who they were.”
She sat still, she couldn’t blink, she stared at him, it was just as she was afraid it would be. And all these years she begged him to stop, but nothing changed. She couldn’t take it all anymore. She put out her right hand, not knowing exactly what she’d do if she held his hand. He put his left hand in hers. “You know,” she said, then paused for a drag of the red fire, “This state would consider what you did to me years ago stalking.” She held his hand tighter, holding his fingers together. She could feel her lungs moving her up and down. He didn’t even hear her; he was fixated on looking at his hand in hers, until she caught his eyes with her own and then they stared, past the iris, the pupil, until they burned holes into each other’s heads with their stare.
“And you know,” she said, as she lifted her cigarette, “I do too.”
Then she quickly moved the cigarette toward their hands together, and put it out in the top of his hand.
He screamed. Grabbed his hand. Bent over. Pressed harder. Swore. Yelled.
She stood. Her voice suddenly changed. “Now, I’m going to say this once, and I won’t say it again. I want you off my property. I want you out of my life. I swear to God, if you come within fifty feet of me or anything related to me or anything that belongs to me, I’ll get a court order, I’ll get a gun, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you away forever. Now go.”
He held his left hand with his right, the fingers on his right hand purple from the pressure he was using on the open sore. He moaned while she spoke. She stood at the top of the stairs looking down on him. He slowly walked away.
She thought for a moment she had truly taken her life back. She looked down. Clenched in the fist in her left hand was the cigarette she just put out.