Between the Moments

Between the Moments

Patience was a virtue Jade prided herself in but hated. Few people enjoy waiting. She knew she had no choice but to wait; leaving was not an option. Patience made her bones ache, her head pound, her feet tap, and her fingers tingle. She was waiting for an answer.

It was a cool summer night, and the window was open. Tiny bugs were crawling through the screen to fly around the monitor and bounce off. They were small and green, with thin and fragile stained glass wings. Jade irritably swiped at them, but their smeared guts made it hard to read the words on the screen. She had been sitting in the old broken chair for hours, waiting for a response. She read and reread his words through the bugs, hoping to find a trace of an answer in them. The clock announced it had been twenty minutes since his last response.

“Damn it, Andrew, say something!” She pounded in another line and hit enter, saying nothing. He responded after a moment, saying nothing back. That was what it usually came to, saying a lot of words that meant nothing and everything to her all at once. She would enter in a dozen lines and he’d leave a line in response, something noncommittal. It was the same song they had danced to for years, a song that repeated itself over and over. Sometimes it was beautiful, sometimes it was mournful, and sometimes it simply droned on saying nothing but was inescapable. The music of their relationship made Jade want to fall asleep but stay awake in case a note of beauty and hope was set free. She was tired of watching him dance, of listening to his music. She was tired of reading and writing nothing to him.

“I still love you,” she entered. There was silence. “But I’ll be patient.” Between the moments she heard him shift in his seat and put down his drink, miles away from where she sat. She knew what he would be wearing, what he was drinking, what his lips would taste like if she kissed them. She knew he had just moved back from the computer and looked away from her words. She could feel his discomfort, she could feel the undeniable frustration he must be feeling. She wished he could understand, would be willing to understand.

More bugs crawled in through the window and hugged to the light of the screen. They flew close and bounced away. Burned, but remembering the warmth, they flew in and bumped against the glass again.

The screensaver came on and she rubbed her eyes. Finally, after nearly all the bugs had crawled back outside, Jade got up from her old broken chair in the darkness. She stumbled away to her room, her legs having gone numb hours ago from waiting. As she dreamed of things unfulfilled, the screen lit back up with his answer, their answer.

“It’s okay. You’re just saying things that I’m too afraid to say myself.”

The bugs woke up with the flare of the screen and crawled back through the window, clinging to the light and bouncing away again.