Barry Revill

She slammed the bedroom door shut, turning us both into silhouettes against the fading light filtering through the large open window. Barely in the room, she collapsed on the bed in front of me, said, “Smartphones are what cigarettes were for the great masses of people once addicted.” Reaching across her bed, she dipped her hand into the bottom drawer of her bedside cabinet and pulled out a single cigarette.

The things I want to say aren’t the sort of things you’re allowed to say out loud. You’re not even meant to think the things I think. But sometimes I think them anyway and sometimes I want to say them, so badly, that my chest fills with this irredeemable rage and I don’t know which way to look. Life is so strange. People don’t talk about that enough. My boss killed his wife.

The next time we saw each other I would only remember the name Bastard, which was not his name but what his friends had called him, how they’d introduced him that first night, because it resembled the sound of his true surname. But I felt strange addressing him as that; even an unflattering nickname seemed to produce intimacy I didn’t care to feel. Instead, I didn’t call him anything. I said, Hi, and then: Do you remember me? Yeah, he said, of course.