nice out

“Nice out,” he said. She looked up from her coffee cup but only briefly. She could barely conceal her disgust at him, unspecified but incredible disgust. Their long relationship had amounted to this. Pleasantries, small talk, fucking weather. What a waste of – how long was it, six years? Seven? They’d become everything they’d sworn they wouldn’t. When she’d fallen for him he’d been excited and interesting and so smart they’d sit up all night talking about cinema. Where had all that gone?

He was moving things around in the kitchen in the way he did, the bottom of his mug scraping unbearably across the thick glass surface protector. She gripped her own cup until her knuckles were four white peaks. “I said,” he said.

“I know what you said,” she said. “It doesn’t need a response.”

“Fine,” he said. He poured slightly hot water – why wouldn’t he just re-boil the kettle? – onto a teabag and covered the surface in spillage, threw milk in carelessly. He was a poor tea maker, too anxious to let it brew.

“What are you doing?” he said, lowering himself heavily into the chair across from hers.

“Stop it,” she said.

“Fine,” he said, sipping his drink with absolutely no pleasure. He could always change.