Certain Goodbye

They looked at each other and checked the time. It was 7 pm a Friday. The dinner question was a moot one. The question had made them squirm any other day as it came at the opportune time when bellies rumbled. Meal prep had been a pipe dream. The TV was turned off. Jackets donned.

They could have walked there but couldn't resist the fresh car smell. One of them was too tired to drive, and the other's car was in the garage for its first servicing. It didn't matter. Both of them had just purchased top-of-the-line German cars.

They were greeted and scurried to their usual spot. The local watering hole was not the locals' first choice but a boon for the students on tight budgets. After graduation, the old habits stuck with them.

It had been long five years with arduous coursework. They could have graduated a year sooner if they could have resisted or understood how they influenced each other. None of them regretted it. The weekly Friday routine, among others, was the holy grail with no end in sight. Now that both of them were settled in their cushy office jobs, their most significant expense was food. The rest was gravy.

They got cozy in their usual spot, and there was something off. They had had Fridays when they disagreed on what drink to enjoy, but today there hangs a sense of unpleasant uncertainty. The waitress suggested their usual and didn't even wait for their agreement.

After a couple of drinks, one of them started talking about something missing in life. The same old rant over drinks on Friday nights. The long-winded speech about finding the purpose of life and doing something that makes a difference. This time it felt different. Rather than taking a turn into something philosophical, it was going into an actionable plan. The tired one said he wanted to volunteer to teach young minds science and math. The roommate didn't seem concerned. But the extended silence and the idea of his roommate moving out hung like a guillotine about to be released. The haunting silence continued, and the moist eyes of his roommate were enough to release the blade and severe something deep that he didn't even know existed. He had to understand because there was nothing he could do to stop him. The car was already sold. He knew the rent was not an issue. The moist eyes explained the unpleasant reality that it was a certain goodbye, but the long companionship germinated the seed of crossing paths in future.

Fictional short story