The night was cool and dark, the clouds were blocking out the moon. She looked up into the softly falling rain and let it wash the tears from her face. Her grandmother always told her that there was a special rain that would fall from god when you had no more tears left to cry. And that if you stood in it, for a moment, the world would cry in your place.
She felt the cool breeze on her face and realized that the summer was over and fall would come in soon. Fall in Michigan came fast and brought with it cold and bitter nights to contrast the mild sunny days. She wouldn’t miss the fall, she would miss him, but he had been a summer love. He had been only three months of her life, but she would carry him with her forever.
She was walking through a dark parking lot towards his car. The car that had spawned such a terrible fight and was the beginning of their end. Such small things she thought, how could I have fought over such small things. But things seem smaller when the vail is pulled back and you are introduced to the darkness that your innocence knew nothing about. The huge lies and the terrible truths they never play on tv or talk about in school.
She would leave everything behind, her father who betrayed her, her mother who she loved, a slew of friends that don’t matter and him. She hated him, and loved him.
She thought to herself about a moment just hours again when they had said their final goodbyes.
He had told her to go, he had left her in the shitty hotel room, with nothing but money and the keys to his car. He had told her he never loved her, that there was nothing left here for her. She had called him terrible things. A liar, coward, and a monster. But he had only told one lie, that he had not loved her, but she figured this out to late. She held his face in the darkness of the doorway on that cloudy night and told him to tell her that he did not love her and did not want her to stay. And he had said it. He said it with only the slightest shake in his voice, but hadn’t he once told her, that we tell the best lies to the ones we love the most, because they are the only people really worth lieing to. He did a good job, but after he turned and left her, his long coat flipping out behind him, she had kissed her wrist as if to kiss him one last time. And she tasted the salt there, the salt from his tears, that she had thought were rain.
So stuck her finger in the large ring his keys were attached to and gave them a flip. This was a bittersweet action because it was his, she remember how it had annoyed her. How we would constantly flip those keys around his finger, spinning them and catching them, as if just to hear the sound of them tinkle against each other. She looked at the deep black curves of his Charger across the lot. She never decided if she liked that car till now, she decided she loved her, because John had loved her.
"She is like a beautiful and dangerous woman. She’ll purr for you and take you for a ride, but if you ever forget to respect her she’ll turn you into burger", She remembered him telling her.
"You like that car more than you like me, and I don’t know how you paid for it or why it has Nevada plates." She remembered saying to him in that long ago conversation.
"I could never love anything or anyone more than I love you. Nadya, you are my moon, with you the night is beautiful and magical, without you the night is filled with only darkness.
She smiled, he was like that, John. He had a way of saying the most ridiculous things, as if they came straight out of a book, but you never thought he had pulled them from somewhere else, you just knew in his head there was no difference between a story and real life. He was like living with a dream, but the trouble was that there were also nightmares.
She looked at the Chargers beautiful curves and the way the mirror black finish seemed to reflect even the darkness. Nadya had named her Yelena once she had warmed up to her. Yelena wasn’t like a new car that gave you the feeling of a toy or of an object, she felt alive, and she was a good 14 years older than Nadya.
She spun her keys one more time, listening to the chink as they hit her palm and prepared to leave, for him, because he had put so much at risk to give her this chance. It would hurt her to leave John, but she knew that if she stayed, he couldn’t protect both of them and if he came, they would know and follow. Her heart was ready, she had his car and they had kissed, cuddled and made love in her warm leather interior, at least she could carry those sweet memories with her into her new life, with her new name, and the money he had given her to go to college and live and learn to paint with. She took the last step of her old life and the first step of her new life.
The sound was only a whisper of the wind followed by a metallic click, but she knew it after spending the last few weeks around dangerous men. She felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed to the back of her neck and knew it was all for nothing. That the world had spun a little bit more and decided that even them giving up their love and their happiness wasn’t a big enough price.
The voice she heard from behind her was cold with a tinge of crazy in it. She knew the voice and felt the last of her strength run from her body.
"Turn around and get on your knees, I’ll have you stare death in the face when I send you on." The Demon of a Man told her.
She turned around and got down on her knees and looked up into his face, still not believing it in her heart. They had come so far and she couldn’t believe it could end like this.
"Don’t bother looking around for him, I already took care of him. Now they’ll know the truth and I will be twice rewarded for finishing him and his unfinished business." The Demon cackled.
The dark circles under his eyes and the way he had to keep itching his gun arm with his free one told the tale of her death more clearly than his threats had. He started to squeeze the trigger and she heard the thundering bang of doom, and in the end of her life she remembered the beginning of her life, or at least her real life, the one that had mattered and formed her. The one where there were many characters but the two primary ones were herself, Nadya the pretty, and him, John the dark or John the light. He was, the light, at least to her darkness.
