It’s not the end of the world, you said, and I wouldn’t look at you. Kept my eyes on the murky brown stain above my head. How many times had I lain there beneath you all winter, spring, and summer, shivering or sweating and often quite honestly bored out of my mind. The seatbelt buckle a blunt, aching pressure against my spine. Staring up at that stain, my nails on your back while you moved inside me, and not once did I ask you how it got there. And now I never would. I was too busy committing this moment to memory: the fine tufts of dark hair around your nipples, the snap you missed on your dad’s old Wrangler shirt as you sealed your body away. The lack of emotion in your voice when you said you’d be back next summer, like you were talking about the weather. You’d been watching me since middle school. How could I know you would be the one to walk away?
I reached up to trace the outline of the stain with my finger. A year later you would wreck that car, come home with a scar above your eye and a new girlfriend—a petite Midwestern girl, blonde and cheerful, with a gold cross dangling from her neck. She would teach your parents to play euchre, make King Ranch casserole with your mom. I would watch the way you looked at her and think about that stain. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was the end of something. It wasn’t the last time, but I didn’t know that yet.
Sarah Bradley is a writer from Austin, Texas. A Best of the Net nominee, her work appears or is forthcoming in *River Styx, Cutleaf, Tahoma Literary Review, Flash Frog, HAD**, *and* Phoebe*, among others. She's currently working on a story collection and a novel. Find more of her writing at www.sarahvbradley.com and follow her on Instagram @sarahbooradley.