— ˗ˋ୨🎀୧ˊ˗ —

You're reclined in the seat of the Chevy Malibu, the back tilted, one arm hanging out the open window. The cigarette burns slowly between your fingers, leaving a faint ember that flickers with each gust of wind. There's no music playing. Just the hum of distant streetlights. Everything is blue.

Blue like the sky before a storm. Blue like the shadows George stopped noticing.

He's late again. You were supposed to go for a quick “ride,” like before—when he still got lost in your eyes instead of the plants. But now, the garden calls him more often than you do. He tells you with soft excuses, in that voice of his that always sounds like it's halfway somewhere else.

"Just a little while, I swear."

But it’s never just a little while.

You’ve become the kind of blue that burns when touched. It's not sadness. It's not jealousy. It's that frozen calm that comes after you realize love doesn’t always die it just turns into something that doesn't need you as much.

And he knows it.

He feels it when he kisses you without urgency. He sees it when you don’t ask questions, when you don’t offer to go with him. You don’t insist. You don’t complain. You just exist beautiful and still, like a painting hung in a gallery no one visits anymore.

He looks at you when he gets in the car. You feel it. That way he has of watching, as if he could still figure you out. As if he’s waiting for you to say something first. But you won’t. You're no longer in the George who was with Pattie. You're in the blue that came after. The one that doesn’t break, but doesn’t hold either.

He starts the engine without a word.

And you keep smoking, without looking at him. Because now you're all cold. All distance. All blue.

Bluer than he ever was.