The Conversation

“You know when you finally think things are working out, and everything could go the way you dreamt it would, but then something happens to make you feel that stupid sinking feeling in your stomach and it turns out you’re just 5 steps behind where you want to be?”

Well that just rolled out. She stopped to catch her breath, mentally throwing curses at her mouth.

“Stop being so cryptic. What’s wrong?”

She smirked grimly. Of course he saw through that.

“I can’t talk about it---“ 

“Can’t or won’t?”

She looked at him then. Blinked. That was definitely something he got from her. 

Every so often, a conversation gives you a sense of clarity. Maybe you discover something about the other person, maybe about the situation. But in this case, it was about herself more than anything else. Confrontation obviously wasn’t her strong point, at least not about more personal things like relationships and feelings. Stupid, seemingly insignificant things. Not really important at all, given more worldly problems like curing Parkinsons or feeding hungry African babies. Not even on the scale there. Negative significance. But somehow, even with everything else going right, how was it that this was the one thing that constantly seemed to pop up again and again? It came so easily to some people. Just not to her.

She hesitated. Maybe this would be that moment to change the way she would normally react. To open up, to act on impulse for once in her calculated life. The movie reel playing out the way it should.

He was still staring at her. “Can’t or won’t?” he gently prodded.

Almost. She almost let go.

“Both”.

Guess it was never meant to be.