Theoretically Painful

“I’m sorry.” She smiled at me, her brows upturned, pained by her own words--or so I’d like to think.

----

To stare at the rain outside my window--the constant tap tap that registered in one ear, ricocheted in the empty back of my mind, then exited the other--was to revisit that moment in time again and again, until the event itself blurred and rewrote itself into a more flattering diary entry. Rejection was like that for me.

Tap tap. Tap tap tap. Sounds tended to echo in the empti--

“Jaxon, get the door.” The matriarch’s voice vibrated against the sound of my own voice.

“Yeah.”

The swish of my socks against the tile floor, the clack of the turned lock, the city traffic that intruded through the ajar door, all noises to tune in to and zone out on.

“Hi, Jaxson,” said a familiar voice--the same voice that uttered over and over “I’m sorry.”

I panned from the ground to the face at the door and snapped a new picture of her smile. “Sophia… what are you doing here?” The apathy in my voice shocked me. I couldn’t detect the sadness I expected.

Her brows turned upwards once more. They pitied me, they were apologetic, but they were anything but pained. “Jason left something here, could I grab it real quick?” Her foot overstepped the door-line before I consented.

“Sure.”

She left her sandals outside the door, wiped her feet on the welcome mat, and dashed into the house. The blur of her figure behind me deleted the incessant auditory stimuli in my head and cleared my eyes. I stared at the ground. Her heart-logoed sandals sat outside the door, refusing to enter. She would never enter my embrace. She loved Jason. She loved the identical copy of me but not me.

A smile crept onto my face from the corners of my mouth. The tap tap stopped. From behind the gray emptiness, a newly lit sun emerged. I sighed. It was the sound of relief, it was the sound of acceptance, it was the sound of moving on, it was no longer the sound of painful numbness. Sigh. At least I got my senses back.