Windows — A Short Story
“You have nice eyelashes”
“Huh?”
“I said you have nice eyelashes.”
They were both laying on the bed as sunlight beamed into the room. The light gently touching his face as she looked up at him.
“I’m kind of jealous”, she said.
“Of my eyelashes?” he asked.
“Yeah. Do you know how many women would love to have lashes like yours?”
“I don’t think it’s a big deal.”
“Do you know you’re really terrible at taking compliments?”
He smiled. “Yeah... I’m not used to it.”
“You’re so cute sometimes…”
“Just sometimes?” He said, smirking.
When she left the room, the warmness he had felt in her presence disappeared. The smile on his face replaced by a frown. Then came the sudden sadness in his heart.
In her presence, he tried to play it cool. But in truth, he was actually hurting inside.
It was just last weekend when he had driven to her apartment. He had wanted to surprise her. To do something out of the ordinary. Do something that she wouldn’t expect. She had always known him to be predictable. But that’s what she had loved about him.
Maybe that’s why she never expected him to show up when she was with the other man in her apartment. The other man she had been seeing. The other man she had been sleeping with.
He had seen them through the window from outside.
Hugging. Kissing. Smiling. Like a warm couple, enjoying their time together.
At first, he just stood there, frozen in time. All he could do was watch. His brain struggling to comprehend what he was seeing.
He slowly re-entered his car and placed the wine bottle back on the passenger seat. Then he sped off towards his a seemingly doomed fate.
He wasn’t wearing his seatbelt when he swerved off the road and hit the light pole. The airbag deployed as the windscreen shattered, sending tiny pieces of glass shards towards his face.
The world seemed far away as he was trying to stay afloat in the pool of his consciousness. He tried to look through his windscreen but it was all blurry.
Unable to move. Unable to speak. Maybe this was for the better.
He heard the sirens over the distance just as he slowly got pulled down in the dark pool of his consciousness.
It was nothing but black. Everything was calm. It all seemed serene.
She came to visit him every day in the hospital as he recovered from his accident.
He was happy to see her whenever she came over. Occasionally laying in the bed with him and cuddling.
“You have nice eyelashes…”
He had always told her to get blinds for her apartment windows.
“What if you have some stalker watching your from outside one day?” he had asked when she still hadn’t put up her blinds when he came to see her.
“Maybe I like when people watch me…”, she said cheekily.
He wished she had put up the blinds.
Eventually, he would recover from his injuries. He would be discharged from the hospital. Then he would confront his girlfriend of two years and tell her what he saw before his accident.
She would say she was sorry. She would ask for forgiveness. He would say no. Then he would tell her to get blinds for her windows before he left her apartment.
