№1001: The Island

She rolls over, away from me. Her hand slips over mine, and away. A deliberate choice.

‘I don’t want to come tonight,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I’ll go.’

I say nothing. This wasn’t unusual — the last few events I’d thrown with my friends had come second to her going out the night before.

‘It’s not because I went out last night,’ she insists. She isn’t making eye contact. So I believe her.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Not now.’

‘Is something going on?’

‘Just — yes, but we can talk about it later.’

I reach out and touch her arm. She lets my hand rest there.

‘Are we okay?’ I offer.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t think we should see each other anymore.’

I don’t react. I think I knew this was coming, something deep in my brain, that primordial part, the bit that has access to the preternatural subconscious which is always ready for the shelter to go away as the tigers and elements sweep in.

‘That’s not what I want,’ I say. It’s all I can think to say.

I feel stupid. Numb. I say something else but find I’m crying, and say it again. I’m not sure what I said, only that it felt true. She says we can talk about it tomorrow, and that it isn’t over, that she wants to talk about it. But that part of me — the one that is always ready for the apocalypse — it lets me know there’s nothing I can say here…