He sat despondently on the curb, waiting for the familiar sound of a passing car.

In his mind,
he went over what he would say to her. I was stupid, he would say, I didn’t mean any of what I said
because I love you. He imagined the hurt look on her face when he was drunk and raging at her and
he imagined how she would look when she saw him come back. She would smile a smile which
would remind him of the rising sun on a crisp, clear morning and she would kiss him so hard his lips
would bleed. Wrapped up in her comforting smell, he would sleep and everything would be safe.

But for now, he had to wait. He consoled himself by flicking away a pebble which bounced
across the road. A pedestrian walking behind him stared. He ignored the gaze and continued his
thoughts. He felt like he would be making a new start, a fresh beginning which would bring about a
change, a metamorphosis inside me, turning me into a person who didn’t go into rages whenever
things didn’t go as planned or when he simply found life too unbearable. He could change, he could
always change.

He waited impatiently. He kicked more stones which brought the attention of more
passersby and he went over the scenario of his soulful apology. He was so deep in thought that he
missed the arrival of a gentleman in a fine black tuxedo. The man wore a faint smile and his suit
shimmered under the sun. The man daintily took off his top hat and coughed politely and he turned,
mind still on her smiling form, to face the stranger. Not you again, he said, I told you I’m not going.
The man’s smile vanished and he took out a pocket watch out from the depths of his suit. You must
understand your situation, he rasped and was gone.

He saw the car in the distance and clambered to his feet. He tried to flag the vehicle down,
but it simply sped by, blowing smoke into his face. He looked at the diminishing form of the car in
the distance and felt like he was lost. He felt like he was sinking in the depths of the ocean while the
people swimming on the surface continued their daily life, unaware of how much help he needed.
He sat down. He threw a stone. It clattered in front of a power walker on the other side of the street.
He glanced at the path on the other side of the road, but saw no one. He kept walking.

There were no bus or tram routes that went through here so he waited; waited for a car that
would ignore him, unaware of how much help he needed to get home; to home, where she was
sobbing over the death of her beloved fiancé. Maybe I should get a suit, he thought, and threw more
stones.