It’s hot, and it’s sticky. The crickets are singing and the fireflies are dancing. A group of children are running and shrieking delightfully in the street, illuminated by an orange splash of a street light. It’s a summer night in Omaha.
Michael watched all of this from a ruddy, wooden bench, cigarette in hand. His wife just told him she wanted a divorce two hours ago. Michael felt like a psychopath because after he walked out of his house and sat on this bench, he decided to look at his heart rate data from his smartwatch. He could (he believed) see the exact moment when his wife asked him if they could talk today, that she had something to tell him; he could see his heart rate looked like a mesa, flattening at a rate two-and-a-half times his normal resting heart rate. And, even now, he could see his watch determined he was ‘Stressed’ and ‘Anxious’. No shit.
He felt like a psychopath, because his metaphorical heart had just been torn from him, but his actual, physical, literal heart was still there pounding.
Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, …
He just wanted it to stop. Fuck me, he thought, as he took the final drag of his cigarette before stabbing it out on the armrest. Fuck. Me.
Michael took a deep breath and stretched to look up to the sky. A few stars peaked out between the gap in the cloud. He saw Jupiter or Venus or something bright. He wasn’t sure why the Omaha sky always calmed him down, but it did, and he was grateful for it. It made him feel like he needed to throw up a little less.
He pulled the pack from his front pocket and lit another cigarette. Fuck me, he thought.