Attraction is strange

He was trying to follow the thread of conversation with Phillip, which wound about the car as a virtual simulacrum to the road itself. Instead, he found himself thinking of Lauren. He was thinking about the slightly dusky color of her arms, which was not the normal sort of thing for a man to be thinking about a woman, but perhaps he remembered her arms because he had been paying such close attention to them before the accident happened. They were a symbol of a life he’d never get back. Also, attraction was strange.

They stopped the car to change drivers. Philip went out to smoke and H walked through a small copse of trees. From there, he was overlooking a dry culvert littered with rocks, beige, white, uncaring for eons. Behind him, the trees were singing. It was the sort of sound that you embraced like someone you love.

The two of them sat at the table, folding their coat over and pushing them on top of the little stand, where they quietly wept for the remainder of the morning. H was older now and had a slightly different face. Maybe he'd died in that plane crash. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

“I’ve been thinking lately of Lauren,” H said, sliding a small yellow square of Splenda between his thumb and forefinger. “I can’t stop thinking about her, which is either a sign of very deep and abiding love or some strange sort of attraction. Have you ever been attracted to someone without really knowing why?”

Outside, the sidewalk was being battered by rain. The drops were huge as if the sky were crying in the sort of way that would make you want to look away, to pretend like you hadn’t even noticed. Who knew that you were on such intimate terms with the sky? And that the sky was so emotional? The sky was the kind of girl you’d admire from afar but never fall for.

Daniel was rearranging the salt and pepper shaker on the table to form either a soccer goal or a pair of uprights. H didn’t know if was supposed to slide the Splenda through as it were air hockey or if he should go for the extra point. He did neither.

Daniel sighed and leaned back in his chair. The juke box was playing a song from their youth. The song was about loving someone until the day that you died, even if they never noticed you. “It seems like a bit too long to hold out now doesn’t it? I generally tap out at about two weeks,” Daniel said, referencing the song. “The rest of your life sounds like an obscenely long amount of time to do anything. At the very least I’m sure I’d be bored of loving them. It would obviously occur to you before forever that they chewed with their mouth open or were slightly annoying after two drinks, right? You can’t be stupid for eternity.”