Prologue:
Even walking down the busy street, shoulder to shoulder, their identical smiles would bring surprised looks to passerby's faces, ever since they had been children.
That morning, coffee at Citrus had a sharp taste that proved to be just what Carrie needed to wake up.
She looked over the rim of her mug at Kaye, her eyes lost in the depths of her swirling latte, stirring it absently.
"Penny for your thoughts" she said, even though she knew perfectly well what Kaye was thinking. She felt as if she could almost see right through her, into her mind, were she was worrying the thought incessantly like a sore tooth.
Kaye just shrugged, not meeting her eyes, and looked absently out of the window into the busy street.
Carrie sighed, annoyed, and tried to ignore once more Kaye's attitude, growing more and more secretive every day.
She hated that lately, whenever they were together, she was absent, and her uncooperativeness left her with a bitter feeling deep inside her : she hated feeling as if she missed her when, in fact, she was sitting right beside her.
She missed the old Kaye, who laughed and joked, and was always the first to pick up the pieces and start again.
She loathed the new Kaye, resigned and never talking about what was really important, leaving only small talk to fill the gap unsuccessfully.
The silence burned away between them, slow and exhausting, until Carrie felt she couldn't take it anymore and stood suddenly.
For a split second Kaye reacted, startled, and looked up to meet her furious eyes; but then the moment was gone and Carrie clenched her fists as she looked away again, deliberately, as if not seeing her would make her disappear.
She briefly considered just letting go and having a screaming match, right there, in the middle of Citrus, surrounded by strangers, but she knew that, apart from not doing any good, she probably wouldn't react anyway, and just stare at her blankly, like now.
So she turned away and left. No regrets.
She wasn't the one acting all screwed up, she reasoned to herself, and she had nothing to feel guilty about.
So she had no idea what it was that suddenly made her turn around, twenty minutes and seven blocks away, to run back to citrus.
- It's not like a premonition: she doesn't believe in all that crap. It's just a feeling: that she had to be there, now. That she was needed.
So she ran back, out of breath, to find the window Kaye had been looking out of shattered, and the ambulance and police sirens howling.
She stood frozen amidst the broken glass and just stared at the nothingness, and felt empty. And she knew, right then, that it was over.
It would never be the same.