Snippet: Towns, Faces, Voices

So they packed their dirty laundry in garbage bags, threw everyting else in the back seats of their cars, and drove home to their folks’ for the summer, he on his side of the state, she on hers. The next semester, every time he saw her, he told her he blamed her. He demanded the return of his love letters. She missed his letters more than she did him.

They ruined a lot of things for each other. They hated each other’s music. Taste in books. Each other’s majors. Each others’ high school football teams. He tried to gain control of their mutual friends; she judged them by their ability to get jerked around between the two of them. They graduated, and never saw each other again.

Everything burned away, even the facts that he never made her come and she never made up her mind.

Everything except the sound of each other’s voices when one or the other of them would drive into the town where the other was, and that first, uncertain moment when they saw each other after an absence, and the truth would come out. Then they would smile, kiss each other passionately, and feel like a storm had finally passed. That was the only thing either one of them cared to remember.