If this were my last breath, I would use it to say I love you. But it’s not my last breath. So I blow it out. 

“I just don’t think this is going to work,” Kiera says. She’s bent over a cardboard box, attempting to arrange her pristine book collection to absolute perfection. I want to tell her there’s no such thing as perfect, but she’s had enough of my opinions. They’re probably at the top of her list of reasons for breaking up with me. 

“Why don’t you try another box?” 

“I can’t. I won’t be able to fit anything else in my car.” She carefully wedges a paperback that looks like it was purchased yesterday—even though she has read it three times over—in between a novel as large as a bible and a fancy hardcover with gold-edged pages, the telltale sign of a collector’s edition. It fits, almost perfectly, and I start to applaud. Then she sighs and pulls it back out.

My hands hang awkwardly in the air mid-clap, fingers curling inward in an attempt to conceal the action. As if I could snatch it back from time if I clenched my knuckles tight enough. “What was wrong with that spot?”

“It doesn’t fit. If I leave it there, the corners on the Dickens will shift when I’m carrying it and it’ll get scratched. It’s just too risky.”

A Tale of Two Cities is the aforementioned special edition with horrifically dangerous edges.

“I’ll get another box,” I say.

She bats a thin arm in my direction. It makes the fabric of her worn blue cardigan flop in the air. A loose thread hangs from a hole in the elbow where she accidentally got it caught on the door jam at Mega Bean Coffee one afternoon. It was kind of cute the way she pushed the door open with her back, looking up at me with eyes that told as many stories as the tales that fell from her chapped lips. She was rambling about the differences between the show True Blood and the books that inspired them, enlightening me about which one tackled issues of racial prejudice better. She didn’t even notice the snag until it pulled her to a jarring halt. 

“No, it’s fine,” she says. “I’ll move Dickens to another box. I can wrap it up and put it with my shirts.” 

“Suit yourself.” 

Her small hands, constantly peeling from the dry desert air, slide over unbroken spines as she re-arranges the books for what must be the tenth time. I go back to my side of the room and look at my DVDs. They’re scattered on the floor in shiny silver heaps where I dumped them haphazardly out of the entertainment unit. Half of them are scratched, unlike Kiera’s books, and it matters a lot more with a DVD. You can still read a book with a scratched cover, but a damaged DVD is worthless. One scratch or smudge and the movie jumps and pauses at odd places until the story doesn’t make sense anymore. For a brief moment, I ponder the usage of the wrecked DVDs as a metaphor for our relationship, something I never would have done before I knew her. The thought makes me smile, though it isn’t funny. 

I should probably just throw them away. She’s told me a thousand times that I should. Maybe in spite of her, or maybe just because I’ve had them forever, I snap them back into their plastic cases and shovel them into my suitcase. What’s one more damaged fragment to take away from this wreck?

Just as I’m tugging up the zipper of the ratty old suitcase, my eye snags on the image of Anna Paquin with a single bloody tear dripping down her pretty cheekbone pictured on one of the cases at the top of a stack. 

“Where did you put my shirts?” 

“Hmmm?” I turn to face her, noticing the way her wavy black hair threatens to slip from where it rests behind her ears. I used to kiss those unattached earlobes in darkened rooms where our bodies temporarily fell into rhythmic harmony. I avert my eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve seen that box.”

“Yes, you have. You duct-taped it this morning.”

“Oh, ummm . . . ” I scratch the back of my head. “Try the kitchen I guess.”

I don’t miss it when she rolls her eyes or when she stalks to the kitchen, murmuring to herself about men and their lack of decent brains.

“I don’t see it,” she calls, voice getting tighter with annoyance.

That’s because you don’t see anything. 

“Let me see,” I say.  

The sight of the kitchen catches me off guard. Never have I ever seen Kiera near this much of a mess without having a panic attack. Boxes litter every square inch of the white tile floor along with so much bubble wrap I could take a bath in it. I point at a box. “It’s right there, underneath your pillows.” 

“No, those are my pants.”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does! The buttons on the pants could leave an impression on the leather.” She waves the book around for emphasis. 

“Don’t some of your shirts have buttons too?”

She blinks twice in rapid succession the way she always does when she’s trying to be patient with me. It’s always reminded me of the way someone might double-tap on an iPad screen. Blink. Blink. “Yes,” she says, “But those are smaller. And I can wrap it in a T-shirt. No buttons on T-shirts. Nothing will be able to touch it.” 

Sometimes, I think that her life is wrapped in a T-shirt with those books. It might as well be. 

It’s while she’s wrapping the soft cotton around the polished leather book that a flash of green grabs my attention. 

“What’s that?” I ask, pointing at the little green triangle jutting out from between the pages. 

“What’s what?” She rotates the book in her hands to get a better look. The thin pages fan out in the air just enough that the green object slips from between them. It lands on the floor. 

I pick it up. It’s not much. Just a sheet of colored copy paper folded hamburger style to make a card. Clumsy letters written in red marker across the front read, “Merry Christmas!” And suddenly, the slip of paper feels a lot heavier in my hand. I remember it. 

