Ending Things - Darcy Vebber

“There is a moment when you are awake,” Sam explained to her, “And then, in an instant, all over your brain parts shutdown like shops turning out the lights and you are asleep. You can see it, exactly, on a brain wave monitor.”

They were lying next to each other in her bed, she on her back, looking up at the ceiling, he on his side, propped up on one elbow.

“So you like the class?” she asked. What did she hear, she wondered, in this perfectly normal conversation that made her feel sad? Wasn’t this the kind of conversation they always had? I learned this, I just found out that. Delighted, they tossed bits of knowledge back and forth. Because they counted on each other to respond in the exact right way. So cool. So interesting. Sam’s neurology class was doing sleep and sleep disorders.

He frowned.. “Yeah. I mean some of it is more like learning physics than medicine but there’s some great stuff, too.”

She nodded. By turning her head slightly, she saw his chest, the skin gold colored in the light of her bedside lamp, the ribs and breast bone visible, the small circles of hair around his nipples. The sheet was up over his hipbones but she knew all the landmarks of his body. She shook her head.

“What?”

“Sleep,” she said after a moment. She closed her eyes, thinking about a water fall, the moment when forward motion becomes downward. What she wanted was the release of the freefall. She kept her mouth and her eyes closed. One word would be too many.

“I should go then.” He dressed mostly sitting on the side of the bed. She heard pants, socks, shoes. The bed rocked a little and creaked. He put on his t-shirt last, standing now and coming around to her.

She pretended to be asleep, the way she had pretended as a kid in the car to get her parents to carry her inside. His lips on her forehead were cool. He waited a moment then switched off the lamp.

She listened, but he didn’t say anything, just made his way out of the apartment in the dark.