Don't think so much

The smell of raw animal fat has always made her gag. She wonders why she hasn't turned vegetarian years ago. He plays with the foil from the cigarettes, folding, unfolding, ripping and twisting the little pieces. If the carton could talk, it would have plenty to say.

"So." She looks away.
"So." He looks at her.
"What now?"
"I don't know."
"Hm."

He lights a match. Staring away from her, he searches for the faces of the passing travelers in their belching machines, as they maneuver a route through the potholed highway. The match burns out.

"When's your train?"

He lights another match and with it, a cigarette. He inhales deeply, the cigarette between his lips. She can't help noticing how his lips crease differently in the moments before they kiss from those when he smokes.

"Friday."
"Should I come to see you off?"
"Um...no need, really."
"You're sure?"
"Ya."

She is very tempted to ask him if he will miss her.

"I'll be back in a minute." She stands up.

In the minuscule loo in the back, she stares at her face in the grimy mirror, recognizing the very moment from the many films they had watched together. She smiles as she realizes that now would be a highly appropriate time to burst into tears, sing a sad song and sink to the floor theatrically, clutching her handbag to her chest.
To do so would be below her.

Meanwhile, he has finished his watery tea and has begun to dig for change in his many pockets as the waitress hovers hopefully in the background.
He wonders if he should knock on the loo-door.
He wonders if she has left through the kitchens.

She has, in fact, left.

She drags her slippers across the highway to the waiting bus. The rattling red monster does a U-Turn and she sees him through the two layers of glass, still sitting at their table, striking a match to light the cigarette pinned behind his left ear. For a brief moment, he sees her too, but looks away in the direction of the loo as if to brush the image out of his head as some sort of passing illusion.