Last Call at the Dep

A Treatise on Temporary Love

It's 10:45 PM, fifteen minutes before the dépanneur stops selling beer. We reach for the same six-pack: Boréale, because we're both pretending to have taste. Your hand touches mine. We don't pull away.

"You take it," I say in English.

"On split?" you suggest.

And suddenly we're walking toward the park, passing cans back and forth, strangers bound by aluminum and bad decisions. You tell me about your ex who moved to Toronto ("might as well be Mars") and I tell you about mine who stayed but became unrecognizable.

The park is dark except for one streetlight that flickers like it's sending morse code to the universe. We sit on swings that squeak with rust and memory. You push off, swinging high, and for a moment you're silhouetted against the city lights, suspended between earth and sky.

"In another life," you say, pumping your legs to go higher, "we meet in daylight. We have proper dates. We fall in love slowly."

"In another life," I agree, "we're different people entirely."

But in this life, we drink warm beer on cold swings, talking until the sun threatens the horizon. We part at dawn with no numbers exchanged, no promises made. Just two people who shared six beers and six hours, who made temporary sense of permanent loneliness.