“Annette—”
“It’s all okay! I’m saying it’s all okay! All the times you made me feel like your backup choice when it would have been so simple to just tell me I looked beautiful; all the times you made me feel like the girl you were just killing time with while you waited to find your true love, even though you knew I loved you; or the times you made me feel like your stupid little sister, or your employee—”
“Annette—”
“No, I forgive all of it. You don’t have to admit it or even accept it. I choose to let it go. I don’t want to carry it around in my heart anymore.”
“Okay … Well, Annette—”
He paused, then rushed to make up for whatever the pause had cost him.
“Annette, just because I’m accepting this doesn’t mean I’m conceding anything you say is true—”
“You don’t have to,” she smiled. “It’s all in the past. It’s all over.”
“Okay, well, that’s good. Some of what you’re saying is unnecessary and implies, I think, an excessive level of … I mean, I understand, as a thought exercise, for the sake of—”
“Now I want to kiss you.”
“Annette …”
“A goodbye kiss. Just one. For closure.”
Annette took a step toward him.
Closure, so close.
“Annette … I want to … But I don’t think … God, you look beautiful, trust me, it’s not … But this is, I’m kind of seeing someone, and—”
“One kiss! You don’t even have to kiss back. I just need to kiss you goodbye. For closure. One last time. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Open your mouth and close your eyes,” said Annette, coyly.
“I thought you said I didn’t have to kiss back,” said David, coyly.
“Well, then you can keep your mouth closed, if you want,” said Annette, coyly.
David half opened his mouth and closed his eyes.
Annette kissed him.
While she held the kiss she pictured everything she could remember from the relationship, in chronological order, from the first email to the last text message, and every kiss and laugh and fight in between. When she had pictured absolutely everything she could bring herself to remember, which was everything, she visualized herself literally kissing the block letters of the word GOODBYE.
As the E started to fade in her mind, and her real lips stayed on his real mouth, she held out her left hand and snapped her thumb and index finger together—the softer and more difficult version of the snap—and eight men masked in black descended swiftly toward her ex-boyfriend, quiet enough for all their footsteps to be flattened by the squish of her kiss.
The first man injected David’s neck with a clear liquid that knocked him unconscious. A second man pulled David’s phone out of his front pocket, right where Annette had told him it would be. Two men wheeled out a cement box from behind a parked truck and removed two sacks of beach sand, and then a fifth masked man joined them to lift the unconscious body into the box, then split open the sacks of sand and fill the rest of the box to the top. A sixth man fastened a cement lid to the top of the box on a preset row of hinges and then, together with the third and fourth men, carried the box to the edge of the river and tilted it in, while the seventh man swept up all the miscellaneous bits of debris that had accumulated into an opaque plastic bag. The second man, still holding the phone of the man in the box, showed what he had been typing into the phone to the eighth masked man, who had been simply watching everything as it unfolded and nodding, and who now nodded more as he read:
To everyone I love (and a few who just got on this list off my spam folder, haha!): I’m writing because I needed you to know that after a lot of soul-searching I’ve decided I need to “drop out” for a while (as it were). A lot of you know that I was having a lot of anxiety about things, esp. with my most recent relationship(s), and I decided I need to kind of take some time off and really just think and be myself for a while with no distractions and no influence—just for a while!!—from the people who have made me, well … me. I’ll be getting some much needed rest & solitude. Maybe I’ll finally take that motorcycle trip across Central America that I’m always talking about—although I guess first I’ll have to get a motorcycle license (and learn how to change a tire!). Ha. Also, my plan is to watch all five seasons of The Wire while I’m away, so when I am back, at least I’ll finally have something to talk to you all about! Anyway, I love you all so, so much, and thank you for respecting this need of mine right now. And, again, do not worry about me just because I’m out of contact. This really is the best thing that could happen to me. Have fun, I love you all and miss you already. Love you and thanks for understanding this.
Sent from my Phone—forgiive tha typoooes&&1*&?.