Take my breath away

After a stormy weekend he left like he said he would, with Tom and an empty suitcase. I share a cigarette with Daisy down by the water, then another one and a bottle of wine and it tastes just like sawdust. "Why are you with him" I ask, her cheekbones glimmering in the pallid moonlight. She shrugs, a crooked smile on her Beaujolais lips and salt in her hair like diamonds.

"And you" she asks, "why are you with Henry?"
"To forget about someone else."
"Is it working?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"No."

A night and a day earlier he's standing over me by the bedside, bowed down and breathing carefully to keep from waking me but I haven't slept for hours. His hand hovers just over my hair, he hesitates for three seconds before stepping back and in one seamless movement he walks out and closes the door behind him. I shiver in the 6 AM cold, outside the sound of an engine and tires on gravel, then asphalt, further and further away until it's gone.