a scene.

I rasped on the door. No response. Gingerly, I turned the handle and, finding that the door was unlocked, I let myself in. She was sitting at the kitchen table in front of me, leafing through a magazine. Her gaze never diverted from its pages, though she clearly wasn’t reading it.

“So, is that it?” I said. “Are you never going to speak to me again?”

She didn’t respond right away, but I remained unmoved. This had gone on for too long, and I needed answers, closure — anything else. Heaving a big sigh, she closed the magazine, folded her hands on top of it, and looked at me.

“I’m not mad at you,” she said.

“Could’ve fooled me!”

“It’s just… I don’t know.” She looked away.

“Look,” I said. “If you don’t want to talk about it yet, that’s fine, and if I knew it was going to hurt you this badly, I wouldn’t have —”

“I know.”

This one ended too abruptly, but I didn’t know where else to take it, so I thought I’d just quit while I was ahead.