Memoira Magazine: ‘fizzled out’

Find my prose text ‘fizzled out’ in the new issue of the wonderful Memoira Magazine alongside amazing artwork by Ally Zlatar. As of summer 2022 Memoira Magazine is on hiatus, thus you can find my text here now.

fizzled out

‘Share my umbrella?’ he asks.

They are sitting outside the café on a bench next to each other. Children are running along the street, chased by their parents, bumping into each other. The clouds slowly cover the aquamarine of the sky, blurring the clarity of the sunlit people, immersing everything in a murkier shade of itself. 

‘I’m fine.’ She feels a drop hit her cheek now, winces at the sudden touch, but does not move an inch closer to him. 

‘Sure? There’s enough room for both of us.’

She looks at him with her blue eyes, shakes her head stoically; a strand of her brown hair falls into her face, the raindrop meandering down the lightly tanned skin of her cheek. 

He puts the umbrella back on the bench next to himself. It isn’t raining properly yet; it might still pass over. 

He takes his empty glass of Aperol and nibbles on an ice cube, the cold effervesces on his tongue; he feels her gaze on him as he spits the remains of the ice cube back into the glass.

‘Too cold,’ he grins sheepishly, and slips another one into his mouth. He moves it around, making his cheeks bulgy in turns, spits it out again. 

She nods, trying not to smile. She grabs her own glass, stirs the ice cubes inside with the steel drinking straw, faster, the sharp click clack of ice on glass turning into a coherent vortex of jarring until the vigour of the sound reaches her mind. She stops herself, the whirl still ringing after she pulls out the straw. She doesn’t look at him, focuses her eyes on the calm flame of the candle that the waitress had positioned on their table. 

The plates in front of them are empty, exempted even from the last breadcrumbs. She rearranges the fork and knife on her plate, as if it had been delivered to her empty. She takes the barely used napkin and folds it anew, picks it up again and crumples it in her hand. They are finished.

‘What do we do now?’ he asks when the last of the ice cubes in his glass has melted away.

She sits up straight. ‘We could go for a walk or dancing or swimming or...’

‘No,’ he interrupts her, ‘I mean at all.’ He can see the muscles around her mouth straightening, the wrinkles around her eyes disappearing as her face loses the volatile tinge of joy. 

‘We stay right here,’ she says. 

His green eyes narrow, he seems puzzled by her oblivion. ‘We have to do something. We have to decide.’

‘I just want to stay here a little longer.’

The rain becomes more intense now, a cascade of drops pattering on the ground, touching their legs, backs and heads. She can feel the water soaking the sole of her slim sandals. He takes the umbrella and unfolds it, slides closer to her so they are both shielded by its wings. He leaves a gap between them as if they had just met a few hours ago.  The candle on the table is still burning, flickering wildly. She looks at him again, the corner of her eyes reddening now, the wrinkles around her eyes crinkling in another way. 

He holds her gaze for a while, the rain crackling loudly on the fabric of their canopy. 

‘Can I hug you?’ he eventually asks and moves a little closer to her. 

She shakes her head, no no no no no but crumbles into his arms. 

‘You shouldn’t be the one to hold me,’ she mumbles into his shoulder, her voice husky. He presses her closer to his chest. ‘You shouldn’t be the one to comfort me when you’re the one...’ She is sobbing erratically now, her upper body shaking. Suddenly, she untangles herself from his embrace. 

‘We can make it work,’ she says. ‘It could always be like this. You and me, in each other’s arms, side by side, watching it rain.’

She puts her hand on his chest, tries to feel his heartbeat, her eyes searching for a response, a change, a promise. 
He shakes his head. ‘You know it doesn’t work like that. I’ll always cause you pain.’
She removes her hand from his chest and slides back to her original spot on the bench, now partly covered by the umbrella.

The rain is cold. She shivers, wraps her arms around herself.

They sit in silence for a long time. Eventually, the rain dilutes into a merely tangible drizzle. He closes the umbrella. The waitress begins to pull up chairs on the other tables. He looks at the flame in front of them, takes the box of matches the waitress left on the candle’s saucer, takes one out of the box. The flame hisses when the matchhead touches the fire. 

He holds up the burning match and concentrates on the flame in his hands.

‘You know, we were a perfect match,’ she says.

The wood crumbles until it almost burns his fingers. He blows it out, pushes the remains into the liquid wax around the wick. They watch as the charcoaled match dissolves in the red farrago.