Closing Doors

By Audrey Yeung

She sits by the window on the train. The seat beside her is empty, and yet he stands on the other side like a guard dog. His hand is on the railing, but he doesn’t really need it for balance. It only makes him seem more normal, less distraught. He does not look away from her. She does not look at him. The drab buildings seem anything but to her, not because they’re not sad, boring, and monochromatically grey, but because they hurt her eyes less than when she meets his. 

He has tried to apologise. Once, after she found out. She barely registered the words I’m sorry before her own thoughts drowned them out. Why? For how long? Did it mean anything? His eyes turned green before he answered. I don’t know. Months. I wish I could lie. The second time, over the phone. She was in bed, pretending that he was under the covers instead of on the lips of someone else. He was drunk beyond anything, and his apology was slurred and half-sincere under her reluctant reprieve. The third, fourth, and fifth times were cut off when she simply walked away. And now, they were on a train. 

He holds a cup of coffee in his other hand. A latte with an extra shot, because it was past eleven in the morning and he knows she would need to stay awake for at least twelve more hours. He extended it to her back at the station and nearly dropped it when she almost took it, changing her mind at the last minute in favour of fixing her hair. He opened his mouth again, presumably to apologise, but she had already gone ahead. 

She wants the coffee, but she refuses to give him the satisfaction, or the hope that she may somehow forgive him. She looks again out the window, attempting to trick her brain into believing phantom caffeine is a thing. She knows he has a small cut somewhere on his cheek because she heard him swear in the bathroom that morning while he was shaving. She knows his breath probably smells like the mint he had right before they boarded the train because it was a habit of his since he was a kid. She knows there is a stain on his shirt that he has never been able to get rid of because she had been an active participant when paint was accidentally spilt, decidedly not on the intended canvas. But she doesn’t know where the cut is, what his breath smells like exactly, or if this is even the shirt with the stain on it. She has not looked at him properly since he admitted to what he had done. Now, she tries to forget every detail that she had once meticulously memorised. She tries to unlearn every crease, dip, and inflection. She places distance between his body and hers by not speaking, barely breathing in his air. She heard every apology and now regards them as empty sentiments.

He knows he has ruined things. He felt the rope between them taut the moment he lay somewhere else, and now he held only frayed ends. The coffee was a peace offering, he supposes. He had hoped that it would show her that he still loves her, that he still knows her, but she hadn’t taken it. She knows things are ruined, too. The train slows to a stop, and she stands. He looks down because he knows she doesn’t want to acknowledge his presence. She takes the coffee from his hand and gets off the train. He looks up, almost in disbelief, watching her step onto the platform. The doors close between his front and her back.

She brings the cup to her lips because she so sorely needs the real thing. A latte. She throws it away. God, she had always hated lattes.

2025 September Edition