By Nicole Ruf
Victoria places her plate on the kitchen table and sits across from him. He lifts his gaze slightly, just enough to see her, and enough for her to see him do it, just not enough to hold it. With that same caution, he brings his fork to his mouth. They eat scrambled eggs, with thinly chopped onions and tomatoes. Where Victoria comes from, they call them huevos pericos, but he does not know this; he has never asked. Victoria’s eggs are cold. She eats them anyway, more out of habit, and to give her hands something to do, than out of hunger.
It had been a while since she had felt real hunger, or perhaps she felt it all the time, a low ache so constant she no longer knew how to recognise it. She stares at her plate, fork held between palms in a gesture on the verge of prayer, praying, perhaps, that the eggs on her plate might confess something to her, that something, anything, might happen, that her gaze could pierce its ceramic, or the wooden table, or even the tiled floor beneath her feet. Break apart this kitchen, this apartment, this life she was never meant to stay for. With the same intensity Victoria fixes on her plate, he fixes on her. Probably with similar intent: to provoke a reaction, any reaction. He watches the stubborn line of her mouth, the brief crinkle of annoyance at her nose, studying her the way one studies a closed door, searching for a way in. Victoria can feel his eyes on her. She refuses to return them.
“My eggs are cold.”
“I told you to give me the first ones.”
Victoria opens her mouth to say something, but does not. For a brief second, she thinks the gesture makes her look a lot like a fish; the thought amuses her.
“What are you laughing about?”
She says nothing.
“What are you laughing about?”
Victoria looks at him then, for the first time. One eyebrow raised slightly, eyes hovering between scolding and something close to pleading; see me, they might say. He cannot tell which she means, perhaps she cannot either. She simply shakes her head. It seems to satisfy him; maybe he lacks the will to insist further, maybe it is indifference, probably a bit of both. Victoria lowers her gaze to her plate again, and he to the crown of her head. He can see the roots of her hair, the newest bits of her; they make him think of the first time he saw her. He had liked her hair so much then. He follows each strand with his eyes: those intertwined shades of brown and copper, the curls forming at the ends. He thinks of how well he knows this hair, how many times his hands have… and then stops. Some things it no longer helps to remember. It occurs to him how beautiful she looks.
“Are you crying?”
The sound of her voice catches him off guard. He straightens too quickly, shifts his gaze to Victoria’s eyes, but she has already returned hers to her plate. Victoria furrows her brow. His tears make her angry, in fact, they make her furious. That her heart will not yield at the sight of the man she loves crying across from her, and yet it refuses to. She bites down on her tongue, hard enough for it to show on her face. The gesture draws another tear down his cheek.
“I shouldn’t have stayed.”
She does not know, quite, why she says it. Her words have a tendency of arriving before she does. He sets down his fork. Her words come slowly, like furniture moved between two. Then anger; at what she said, but mostly at her eyes, still fixed on her plate. He wants her to look at him. Even knowing that he will no longer find in them that same tenderness that once lived behind her pupils, reserved for him only. He knows she has already left in every way that matters. He looks at her anyway.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have stayed.”
Victoria’s eyes flick to him, just briefly, just half a second before she intends them to. She lets out a small laugh.
“Are you agreeing with me?”
He laughs too, but it sounds hollow even in his own ears. They allow themselves to look at each other, and they smile. For a moment, elapsed time collapses, and the room is dim and orange, and she is in his shirt, sneaking back into bed with a plate of scrambled eggs, the window full of sunset. She was happy then, or thought she was, or was just not yet unhappy. Just as quickly, Victoria looks away, back to her plate. She is the one to do it; she notices this. They both miss it, though not in the same way. He misses her, and she misses who she was before. The eggs are colder now.
Featured Image: Pinterest