A/N: I apologize for this. I'm in kind of a downer mood lately.
"We are always getting ready to live but never living." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We're not really living, are we, Brad?"
The question, spoken almost too quietly to hear over the movie they've been watching for the last hour and a half, hangs in the air between them. They're just sitting side by side, arms barely touching, but Brad still feels Melanie pull away from him a little as she asks it. He glances over at her, but her eyes are fixed in the direction of the TV screen. It's hard to tell if she's actually watching the movie or just using it as an excuse to look anywhere but at him.
"Where did this come from?" he responds, keeping his voice even.
She shrugs, still staring at/past the TV. "Where didn't it come from?"
For a long time, neither of them speaks. The silence drowns out the sound of the television. He struggles to think of something to say, but he's coming up short. Maybe there isn't anything. He thinks about taking her hand, something, anything to reassure her. As if she's reading his mind, she folds her hands, placing them neatly in her lap.
"I didn't want this," she says finally. Her voice is small, faraway. They always say they don't love each other, but in that moment Brad feels a twist, an ache deep in his chest, and he wonders how true that is.
"What does that mean, Mel?" he asks, running a hand through his hair in frustration.
"What's my favorite color?" she asks in response.
"Brown." The word slips out of his mouth before he can stop it and he curses mentally. Right now, he hates himself.
Melanie doesn't bother to reply.
The movie ends, credits rolling up the screen with some cheesy song playing in the background. Brad thinks he remembers it being a popular song when he was in high school, but that was a while ago. When it ends, it leaves them with a dark television and true silence.
"I should go."
She pushes herself up off the couch, but doesn't move other than that, glancing around the small living room. It's impeccably clean - they've always kept it that way. No one would be able to tell a young couple lived here. If you would even call them a couple.
If you could even call them living.
"You live here, Melanie."
Finally, she looks at him. She's got just the faintest hint of a broken smile on her lips, and she's twisting her hands back and forth, fingers interlaced. He wants to shout at her, look, you're twisting your hands, you always do that when you're uncomfortable, I know that, and I know about the birthmark on your thigh and that you wear nail polish because you chew your nails otherwise and that your favorite color is red, dammit, it's red and I knew that.
But he doesn't say anything. He just stares dumbly, because this has been coming for years and if they weren't both so fucked-up they would have ended this a long time ago.
"No, I don't."
He can't remember a time when her toothbrush wasn't next to his in the cup in their bathroom. The comforter on their bed is the one she picked out - a red and grey and white patchwork thing with flowers that he fought her on, said was too girly, but is warm and cozy and the flowers aren't so bad now. There's a list on the fridge of who has what chores for the month because they both hate doing the dishes and for the two weeks before they started making lists no one did them and they were eating off paper plates for a while. Half the DVD collection in the cabinet under the TV is her chick flicks that he always protests against watching but secretly doesn't mind.
That's not what she means when she says she doesn't live there, though.
She draws her hand back when he reaches up to grab it, shakes her head almost imperceptibly.
"Melanie."
"Don't." She takes a few steps back, toward the door. Without looking away, she reaches up and grabs a set of keys off of a hook, slides her feet into a pair of slippers, picks up her purse off the little shoe rack.
"Where are-" The words catch in his throat, almost choking him. He tries to cough them out.
"Kathy's, maybe. Or a hotel." Her hand's on the doorknob and she's pulling it open and oh God, say something.
"What about a jacket?"
"It's warm out," she responds. And then she's gone, and the door clicks shut, and that's it.
It takes him a week to cry.