'The Night of the Comet' by Marinela Davies

Why we weren’t speaking that night − and it was late, very late, 3:30 a.m. by my watch − was something that happened nearly twelve hours earlier. A small thing, really, but by this time the silence had grown out of all proportion and poisoned every gesture we made as if we didn’t have enough problems as it was.

 

Janice was stubborn. And I was feeling defensive and maybe more than a little paranoid. We were both drunk − not loosened up, but like two exhausted zombies − by what we’d consumed at Nick Harper’s in the wake of the incident and then at dinner after and the bar after that.

I could smell the nighttime stink of the lake beneath the bridge. I looked up and watched the sky expand overhead, its celestial alchemy lazily stretching. A boat hissed under, waking up all the geese, their talkative ardours screeching in protest or accord, I couldn’t tell which. The crickets started sawing in the dark till the night felt as if it was going to burst open and leave us shattered on the roof of the car.

“You idiot,” she snarled.

“You’re the idiot,” I said.

 

“I hate you."

 

“I hate you back,” I said. “No mercy.”