Short Story

That’s it. Its over. It must be.
She thought, wiping her brow with the back of her cold hand. The train was steaming. Outside a wet slush lay on the tracks, not quite winter, not still fall.
She had kissed him better than before. A dart of passion and longing that only leaving can achieve. She had never liked kissing him. His thin winter lips, red and chapped, bore the mark of his otherwise well hidden anxiety. He tucked his bottom lip behind the two white plastered teeth he lost during hockey years before. These small indents left on his lip reminded her of a rabbit, quite fitting- as he identified the communist flats where he lived as rabbit cages, or králíkárna.
Now her hands were too warm and she mopped them on her tweed trousers, careful to hide the chipping polish she would have to redo before school in the morning. Few towns traced the way back to the village where she taught. Most of the journey was a wash of dark fields, which during the short light of November revealed only a gray grass with the occasional illumination of lingering yellow leaves.
She didn’t know if it was the train or nerves that shook her hands, she chose the former and refused to look down when the train made its first stop at the few and sparkling lights in Vysočany.
She managed a few haggard breaths, and thought of his- always milky.
They had said goodbye halfway into the train, somehow she had made it on board with the whistle. If she had been alone she knew she would never have made it. They pulled apart; but before “čao” could pass her lips her gut turned and she considered, this might be it; it must.
So again she pressed her mouth to his. And now watching the lights become less and less frequent she realized that he had been thinking, go get on the train. His kiss empty, confident he would see her again.