Mojito

I was spitting bits of mint into my glass. I don't think you're supposed to eat them, I've eaten them and they don't taste too good. This tasted fine. She'd handed me this drink, mo-HEE-toe, she pronounced it in an ethnic kind of way, her tongue stuck just a little out. I would've been plenty good with plain rum even though I don't like it much. She wanted to do something nice though and who was I to stop her. But I will say this, that every time I take a sip from my glass I'd rather not be spitting something back into it.

She said wasn't it nice to be together. She was in town for the weekend, staying with me. Had other places she could've gone but she chose mine and that meant something. I told her yeah, it was nice to be together. Time gets so that you forget the things you used to not need to remember. They were just there, they just were, she was always around. But things change, people go, and suddenly you know what memories are. She was like that, but she was getting realer every second.

I poured from the pitcher. It was that level right beneath ice cold, it's watering down but started strong so you don't care. I even spilled a little on the couch and laughed it off and she said I'd changed. Made me start to thinking if I did, and if she had. She looked, sounded, smelled, was the same. She must've been. But then I thought I was the same, too, and she was always smarter than me.

It was one of those nights makes you wish you had a screen door. We belonged in quiet, but somehow sitting there we made our own. All we had to do to catch up was sit there and breathe. And I told her maybe we didn't need to do it. She asked what I meant. I said this, maybe we didn't need to do this anymore. That there was a way to fix it. Where we didn't need memories or special drinks because every moment would be now. And somehow that didn't sit right with her. Like she didn't think things were broken.

She got up and left, called a friend and took her bag and said she'd see me soon. And me only just telling her that she could always see me soon. I picked up that pitcher, torn green leaves suspended in an off-white sea. There was enough for two more drinks and I drank them both. And I don't know what I would've done with that screen door. Probably ripped it off its hinges. I can see it now. Looking out onto some field, dirt road cutting through, a hundred thousand dandelions blown into the wind.