Cliche

CLICHÉ
by
Angelique Jurd

Shouldn’t it be raining?  Isn’t that the general clichéd setting for this scene?  It’s supposed to be raining and I’m supposed stand here and watch him walk away in the rain – and nobody will be able to tell the tears from the rain on my cheeks. 
I’ll tell you what – if Richard Gere shows up in a grey suit clutching roses and an umbrella, or if Frank Sinatra starts crooning, I’ll start crying.  Deal?
He’s almost out of sight.  A few more steps and he’ll be gone.  No more candlelit dinners.  No more walks in the park.  No more frantic groping and tearing of lace in the race to the orgasmic finish line.  He will return to his Investment Portfolio, his BMW, his dog and his elegant, cultured girlfriends. I will go back to my bookstore, my VW Beetle, my cats and my favourite good-quality-plastic-designed-for-the-ultimate-pleasure vibrator.  And all will have returned to normal.
I don’t even know why I’m still standing here. It’s not like I’m naïve. It’s not like I expected anything life changing.  It’s not like I thought I would win Prince Charming and be miraculously transformed into a Princess.  After all, Richard and Julia already did that scene.  Or something like it.
Okay, maybe I let myself fantasise.  Just a little bit though.  Not enough to ever lose sight of reality. I remember walking in the street with him, looking for a café to have breakfast.  The summer sun hot on my uncovered head and the reassuring heaviness of his arm draped over my shoulders.  The taste of his orgasm still on my tongue.  We turned a corner and were caught in the horizontal deluge of an open fire hydrant.  He pulled me screaming and giggling into the icy water; laughing at my dripping hair and hard nipples.  Later at his apartment, wrapped in a towel and dozing against him as he brushed my hair and murmured in my ear.  Murmurs that were gentle and warm and that I didn’t believe.  Not really.
Is he gone?  Yes, no wait – there’s the azure of his silk shirt.  No conventional white for him.  No, he likes vibrant colours.  Colours that introduce him and hold him above the crowd.  Colors that match both his ego and his charm.  All of them hiding his fear and his doubts.  Oh oh – I’m analysing him.  Must be the lack of rain, trade one cliché for another. Danger Will Robinson, danger Will Robinson.  He always laughed when I said that, waving my arms around like I’d short circuited.
He’s gone.
I can hear my girlfriends and sister now.  “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”  “There are plenty more fish in the sea.”  “You can do better than him.”  “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
Oh look it’s raining.