let’s keep it under ten lines of dialogue

“My shirt smells of her perfume.” Simon tells Tim, in reference to what had happened only minutes before. The scent mingles with the threads of his cotton shirt, reminding him of a field of flowers, or something as adequately cliché.  “It’s slightly nauseating but I don’t really mind.”

“Oh god. Not this again.” Tim responds. Not this again indeed, for Tim had witnessed the event many times before. Simon, on the borderline between emotionally unstable and entirely too emotional for his own good, often found himself engaging in elaborate imaginations of romances with those that were too good for him, those that he was too good for, and those who, despite the best of his abilities, he could not resist wanting to take to at the very least, dinner. The girl who had just left, the one who so carelessly gave Simon a final embrace before leaving to parts unknown, whose perfume smelled of a field of lilacs, was in a category of her own. She was, in essence, the one that got away, the one that was never meant to be, the one that broke his heart to tiny enough pieces that he has yet to put it back together. The one that caused him to be the effusive, overtly emotional persona that Tim had grown accustomed to. Tim gestures Simon to return to the green vinyl booth of an all-too-familiar bar.

“What does that say about the situation?” Simon muses. Tim began the process he always does. A swig of whiskey, a breath of air, and a truth masked in an insult.

“It could mean that even though you find her at least somewhat insufferable, very insufferable, even, you still long for her presence, even when you two just said goodbye. Like, not even five minutes ago. It’s either that, or you like wearing women’s perfume.” Just as before, just as he always did. Things had gotten mundane, it seems, for the pair.

“Asshole.” Simon retorts. “This is why I don’t talk to you about these things.” There was nothing more that Simon wanted than to return to a time of perhaps not-empty flirtations between him and the girl, before the times when his overly paranoid self was kicked into an overdrive driven by the desire to not get crushed again. Before her person changed within the span of a stairwell and whatever was between her and Simon was crushed to smithereens, ashes falling ever so lightly from the cigarette of someone smoking a cigarette on the roof of an apartment building. Maybe she had changed, maybe they could return to being perfectly fine with sitting on a worn leather couch watching whatever was on TV. It was too late for that, now. Simon snaps out of his trance with a sip of Chardonnay. He could muse on the subject for hours, left unchecked.

“At least one of those points was valid, though.” Tim shoots back, his wit a revolver and his statements the bullets. There was caring behind the words, hidden amongst the jackassery that psychologists would call a defense mechanism. “Judging by your past and my knowledge of your personality, and the fact that you’re drinking white wine of all things, I can only assume it’s the second.”

“Jackass.”

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