Sorbet
an excerpt

1
I’ve got used to getting up this early now. I used to sleep in till at least 1, but if I did that I’d miss busses. It used to be a struggle, but now I wake up before the alarm. In summer the skies still grey and in winter it’s still dark. The air feels crisp and fresh. The roads are deserted, they belong to early commuters and, unfortunately for me, the first of the X14’s.

So, wake up, cigarette, clothes, fruit juice. And then the walk to the bus stop. It’s the one she always got off at, so when she comes back it’ll be the one she comes back to. The bus stops set a little way from the road and sometimes the bus drivers don’t see it and just drive right past, even if there’s people waiting. If she was coming back she’d ring the bell and it’d stop. I know, the same way I know my name, that she’ll come back. Kira never broke a promise and so she’s unlikely to start now. She promised, as she was leaving that she’d come back and what reason to I have to doubt her?

The X14’s aren’t that regular so I have time for other things, but she might come back on a different one. Who knows where she is? So I have time for other things, but what else is their worth doing? Still, I tend to go home at 10, or at least when the last X14 drives past.

Sometimes I bring a book to read as I wait. I’ve read through the entire box of books that she forgot to take with her. It distracts me though, reading. It makes me feel anxious. What if I’m reading and she gets off and I don’t notice because I’m too stuck in some dull Stephan King? Most of the time, I just lean and wait. I know she’s coming though, because she promised.

The people who get on and off at the stop give me odd looks sometimes. They’ll get on to go and do whatever it is they do and then they’ll get off in the evening and I’ll still be there. I hope I add some interest to their lives. There’s no law against standing at a bus stop. There is a law now against smoking in the shelter now, which is annoying. If it rains I bring an umbrella. I’m not hurting anyone, I’m not doing anything wrong.

When I get home, I tend to read for a while, then make a sandwich or something. I don’t seem to have any appetite anymore. I suppose it followed her. I sleep early now because I have to get up early now. This means no more 3am’s, no more waking up when it’s already dark in winter and going to sleep just as the sun rises.

I think because the patterns of my life have changed so much I must be an entirely different person. I’m never in the same situations that I used to be, so I don’t act in the same way. I don’t see people anymore, don’t talk to them, so I have no frame of reference on which to base my indeinty. That means that as person I don’t exist any more. Kira took everything else she wanted anyway with her and I can say, because of this: look, she took me too.