As he walked alone in the park, fallen leaves, wet brown from the chill rain, crunched softly beneath his hiking boots. Under some trees, nearly bare now, where the light rain could not reach, the leaves were still bright and colorful in reds and golds and greens. It made him think of Christmas, though the holiday was still two months away. The road beside which he walked glistened black and shiny in the late afternoon light that penetrated the gray cloud cover.

He had not meant to think of her, but the melancholy afternoon rain led him gently there. He was not angry about her anymore; it was far too long ago for that. In fact, he seldom thought of her these days at all except in passing, but today her memory stood out in his mind like the rainy countryside through which he slowly walked.

It had not been his way for some time to linger on the past, to dwell on her. They had gone their separate ways years before and he knew that if something or someone else had come along since then that perhaps he would not be thinking of her even now. But he was.

He didn’t miss her in the sense that he wanted to be with her. No, that was done and settled. It was just that there were times when he wanted to talk to her. To only her. She had a completely distinct life since him and he was not and did not want to be a part of it. Yet she was the only one who really knew who he was. Who he had been. And sometimes, like today in the rain as he walked along, now moving into his own fall, that he wanted to talk to her.

The first thing out of his mouth, he knew, would have to be an apology. He had wasted too much of her young life to think he could begin anywhere else. But he was confident of her forgiveness. She had been just as angry as he when they had ended, but she was not hateful and would have long since let him off his guilt hook. The watery swish of rubber tires on smooth asphalt pulled him momentarily from his reverie and he breathed in the wet air now faintly laden with a passing wave of carbon monoxide.

"It’s alright," he imagined hearing her say, his senses once more barely registering the outer world through which he walked. "I owe you an apology, too."

"Oh no you don’t," he told her, seeing her beautiful face as it had been fifteen years before. "You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the one that screwed up."

"It takes two, you know," she said. "You can’t take it all on yourself."

"Yeah," he said, "but you were right."

"About?"

"About damn near everything. When it came to me anyway."

"What did I say that was so right?" she asked.

"Hell," he answered. "Where to begin?"

"You’re beating yourself up for no reason," she told him. "It’s a waste of time. I’m happy now. I hope you are, too."

"Are you really?"

"Of course. I’m very lucky."

"You have a good marriage."

"Uh huh."

"And a beautiful daughter."

"Yes. She’s my joy, and my pride."

"That’s good," he said. He felt better about things already. He knew she would do that for him. "Do you really forgive me?"

"Stop that," she ordered him, smiling.

"Sorry," he said, lowering his eyes.

"Have you never had someone else?" she asked after a long pause. He looked up at her and into her lovely green eyes.

"Nothing that could last," he answered.

"Now I feel guilty," she said.

"No, oh, God no," he blurted out. "Please. It’s got nothing to do with you, or us."

"I remember we once told each other there would never be anyone else—should there be an ‘after us’. I didn’t live up to my end."

"And you shouldn’t have," he reassured her. "I’m this way because of what I said before."

"What was that?"

"That you were right about me. Completely."

For several moments they were quiet again. She just looked at him intently. Finally he found the words to go on.

"Do you remember how you told me that I couldn’t see my own flaws? That I didn’t think I ever did anything wrong?"

"I was just mad at you. We were fighting."

"Yeah, but you were right."

"I don’t know," she said.

"You were right about it all. It took me a long time to realize it. I am stubborn, inflexible, unable to see my shortcomings. I wasn’t meant for marriage, for any kind of long term deal."

"We had a lot of good years, though," she said, maybe a little hurt.

"You know we did," he said quickly. "Seven or eight of the greatest of my life."

"We were together fifteen," she reminded him.

"Exactly my point," he said.

"What?"

"I mean, if I’d been smarter I would have left earlier and saved us all the pain. Seven years together is a good number. You would have been younger with more of your life left."

"What about you? You would have been younger, too."

"I was never meant to be with anybody," he told her seriously. "I’m a loner. A hermit. If I had understood that earlier in my life or not fallen so much in love with you, I could have saved us a lot of trouble."

"Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophesy, to me," she commented. "And maybe a little self-indulgent, self-centered."

"There you go."

"You did love me, didn’t you?"

"More than anyone else, ever."

"Do you still?"

"People ask me that sometimes," he said. "When they learn I’ve been alone ever since you."

"And what do you tell them?"

"I tell them I’m happy to live alone. To make all my own decisions, my own mistakes, all by myself. To live simply, easily. And …."

"Yes or no?"

"Yes, but."

"But? But what?"

"Yes I love you but I’m not "in love" with you. I don’t want to live with you, be married to you, or any of that. But, yes, I love you. I always will; how can I not? You were too important to me, were too much of my life for too long to simply discard as if you were never part of it."

She was silent after he spoke, pensive. He was quiet, too, relieved at finally having had the chance to tell her what he had thought and felt for so long.

As he looked at her, absorbed the lines of her pretty face with her fullish mouth and high, lovely cheekbones, he felt a light draft, a coolness that was barely perceptible but increasing. He waited, looked. The cold was now more insistent, even moist.

Then as she raised her head as if to speak again, to tell him something, there was a loud sound nearby. A sound that broke into his thoughts, broke into the images in his head, blocked her from him.

Looking up suddenly, he saw the big truck coming in time to move closer to the tree line and avoid getting splashed. The vehicle roared by, its tires whistling over the rain-wet roadway. As he focused back on his present reality, the memory of his ex-wife lingered slightly still, leaving him with a strong sense of melancholy—of longing. Longing for times long gone, for places and people past, for the loss of his youth, his potential, his optimism.

Pausing momentarily, he took a deep breath and looked around. The rain was falling steadily and heavier now and his clothes were getting soaked. Up ahead a hundred yards or so and across the roadway was a small strip mall. To the left of a service station and a laundry, he spotted a little café where he had once had breakfast. Behind its colorful neon lights, the café looked warm and dry—a place where he could clear his head. Letting his past slip from him like the streams of rain from his clothes, he jogged across the road.

In a booth by himself in the back of the café, he stretched to pull off his soaked jacket. He lay the wet garment on the seat at his side and almost instantly began to feel warmer. In a few moments he even began to feel relaxed, as relaxed as he usually got. All thoughts of the past drained from him then and he was overcome by hunger. He ordered an extra large meal, though he seldom ate at this time of day, and afterwards took a taxi back home, which he never did.

On the way to his place, he stared out the window of the cab, watching the rain fall silently on the wet world outside. He felt good, calm and empty of anxiety, not happy but not sad either. At ease for the moment with himself and his life. All things considered, he thought, for this time of his life, being at ease with the world was a pretty darn good thing. Probably about as good as a guy could hope for.

His latest writing credits include: "Campesino" (fiction), First Prize winner, Sager Creek Arts Center (Siloam Springs, AR) Short, Short Fiction Contest, May 2005; "Police Action: October 17, 1951" (fiction), The Copperfield Review, Vol. 5, Num. 2, Spring 2005; "He Liked It That Much" (fiction), Megaera, Issue 21, Spring 2005; "Gorki in New York" (creative non-fiction), The Copperfield Review, Vol. 5, Num. 1, Fourth Anniversary Issue, Winter 2005; "Rice Paddies Lost" and "Aqui no se rinde nadie" (poems), Poesia, Vol. III, No. 1, January 2005, pp. 21-22; "Still Life: Girl on Snowy Night" (fiction), The Square Table, Winter 2005, Vol. III, Issue I; "Reminder" (poem), Mastodon Dentist, Issue 1, December 2004.