She drew nonsense in the sand with that stumpy stick they’d come across just before they’d sat down. Good thing, too. Now her hands were doing something instead of sitting awkwardly in her lap or else playing with an article of her clothing-you know, like the hem of her sweater or the loose thread on her shorts. It also gave her something else to focus on apart from his sad little face.

She felt him watching her. Felt those eyes that were sometimes blue, sometimes green-but always with a hint of gold-studying her, feeling her out. Wondering at what she might say. Scared, probably, of all the things she could say.

Finally, she decided to have mercy on him. She looked up. She smiled a dazzling, radiant smile that had won her a thousand compliments from countless men.

“What?” she piqued facetiously.

He smiled back. But his was forced, pathetic.

“What?” he repeated in a tone mimicking her own. How sad.

She sighed; she wanted to be first one to drop all this pretense. Regain a little bit of control that way. Besides, they weren’t friends now. They weren’t anything. They might as well have been strangers, for all they were to each other now.

“What am I supposed to say?” she asked softly, letting her voice crack just slightly. Just enough to make him start to feel like shit.

His eyes were blank or sad. Hard to tell. He looked at her with something like pity or longing, even though those two emotions were no where near similar.

“I don’t know,” he said.

A favorite phrase of his. No, he never knew, did he? Was he never sure of anything? No, not him. Not Mr. Go-With-The-Flow. Because if you knew things, then that means you’d be forced to make decisions and who on earth wanted that?

She shrugged, not wanting to say all the biting, hateful things that rested just on the tip of her tongue, ready to pounce, ready to cut to the heart of him.

But she was a nice girl. Nice girls don’t do that.

She kept drawing little pictures. Squiggles and circles and blobs that had nothing to do with each other, that had no purpose.

Just like them.

He said her name, suddenly.

She looked up at once. He said her name like a plea, like a fucking prayer. What the hell was he pleading to her for? What the fuck did he need to pray about? Wasn’t he breaking up with her? Shouldn’t she be the one pleading and praying and saying his name as if it were the only thing that would save her, save them both?