehow for the brief minutes she stands there looking back at it with shovel in hand, it’s okay.

Because despite everything, the snowfall’s still pretty.

Author's Note : It's been a rough while. Snow in October. That too.