I remember the book. This book. A Tale of Two Cities. I gave it to her on our first Christmas together. We were sitting on the hardwood floor practically under the Christmas tree. The little green thistles of one of the branches parted the curtain of her hair just above her shoulder like a rock ledge might part the smooth stream of a waterfall. It should have made her look disheveled. But in those quiet moments when we spoke in hushed tones with words that our gentle voices deprived of their sharp edges, it only added to the air of tranquility. I don’t think either of us truly listened to the harmless talk about our jobs and classes. It wasn’t the words that mattered but the comfort that came with speaking them to someone else. 

When she carefully folded back the cheap holiday paper, her face opened like a book. She flipped through the pages, admiring the elegant swirls etched under each of the chapter titles. Her fingers stopped at a page in the middle of the book, tracing the words down the neat column until she found what she was looking for. “I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul,” she said, reading aloud. Her shining blue eyes met mine, brimming with a question she wouldn’t let herself voice. I nodded as if that quote was the reason I had bought the book. As if that was the exact meaning I’d intended for her to extract. In reality, it had popped up as an advertisement on my computer while I’d been gaming, and it looked really cool, so I’d taken a chance. 

If only I had quoted it like that. If only I were Sydney Carton. 

Kiera stares at the card with wide eyes—eyes that still hold the hint of a question. “I guess you might want that back.” 

I thrust it forward. “Keep it.” 

I can tell she wants it, even if she doesn’t want me. She’s big on keeping records. One of these boxes is full of the old crap she used to keep in the bottom drawer of her nightstand: ticket stubs, paper wristbands, even napkins from particularly good dates. Everything holds a memory. She loves memories, with their tendency to turn little moments of everyday life into enchanting fictions. She’s stuck in them. Good and bad alike. It’s not so much that she keeps reliving the past but re-feeling it. Over and over again. Every time she looks at something as small as a cheesy, obligatory Christmas card—one that isn’t even signed with a “Love, Christian.” Those emotions won’t ever go away. So, in a way, we won’t ever end. We’ll stay whole and unbroken in her memories.

I don’t know if that comforts me or makes me more uneasy. 

We stand there, neither of us willing to break the silence. Then her fingers close around the card, and it’s out of my hands. I wait for the tension to release. It doesn’t. She chews on her bottom lip as she studies the thin green paper with meticulous concentration.

“I just . . . I don’t know how to explain it,” she says. “It’s just not there. You get that, right?”

Oxygen gushes from my lungs as if my diaphragm is a balloon that someone has poked a hole in. It makes a sound like an exhale. She means it’s not like it is in the stories with the insanely hot prince who understands every fiber of her being. I’m not perfect. I’m human. I play video games during dinner while I’m supposed to be paying attention to her. I forget about dates and eat cheesy fries way too close to her immaculate books. I don’t spontaneously buy her flowers, and I can’t for the life of me remember which one is her favorite no matter how many times she tells me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t—

“I know,” I say. 

Her teeth release her lip from the vise grip. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She smiles that quirky little smile, the one that almost makes me believe in perfection. My heart slows down. For a second, I think it’s going to stop. But then it doesn’t. She looks away, frowning down at the book. 

We go on packing without incident, silently keeping to our own sides of the room. Everything is divided, unscrewed, unglued, and disassembled. Our lives go into separate boxes and get packed into separate cars.

I keep thinking about that Christmas. She read me the entirety of that book over the course of the winter. We didn’t have a fireplace, so we settled for sprawling on mounds of blankets under the tree. She’d lie on her stomach with the book propped open before her in one of the few instances it was ever allowed to touch the floor. I’d rest on my back, staring up at the dying limbs and their browning needles. She’d use the brief pauses when she turned a page to steal glances at me. Maybe she was checking to make sure that I was listening. But I always was. I didn’t mind books. In fact, I shared her love of stories. It’s kind of what brought us together in the first place. Only, while she prefers to tell her tales with paper, mine unfold in digital campaigns and virtual realities. The two practices aren’t all that different. So I listened as she walked me through the world of Lucie and Sydney. And when she came to her favorite line, the one she’d quoted on that first night, her voice nearly turned the words into a song. It wasn’t that line that stood out to me, though. It was what came next. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down . . . 

“Fire Lily,” I say. 

Kiera halts in a squat, arms wrapped awkwardly around her last box.

“That’s your favorite flower.”

“Yes,” she says, voice breathy as if I’ve suddenly sucked the air out of her lungs. 

She trains that serious, contemplative gaze on me, lips parting like she’s going to say something else, ask something else. Then she shakes off the daze and stands. “I left the key on the counter.” 

“Okay.” 

“Could you get the door?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I reach around her and pull it open.

She steps out into the otherwise vacant hall, ballerina flats sinking into the old carpeting.

“I guess this is it,” she says.

“I guess so.” 

“Goodbye, Christian.” 

“Bye.” 

Kiera ducks her head in a slight nod and turns toward the stairs.

I draw in a breath. Will she ever be satisfied? Will I?

“Kiera?”

I love you. Do I even know what that means? Do I love her? It’s not that storybook romance, but is it the best we can find?

“Yes?” She looks over her shoulder, causing the ends of her hair to take flight momentarily. The dark strands fall against her back, standing out like ink stains on her light blue cardigan. The same light blue as her eyes. Those piercing eyes that are boring into me with a curious anticipation. As if they’re offering me one last chance at redemption. One last chance to use this breath for something productive. One last chance to say—

“Nothing.” 

In seconds, she is gone, disappearing around a bend in the stairs. I’m left standing there, still breathing, with all too much air left to occupy my lungs. All too much space.