Dustin was on his fifth consecutive cigarette when the door opened behind him. He didn’t have to turn around to see that it was her, Blue Baudelaire, his girlfriend - he would have to remember to put ‘ex’ in front of that term now - of the past 9 months.
She made her exit from the building doors loudly, dragging her over-packed suitcase on it’s side even though it had wheels, and was huffing as if she had just participated in the Boston Marathon.
There was silence behind him as he sat, the only sound in the cold night air being her heavy breathing. Dustin took another drag of his cigarette, elbows on the step above the one he sat on, and glanced up at the stars through the bare-boned tree branches lining the stoop of his place.
No doubt there was something he should say to her. Anything, really. He just didn’t know where to begin. How had the fight even began? How had it progressed to the point of her packing up her stuff?
Blue began her loud decent from the top again, bumping and scraping the hard shell of her suitcase across the dirty, cement stairs he sat on. She made it half way down the stairs before gravity finally seemed to realize how much the case weighed and sent to crashing into the boxes stacked where she had left them.
She paused on the stairs beside her, her gaze cutting into him as if he had pushed the case down the stairs himself.
“Do you have anything to say? Did I really mean that little to you, Dustin?”
Again, Dustin was at a loss for words, his fingers warm from where the cigarette had burned down close to where he held it. A part of him wished that she would just call her cab and leave - so that he could erase any sign that she had even been in his life at all. Another part of him, one that he desperately had been trying to ignore, wanted to tell her every little thought he had. Every single fear and emotion and panicked, dependent need.
He tried his hardest to work past the lump in his throat but it wouldn’t budge. There was a sting growing behind his eyes, one that he had plenty of experience ignoring in the past and could only hope that he had enough experience to push past it this time.
Even though it was only a few seconds, the hesitation was too much for Blue, and she continued down the stairs, reaching the bottom and immediately hailing over a cab that passed by.
In a matter of moments, Blue had loaded her few boxes into the back of the cab. She gave him one last look, a look that was equal parts hateful but also held a sadness that felt all too familiar, before she slammed the cab door shut between them and mouthed directions to the driver.
Dustin sat there for a while, absorbing the silence and trying to come to terms with the fact that usually he wished for silence but now he would give anything for her to come back and yell at him again.
The streets grew quieter - less busy as the night dragged on - and soon Dustin ran out of cigarettes to smoke. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket, wondering how much time had past since he had first come out to sit.
The date caught his eye and tickled a small part of his brain awake from the numbness he felt. Wasn’t the concert last night? How had he forgotten? Without giving it too much thought, Dustin found himself sending a short series of texts to Kira.
sry i misd ur show last night.
