Interlude

"When do you think the world will end?"
         Thunder drowns out my words.  He doesn't even hear me.  He just stands there, his hand in his jacket pocket, eyes on the cars that pass us and the people who were smart enough to bring umbrellas, smoking his cigarette.  The smoke issues out of his mouth and eventually finds its way into my nostrils.  I am reminded of both my grandma and my ex-boyfriend.  Both of them smoked the same cigarettes, Camel Menthol Lights.  But Grandma quit and I dumped Ryan, and the cigarettes were only part of the reason why.
         I couldn't get too annoyed at Paul though.  The last time I had seen him was five years ago, shortly before he left for Iraq, and it wasn't likely that we would meet again (even today was pure chance).  I suppose a slow death by cigarettes was much more appealing for him than being blown up on some miserable desert freeway halfway across the world.
         "What is it?" he asks, looking down at me.  One of my tricks to get boys to like me is to sit around them.  I've always been tall for my age, and in Paul's case, I'm actually taller.  But my sitting around him was just out of habit.  There wasn't any need to impress him anymore.
         "I was just thinking about your cigarettes.  Ryan smoked the same kind," I explain.
         Paul raises an eyebrow and tosses the butt on the ground.  "Ryan?  Was he the soccer player?"
         I shake my head.  "No, the carpenter.  He was kind of a fling.  Dated him after the soccer player screwed me over.  I was never really serious about him."  Meaning the carpenter.  Soccer player...that was still too painful to think about.
         "Rebound guy?"
         The truth hurts.
         I changed the subject.  "What about you?  It's been over three years since I've seen you.  You must've broken quite a few hearts after mine."
         He laughs, and a shiver runs down my back.  Paul's laugh was one of the first things that I had noticed about him, one of the first things that made me fall for him.  And even though he doesn't look exactly the same as he did then (his hair was shorter and the army had given him one hell of a body), his laugh was one thing that hadn't changed.
         "I really gotta give you some credit, Abby.  You never take shit from anyone, and you never give it either," Paul answers.  Pulling out his pack of cigarettes, he slips another one between the lips I still sort of want to kiss and lights up.  "But, you know me.  I love the ladies, they love me, and none of us can stand to be around each other for longer than ten minutes."
         "And I'm sure that's what you tell them when they're undressing for you," I answer cynically.  I'm not really offended.  I accepted a long time ago that some guys are players, simple as that.  Sure Paul hurt me when I found out he was cheating on me, but after it happened again in my other relationships, I submitted to the way of the universe.
         But Paul seems upset by my sarcasm.  "Come on Abby, don't be that way.  I came back to see you for a reason, you know."  The last time he saw me, I wasn't nearly as jaded as I am now.
         "Because I'm the only girl you know in Milwaukee?" I suggest helpfully.  But I'm touched by his words.  Perhaps he does have a heart somewhere beneath those delicious pecs.
         "Don't be so bitter.  It means you get me all to yourself," he smiles.  I should be offended by his teasing, his mockery of my feelings, but damn.  His smile is almost as charming as his laugh.
         I can honestly say Paul isn't that attractive at first glance.  His eyes always make him look like he's squinting, he's starting to go bald at the temples even though he's only in his early twenties, his forehead's too big, and his mouth is shaped wrong.  But he's got charisma, enough to charm the devil himself.  And like I said, his smile and his laugh were priceless.  Add in some good skills in the bedroom, and it isn't so hard to believe that the guy always gets any girl he wants.
         "Well, whether you believe it or not, I do think about you pretty often, Abby," Paul continues.  He sits down next to me on the picnic table.  "To use one of your fancy writer-terms, you were the only sympathetic character I ever met."
         I raise an eyebrow.  I always secretly thought that Paul liked to refer to his girls by their intended careers.  When he talked about them to me, he referred to them as "the nurse," "the teacher," "the singer," and for further distinction, he usually added either race or hair color, "the blond singer" etc.  As far as I know, he's never dated another writer.  That must have made me somewhat of a novelty.
         "Sympathetic character, huh?" I murmur, glancing at him from the corner of my eye.  He's looking at me with a strange expression on his face.  I don't like it one bit.
         "Did I use it wrong?" he asks.  I shake my head.
         "No, it's just weird that you'd describe me like that.  I mean, not to be offensive, but I did get over you.  I was over you the first time I found out you cheated on me," I explain.
         Paul draws his face back, and his expression hardens.  "Oh really?  Then why did you keep coming back to me?"
         I put a hand on his arm.  "Because.  You fucked me over just like any other guy would, but at least you fucked good," I reply with a smile.  That gets his attention.  He turns back to me with shocked eyes, which dissolve into laughter, and end with a menthol-scented kiss on my forehead.
         "I really ruined you, didn't I?" he asks, putting an arm around my shoulders.  "You're going to be cynical about love until the day you die thanks to me.  Seems like my work here is done."
         For a few moments, I forget about the past.  I was fifteen again, and he was sixteen, and we were up in his room.  I used to tell him that even though he wasn't my first, he was the first that I didn't regret.  And even now, sitting in a covered picnic area at a park downtown in the middle of a thunderstorm, many years and countless broken hearts later, I still don't regret anything.  Maybe Paul made me cynical, but at the same time, he had pulled away the blinding veil of innocence and hardened me to the facts of life.  So I couldn't hate him too much.
         "Abby?" Paul asks.
         "Hm?"
         "Don't worry."
         "Worry?  About what?"
         "The world ending.  Don't worry about it.  It's not going to happen for a long, long, time."
         Thunder punctuates his words.