Travelers

The last time I saw her was on launch day. The wind blew bitterly cold, but the sun still shone brightly in the winter sky. She carried only one suitcase, as if the whole of her life were not important enough to take with her. As if I weren't important enough. There. I admitted it.

We started off so promisingly, or at least it seemed so to me. We met in that little bar down in the Village, a quaint little holdover from the vast building boom of New York's early 21st century. She looked at me coyly as I made my way up to the bar, and I bought her a drink - a vodka martini, two olives. Her lips and tongue played with the olives as if she were kissing them full throttle, her eyes darting to me every few seconds to see my reaction. I turned away slightly so she couldn't see how excited I was getting, but it didn't seem to make a difference. A few drinks later, I took her home, and we writhed like hermaphroditic worms until the sun came up. She was even more beautiful in the light, deep-set brown eyes and arched brows, her features fine but not delicate against the softness of the pillow.

We were together two years. Or maybe I should say, we were a couple for 1 1/2 years and barely connected individuals the last six months. Something changed. She became restless, distant. We stopped going out. She quit her job, got another, quit that one too. We yelled, we screamed, but we stopped communicating. Then she dropped the bombshell. There was a freighter leaving for Mars in a month, and she had already booked passage on it. No "should I go?" No "want to come with me?" It was the same gypsy blood I had never questioned when it had brought her to me. She needed to move on now. Move away from me.

I rode to the spaceport on launch day to catch one last glimpse of her, or maybe, if I was being honest with myself, to try one last time to convince her to stay. It didn't matter - the passengers were boarding so far away from the gate that she couldn't hear me over the crowd scream "I still love you!" to her. But I swear I saw her head turn just a bit, the little impish smile playing once again across her lips. It didn't matter if it were real; it was a fine snapshot to remember her by.