The parking lot faces west, a perfect view of the descending sun, the yellow and pink-streaked clouds. Summer night falls with a subtle grace, unlike the abrupt darkness of February and March, back when I first started dating Katie.
It's nearly nine o'clock. Back then, the sky would have been black by this time, and I would have climbed into my car to pick her up after work. I could do that now, possibly. I could call her and see if she's working, see if she needs a ride. I haven't talked to Katie since we broke up, and it feels like some business was left unfinished.
That's the thing about relationships. They end, or at least mine always seem to, but they never really go away. I can never quite come to grips with the fact that somebody I knew so intimately, so well, could just disappear. Are they supposed to leave no trace on my soul? Am I supposed to pretend they didn't matter? But they did matter--for however long we were together, I shared my life with them, they became a part of my day-to-day existence. When somebody enters so fully into your life, something will always remain, the DNA of your life has been irrevocably altered.
Despite that, I don't know now--I didn't know then--what my feelings were for Katie. I liked her, certainly, and maybe I thought that was enough, it could grow into something else in time. Or maybe it was a placeholder relationship, doomed from the start to be nothing more than a divertissement between the acts of my life. I didn't mean it to be that, and I certainly didn't mean to hurt her if she perceived it that way. Maybe that's the only reason I wish to speak to her now, to apologize and move on.
She is now merely a part of the past, another face and name to be never fully forgotten, one more in a string of never-to-bes. Most of my relationships have been like that. I've been married to one woman, intended to marry another, and was absolutely in love with them. Things, of course, didn't work out. But at least they reminded me I'm capable of feeling.
There were others, a woman I loved in some sense though actual coupledom remained elusive, and one I wanted so desperately to love, but which ended only in indifference. The rest were like Katie, high hopes and good starts followed by slow fades.
I linger beside my car for a moment. Traffic flows lazily through the parking lot. Hand-holding couples emerge from the stores of this bland suburban strip mall. Birds flutter and dive before the sunset. I don't call Katie, of course, nor do I wish to. It was only a passing thought, a moment lost in time.
