The rain stained the plexi-glass window as Alex stole embarrassed glances from the girl’s couch. Every time she looked over he couldn’t help but refocus his attention on the running shoes next to his backpack, barely worn from the treadmill. Tears sat in his eyes, unable to escape as Alex choked out the past year they had spent together.
“You don’t know what you’re doing. The entire time you’ve been here you haven’t been able to stay focused on one thing for more than five seconds,” she stated bluntly, apparently unmoved by his latest epiphany.
“What? I can barely hear you,” Alex asked as the monsoon broke with cacophonous gravity. “This storm’s getting heavy, like when I was in Phoenix.”
“I’ve been here when it’s rained before but it’s never this been this bad, not that I can remember at least. Not here.”
He shifted his eyes away from her deep brown irises, remembering how she had noticed that his, when they met were brown, had slowly turned more hazel.
“But I said you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. I know a guy who can get you a job at that restaurant we always go to, the one on Fourth Street. What’s it called again?”
“I don’t know,” Alex squeaked, as if he had been sleeping all night and just woken up.
“Oh you know, the one with the big pillars inside and the cheesecake and the Tira Misu that I love.”
He stared at her, unmoved by what she had spit at him. The storm shook the ever so intricately painted picture of the women from Sex and the City that hung on the South wall. The cable flashed in and out with the lights giving them an ever so instant moment of blackness and a respite from the din of the electrical generator. Peering out the window Alex couldn’t help but close his eyes and inhale the slight breeze that leaked in from between the window and its track, an airing out he had decided to continue when the two didn’t fit flush the last time he tried to close it.
“…And what about your parents? They didn’t spend $65,000 dollars for nothing.”
“Nothing?” he scoffed, bemused. “The prices we put on things are overrated anyways. I could have stolen all of those books probably understood them better, except for a few. It’s not even like everything started working out until recently.”
“That’s exactly my point, it is working out. And do you have to keep that window open? I’m freezing, come keep me warm,” she answered him.
Alex could hear her heartbeat in her voice. When he didn’t move towards her, his eyes, which were staring at the shoes again, caught a glimpse of the leopard print slippers she was wearing prowl towards him. Before she could reach him, Alex lifted his head and let his tears fall as the monsoon shook the door ajar.
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