Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. (Soren Kierkegaard)

James is standing on the threshold of his living room, looking down into his dark garage. Morning light floods in from the windows across the room behind him, silhouetting his figure. 

“Bye, Jemmy,” Lucinda says, standing between her white SUV and James’ car.  Slivers of light are creeping in around the edges of the garage door behind her. 

James steadies his voice. “Bye, L,” he says, adding an awkward little salute and a sad smile. “Take care of yourself.” James’ voice carries only a hint of his native Texas, more of a chesty resonance than a twang. Occasionally people think he’s from the midwest or the mid-Atlantic states.

He scrunches his eyes to prevent a tear from forming, defying physics for the moment. 

“Oh, these are yours,” Lucinda says in a clear tone, with just a touch of sunny California. She removes a house key from her keychain and hands it to James. She pulls a garage door remote from her purse and hands it to him as well. 

“Ah, I almost forgot about those,” replies James. “Now I know for sure you’re not going to sneak into my house in the middle of the night and steal my TV,” he says, trying to lighten the mood.

“I thought about it, but it would be a pain in the ass to get off your wall,” Lucinda says. “I’d probably need your help. It could get awkward.”

James opens the garage door with the remote, flooding the garage fully with bright light and muggy air. The sweeping new spotlight reveals the sadness on his face. Lucinda vocalizes a sympathetic “Awwww.”

The pity from below strikes James as incongruous. Up on the step, he’s towering over this lovely woman who he has joked is half his size by mass. She’s walking out of his life, and he can’t do anything to stop it.

Not long ago, Lucinda had said that she couldn’t live without James. Once, after a shower at his place, she played the song Please Don’t Die by Father John Misty and said that’s how she felt about him. She needed him. And now she’s loading up and driving off like it’s nothing. 

James takes a deep breath.

“Hey, Lucinda,” he says. “I know we talked last night and everything, but I had one more question.”

“Sure, what’s up?” says Lucinda.

“The note. What about the note?” he asks.

She pauses and thinks. “Oh, the Valentine’s note?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“I meant every word,” she replies.

James tries to speak but can’t find the words.

Lucinda jumps in. “Jemmy, you’re a catch. You have an amazing life here in South Austin.” 

Lucinda always came to James’ place, despite the drive, because it was spacious and comfortable, and the neighborhood was more fun than hers way up north. 

“I just need some time to myself,” Lucinda adds.

James’ eyes explore the tattoos peeking out from under Lucinda’s white button-up shirt, tucked into her skinny jeans. Her office badge hangs at the end of a lanyard, nestled between her perky and smallish breasts. It’s such a modest look, perfect for a systems analyst from the suburbs, hiding the naughty pin-up girl underneath.

James liked to tell Lucinda that she looked like Betty Page. Her dark bangs and pale, slightly freckly face are the natural result of being “half Asian, half hillbilly,” as she had once told James. Her hair was straight and shoulder-length with the ends bleached to keep it interesting-looking, as she had once explained to him.

James turns his face away to hide his sadness in the shadows.

“Are you going to be alright?” Lucinda asks.

“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” he manages. “You?”

“Yeah,” she says. He believes her.

While Lucinda resembled a 1950’s pin-up model, James has been told he looks like athletes he had never heard of from far-flung sports he had never seen – an Australian cricket player, a British rugby player, an Irish hurler. These athletes all had salt and pepper hair, short on the sides, a little longer on the top, and some facial scrub, like James. They all had a sweet smile veering on goofy, like James. And they were all middle-aged and fit, like James.

But this morning,  James looks like a mess. Straight out of bed and exhausted, he is wearing trunks and a loose red T-shirt with the word “BOXING!” written across the front in white letters. A pair of light-blue eyeglasses sit precariously on his nose

James usually wore contact lenses, going way back to some advice he received in the sixth grade from the prettiest girl in the class. Just as he felt his most hopelessly shy, gangly, and awkward, this girl had told him at a school function that if he lost the glasses and started working out, he’d be cute. It was a welcome boost for young James, although in his middle-school malaise he had suspected, incorrectly, that she was just messing with him.

Lucinda breaks the silence. “Oh, I forgot something,” she says, slipping past James and up the stairs to the bedroom.

James checks his phone and sees two notifications. The first is a calendar notification that reads, “Morning standup: 9:30 a.m.” That’s in less than an hour. 

The second notification is a reminder of four tickets to the Austin City Limits music festival that he had bought and not told Lucinda about yet. He had recently decided to introduce Lucinda to his two daughters, ages 9 and 12, sensing that perhaps Lucinda was feeling left out of his broader life. The festival was how he had planned to make the introduction. Father John Misty was even playing. It was going to be perfect. 

Fuck. So much for that.

