Cabernet

Her nails are painted a deep cabernet shade, and as she traces the label on her water bottle with two fingers they glitter like little wine glasses under the café lights. Hunter sees the wine color and wants to reach out and taste it, but she’s not looking at him. She’s looking out the pale foggy window, at the rain licking at the glass window with hot muggy breath, and the people walking by, heads down.
They’ve found themselves in this niche again. It happens from time to time. It has been increasing at a rate too frequent to ignore. That tight little spot they sometimes slip into, and when they do it takes forever to build their way back up — this crevice of silence and uncertainty. There’s so much to say. Nothing is said at all. And every time they try, the words get stuck in their throat like gum in the drain, and it feels uncomfortable and clogged but they keep it there anyways.
This is the way Hunter feels as he stares at her, daring her to just flicker her gaze at him just once, but she doesn’t. The water bottle tilts in her idle hands. Inside his mind, he rehearses all the words glued to his held breath, pronouncing each syllable, practicing each sound. But they don’t emerge. The blankness of his silence is reflected on his face. As she sits there, less than a foot from him, her heather gray eyes focuses intently on the sparkling puddles outside. Hunter feels like he needs a map to find his way back to her.

