This City

The sky always looks nicest above the condos.

“You were right, you know.”

“Hrm?”

“That the sky always looks nicest above the condos.”

Jack laughs. “Only here.”

“Only here.” She smiles. He looks away.

The two sit in silence for a while, and then they get up, and then they leave. They go to their bedroom and they go to sleep and the next morning they eat breakfast together. They watch TV together. They go shopping together. But something is not right.

He goes to the condos again, this time without her, and he gets out of his car and he sits on the grass and he looks up into the cosmos. He thinks about her and he thinks about them and he thinks about himself. The sky, which was the color of their relationship when he arrived, becomes a sort of cotton candy pink.

He goes home and breaks the news.

“We’ll be together again someday, I’m sure,” she gloats. “You think this is the end, but it isn’t.”

For the second time in as many days, though, he proves her wrong.