2nd one

was getting ready for work that morning when I accidentally stepped on something, like a stick. I picked it up and it was a strawberry flavored lip gloss. It was Nicole’s. She had complained that she lost it weeks ago and had gone through her handbag a few times to search for it. She didn’t even look at the floor. And here it was, on the floor just near the bedpost when I stepped on it. I smiled to myself, briefly, at the thought of her saying, “Oh, there it is, and you stepped on it, Jimmy!”. At the thought of her, like how the thoughts of her had made me these few days, I bit my lip. For a few moments I stood silent looking down to the lip gloss in my hand.

Nicole was stationed at the South for two months, and she had been here last to say goodbye. I knew I would miss her, but she told me she would come and visit every two weeks. She left her house key to me, told me to not forget to feed her goldfish. I did as she asked me to, every day since the day she left. It had been three weeks to be exact, and the only visit she gave me was a few days ago; a visit with a news.

I put the lip gloss down to the dressing table, just next to Nicole’s perfume bottle. She had left the perfume bottle there intentionally, said she didn’t like to carry it back and forth from her house to mine. And then I went down to the kitchen to have my breakfast. As I was walking down the stairs, I thought about the milk that had started to taste funny since her visit a few days ago. In the kitchen, everything else had started to taste funny; the bread, the peanut butter, the milk.

“No wonder they tasted funny, Jimmy, you didn’t even check the expiration date, did you?” Nicole would say, and she would laugh and check the expiration date for each food for me, one by one. She would come the next day with breads, jars of peanut butter, a dozen cartons of milk for my kitchen. “There you go!” she would say with such satisfaction on her face. She was always concerned at things like that. Other than that, she was usually quiet. She never complained even if there was something bothering her. She kept things to herself. Things like if I didn’t return her calls or if I forgot her birthdays.