On the night she went back to the capital Kelly and I met in front of the central station. She was taking an overnight bus, and I was there helping her to kill time before she boarded. That's how I put it, "killing time", because the truth was that I wasn't ready to see her go and I couldn't bring myself to admit that I was there to say goodbye.
I took her for dinner at a restaurant in a mixed-use tower opposite the station. The place was busy, and Kelly's bags made it difficult to navigate the narrow aisles and around the small army of bustling, black-aproned waiters. She was embarrassed by the trouble she was causing, and she made a point of apologizing several times to our server. We ordered grilled fish and some appetizers, and drank from large mugs of beer.
"I'm hoping if I drink I'll be able to sleep on the bus," she said.
"Can't hurt."
"I'm actually looking forward to not being drunk so much. Getting back into some kind of routine."
I nodded and said nothing, but the statement left me cold. I understood that for her coming to town had been a kind of vacation, a break from her "real life" (whatever she meant by that, the life she lived in context maybe, or that struck her as possible), but I didn't need to be reminded of it. I let her words die off, and washed away any bitterness they might have provoked with a long swallow of beer.
"What are you thinking?" she asked me, after a time.
"Just that I'm not looking forward to going back to my routine."
"It can't be that bad."
"It was boring."
She smiled into her food; she had a hard time meeting my eyes that night.
"I'm going to miss you," she said.
"Going miss you too," I told her, surprised by how light my voice sounded. I spoke as if it didn't have anything to do with me, as if it didn't matter, and hated myself for doing so; I should have been more honest with her. I should have done a lot of things, but life is littered with bad choices, and as I looked at her across the table I seemed to relive each of mine again.
"Besides," I went on. "You could just ask me to go with you."
"You have a life here."
I spread my hands, glancing around the restaurant.
"You call this a life?" I asked.
She laughed and drank her beer.
"Maybe I will ask you, when I have everything sorted out," she said. "I don't want this to be the end."
"It's not the end," I told her, and when at last she met my eyes I almost found myself believing it.
We finished our meal and left the restaurant, taking a pedestrian bridge across the street to the station. Stopping halfway, I rolled us both a cigarette, which we shared next to the railing. I don't remember what we talked about. Maybe I asked her what she planned to do once she graduated, maybe about her next show. At some point I told her that I loved her and she smiled and artfully deflected the comment with a quiet touch of her hand.
"You're halfway gone already aren't you?" I asked.
"Can you tell?"
"You're not hard to read."
Both of us were smiling, well aware that our time together had been pared down to minutes.
"It's all timing isn't it?" I said.
"Yes it is."
"Things come together for a while and then they drift away."
"That's pretty much the way of it."
"Depressing."
"I know," she said, and she touched my cheek, leaning in to kiss my neck, and then my mouth.
"But right now," she said, very quietly. "Right now I love you. That has to be enough."
"It's enough," I said, knowing that it wasn't, and I put my arm around her as we waited for the last minute to come and go.