FIVE
1329 Words
The sunlight came a little earlier the next morning, falling across the yard with a coolness that had not yet fully lifted.
By the time I came downstairs, Neil was already in the living room, the TV on though he was not watching. He had a can of soda in his hand and looked as if he had been there for a while. Hearing me, he looked up.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
My voice came out even. Too even.
Neither of us said anything more. I went to the kitchen for water, then drifted toward the back door while the TV murmured behind me. The moment I stepped into the yard, sunlight fell over me, and the air loosened.
Children laughed in the yard next door. I looked over and saw two kids blowing bubbles, the tiny spheres flashing in the sunlight before they vanished. The sight tugged something loose in my memory, and I said, almost casually,
“Where I used to live, kids would be out front doing this all the time.”
At some point, Neil had come to stand beside me. He followed my gaze but said nothing.
The silence that followed lasted a little too long.
I turned to him and, without circling around it, asked, “You wanna try?”
“No.”
“Looks boring.” He gave the answer flatly, like he had already shut the door on the subject.
Flat in a way that felt like he was keeping something out.
I watched him and did not move. Then I asked one more question.
“Even when you were little?”
He paused.
It was slight, the kind of pause a person might not have meant anyone to notice.
“I did,” he said.
Then he stopped.
He said nothing more either, and the air seemed to catch there. After a while, as if following the thread of what he had just said, he added,
“My mom used to do it with me when I was a kid.”
He did not look at me when he said it. He spoke without looking at me, as if the words belonged somewhere far away.
I froze for a second. “And after that?”
Neil smiled.
“And then it was over.”
His voice was light.
So light that, for a moment, I could not tell whether he meant the bubbles, or his mother.
I did not ask anything else, and he did not continue. The bubbles were still drifting up from the next yard, bright for a second before they vanished. After a while, I walked over to the low fence and said a few words to the kids. They hesitated, then smiled and handed me one of the bottles.
“Thanks,” I said, and turned back a little too quickly.
Neil was still where he had been.
I did not explain. I held the bottle out to him. He looked at me but did not take it, so I opened it myself and blew once. A few clear bubbles drifted out slowly, wavering in front of him.
I said nothing and blew again, keeping the bottle between us.
More bubbles rose into the air.
Neil watched them. His eyes followed them for a second, then came back, as if he were thinking of something, or holding something in. After a few moments, he finally reached out and took the bottle. His movement was unhurried, as if it had taken him that long to decide.
He tried once. The bubbles came out crooked and broke before they had gone very far.
I could not help laughing.
Neil looked at me. He said nothing, only tried again.
We went on like that a few more times. Gradually, there were more bubbles, spreading lightly through the air. He did not mention what he had said earlier, and I did not ask. It felt as if that small piece of the past had been placed somewhere between us—not gone, but no longer being touched.
The sunlight shifted lower, and the bubbles thinned until only one or two drifted up now and then, breaking soundlessly in midair. When Neil handed the bottle back, his movement was casual, as if the whole thing had only happened in passing. He wiped his hands and turned toward the house.
“All right. I’m done.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
I followed behind him, not walking quickly. The air still carried a trace of bubble solution, a faint sweetness that did not quite fade. At the door, as if I had just thought of it, I said,
“Maybe next time, then.”
Neil’s hand paused on the door.
“Sure,” he said.
He said it quietly. He did not ask anything more, and he did not add another joke. It was as if he had simply taken the sentence and put it away.
The living room door opened, and the light inside dimmed at once. The TV was still on, sounding exactly as it had before, as if nothing had happened. I set the bubble bottle on the cabinet and looked down at my hand. My fingertips still felt slightly sticky.
I rinsed my hands at the kitchen sink. The sticky sweetness faded quickly, but something cleaner seemed to rise beneath it—light, quiet, like the trace from yesterday that no amount of washing had seemed to erase.
I paused.
When I turned, my eyes fell on the dining table. I had tidied it already; the books were stacked, the chairs pushed back into place. Everything was back where it belonged, which somehow made it feel even more empty. I looked at it for one second, and something in my chest went hollow, softly, for no reason I could name.
I put the towel back and went upstairs without looking back. Only in my room did I realize that what lingered on my hands might not have been only bubble solution.
That night, I lay awake for a long time, one hand tucked under the blanket, as if my fingertips still remembered that faint trace.
Or maybe it had already gone.
Maybe I was only the one who remembered it.
Downstairs, Eric and Cindy murmured to each other now and then, low and ordinary, like any other evening. This house seemed to be becoming whole little by little: breakfast, the sound of the television, someone going out to the farmers’ market, someone blowing bubbles in the yard. And yet, for some reason, I kept thinking of the way Neil had said, “And then it was over.”
His voice had been so light.
Light enough to make it sound as if it had been meant to end. But the sentence stayed there, refusing to fade.
I turned onto my side and watched the sky outside the window darken little by little. For some reason, I thought of Nathan again.
I knew they had lived through the same thing. But Nathan never talked about it, not once. I used to think it was because he did not care, or because he looked so capable, so untouched, as if he needed no one’s help. With him, so many things seemed to have been placed where they belonged from the start—never messy, never painful, never visible.
But now I wasn’t so sure.
What about him?
What had that same thing become inside him?
The thought had barely appeared before I stopped it. I buried my face in the pillow, my breathing a little muffled. The room was quiet enough to pretend nothing had happened, but I knew better.
Some things were not absent.
They were simply never spoken of.
I turned over again and drew my hand farther under the blanket, feeling, for the first time, that Nathan’s silence might not mean there was nothing there.
It might mean I just could not see it yet.
- Writer
