lunge across the living room, over the cat, trail of water dripping behind hair matted down the left side of his face as

"hi. it's me."

he stopped, skidding the last few feet to the corner of the room, and stared.

"we were supposed to talk, i know, but we didn't and you left and i had to go so i thought the best thing to do was to do this. but this doesn't seem right either. and i've played it out in my head so much and i knew what i was going to say and what you were going to say and i even planned out the pauses since i know ... you just said 'um,' right?

"so it was going to be perfect but you're not there and you can't say anything anyway but i just wanted to tell you ... i've been carrying this around with me for a while now and i know you were supposed to know, be the first really, but i couldn't bring myself to do it and i walked home the other night thinking about you and i couldn't remember what you looked like and i guess that's really when it hit me.

"bye."