Lucinda returns with her bag of “pretty things”, a tangled mess of lingerie that she had once told James was all quite expensive.

Damn. Not the pretty things.

Months ago, Lucinda had brought the bag of colorful bras, thongs, teddies, and bustiers to James’ place. She had asked him to pick out a few pieces for her to try on and then had him pick one for the night. Every night she stayed with over after that, the pretty things came out, a parade of shiny black, red, purple, and pink. When she had insisted on leaving the lingerie at his place months ago, ostensibly because it was “convenient”, James knew he had a girlfriend.

But not any more. So much for that.

Lucinda returns from upstairs with the bag of pretty things in her left hand, slipping past James in the doorway. When she puts her hand on James’ shoulder for balance, he barely notices her touch. She unceremoniously loads the bag into her car.

“How’s your day looking?” she asks, being friendly.

“It’s a work-from-home Friday, so that’s good,” James replies.

“In other words, all day at the coffee shop for you,” she says.

“Exactly,” he chuckles. “It’s my most productive day of the week. No getting ambushed while I code.”

“Yeah, and all that coffee probably helps too,” she says.

Despite the friendly rapport, James feels like he’s watching a mistake unfold in front of him. It’s like Lucinda is getting on a subway train going in the wrong direction, and the doors are closing behind her. But she can always hop on the next train back to James once she realizes where she’s headed. By this time next week, he and Lucinda could be laughing about “that time you broke up with me for two days.”

In the garage, Lucinda gives James a little wave and says, “Be well.” She climbs into her SUV. 

James nods and waves back. 

Lucinda backs out of the narrow garage one last time, taking with her the friendship, humor, pretty things, and kindness she had shared with James for nearly a year. 

What mileage does a car get with all of that weight in it?

Sure, Lucinda might be back. But James also knows that Lucinda is decisive. Up to this point, it’s been one of his favorite things about her. He might need to rethink that.

Lucinda had been decisive when she picked up and moved her whole family from San Diego to Austin for a job. She had been decisive when she kicked her ex out of the house for being an asshole. She had been decisive when she had stopped talking to her parents for calling her mean names. And right now, she is being decisive with James.

James always admired that Lucinda didn’t take shit from anyone. He just never expected her to turn the sword on him.  

As Lucinda pulls away, James walks towards the open garage door, shielding his face from the late summer morning sun. He watches her car travel down a slight hill away from his condo and then take a right turn, then out of sight, headed towards the main street.

Now alone, James lets out a loud moan that could wake the neighbors. He hunches over ready to vomit. His bones feel like they’re about to jump out of his body and chase after Lucinda without him. 

Don’t move, James instructs himself. Stay right here. Not one step towards Lucinda.

In a certain kind of movie, chasing after the girl and saving the relationship with just the right heartfelt words would make James a hero. But right now, James knows that movie scene would only make him a buffoon, and this would be the start of her movie, not his.

Lost in thought, James sees a white SUV approach from the right. 

Sure enough, it’s Lucinda’s; he can tell immediately from her distinct silhouette. Maybe she didn’t need two days to come back. Maybe it was more like two minutes. 

But Lucinda’s car maintains its speed and continues past James and out of sight to the left. She doesn’t slow down or even glance in James’ direction. The left turn onto the main street bust be “fucked” as Lucinda would say, and she is taking the back route to work, minus coffee from her own favorite place.

Fuck. So much for that. James lets out another moan that turns into a roar like a wounded lion. 

James has to get to work too, but he has one thing to check first. He heads upstairs to his bedroom closet. From a top shelf, safely out of reach of the kids, he pulls down a plastic box of “Lucinda stuff”, right next to the empty spot where the pretty things had been.

The plastic box contains a few items.

1. Some monochrome photo booth pictures of Lucinda and James at bars around town being silly together. They are sticking their tongues out, kissing, doing mock frowns. They look adorable and happy. They were adorable and happy. Fuck.
2. A pair of 3-inch, cherry-red, blocky high heels that James had picked out. They were barely functional as shoes but great for at-home fun. They matched a red bra and panty set that Lucinda had just driven away with. Fuck.
3. A red choker that James had recently bought and was planning to give to Lucinda to complete the ensemble. Damn.

Unfortunately, the “sex goddess” outfit – a black lace-up corset with garters that James had picked out for a trip to New York with Lucinda a few months ago – had escaped out the door in Lucinda’s bag of pretty things this very morning. Fuck.

At the bottom of the box lay a large, fuzzy, hot pink envelope with a white heart on the front and a velcro flap. He opens the envelop and pulls out a note dated February 14, 2018, handwritten with red ink in girly cursive.

He re-reads the note to double-check his own sanity.

➡️ Valens-time