leaving

            There was something about the fabric of the denim against his arm that kept distracting her from the words resting on his lips and falling all over the table. The heavy stitching back and forth back and forth like the shirt could last forever and then behind it his arm looked thin and pale and fine hair all fell in one direction. Thin arms, nice features, nice guys always finish first. He kept talking, having the conversation with himself, she would nod every now and then to let him know she was there somewhat but really, who cares. He was leaving, going nowhere, just not here, just not her. She thought about the first time they had sex in a motel off the five. A hotel has hallways a motel just has rooms. He threw her down across the bed without bothering to remove the comforter, which everyone knows, is the only thing they don’t wash. She kept thinking of how gross the whole thing was as her bare ass rubbed against the faded floral print. Cheap. He kept biting on her ear and she kept looking over his shoulder at a long crack in the wall that seemed to split the whole room in half, like at any moment the floor would open up and swallow them whole. Then it was over and he lay panting next to her one of those thin arms draped across her waist. Her underwear around her ankles felt like shackles and when she came back from the bathroom after cleaning herself up, he had fallen asleep. So all of this was no great derailment in the grand scheme of her life, but why was it that the nice guys were always leaving. The bad guys hung around like habits for years some of them bewitching even from across the country, restraining orders to keep them away, but the nice ones with thin arms and kind eyes and that fuck you nicely in hotel rooms, they leave. I should raise my standards, she thought to herself. He had paused in his speech, was she supposed to speak. She just looked down into her coffee, acting hurt, and acting like there were no words. The coffee was cold and stale and had probably been left over night. The diner was somewhere between two different nowhere off the frontage road in Hemit near a biker bar. She worked down the street at the liqour store. She was on her break. He was paying for the coffee and putting his hand on her shoulder before she knew it and just like that he was gone, thin arms, and denim shirt, and a nice walk that said maybe you’re missing something, but she knew chances are she wasn’t. She sat there for the rest of her break, which was only thirty minuets, which meant he had only spoken for ten. It was that easy then, less than ten minutes to leave someone. She wished she could remember what he said.