Lingering taste

It had been over a year since I had seen you last, but I knew at the moment that I saw your face again, that I wouldn't be seeing it again after this.

I sat in the passenger seat of your car, but the distance between you and I was oh so much greater.

The coldness of the lack of words could have turned our lips to ice, and it was clear that the water hadn't yet passed under the metaphoric bridge.  

You had started to drive and I had wished that I hadn't stepped into your car at all.

But I had.

It was my choice.

I needed to know that although I felt it was the last time, that I had to make sure that it was.  I don't know why I was doubting myself.  Maybe it was because of that water that hadn't quite passed beneath that bridge.  But whatever it was, it made me step into your car.

Your words drove over the past, raking it up, just like we had raked over so many times before.  Your voice was breaking, I refused to look at you, refused to acknowledge the pain in your eyes.  You kept it in, just in the way that you always had tried to when we had first met.  I remembered the first time that you had allowed the tears to fall, that you had given in to those feelings, those emotions, those tears for me.  But, that ability to keep it all in, was something that had never truly left you.  A pretence of a strength that you felt you had to show, as if showing the emotion, the feeling, the truth was a sign of an inner weakness that we know wasn't there.

You had stopped in the layby only just out of sight.  There had been times when we hadn't even worried about that, stopping where or when we had needed or when the desire had become too much.  And we began to make a journey mixed with longing and lust but most certainly nostalgia.

Your hands made their way to touch me.  I leant back, closed my eyes, lost to the moment that hadn't been felt for so very long.  You asked to taste me.  To taste me before we parted ways, and in silence as I watched the lines of headlights pass by the car casting shadows over your face that I knew every inch of, I knew for sure that it was the last time. 

You drove me home then.

And as I walked up the pathway and stood at the front door, I watched you touch your lips with your fingers, and knew that you had discovered the lingering taste of a final goodbye.