The air conditioner needs to be repaired, and one of us needs to go alert the concierge. The windows are making this hot oven of an apartment a deathtrap. Outside during daytime is no better. Perhaps it’s why we spent all that time sharing drinks last night, savouring what we could. Yet the sun has made its grand reappearance, trying to stare us down through the gaps in the blinds, not a cloud in sight. My head pounds like someone is standing on it. 

We sit across from each other, just trying to eat a late lunch, drinking the milk out of our cereal with our spoons, as we both have a distaste towards water. Neither of us talking to the other. The room is filled by the heat and humidity. The last few days we’ve been stuck under summer heat’s spell, too hot to sleep, too slow to be fully awake, in-between consciousness and alertness, while groggily drifting.

I watch you try to lazily stir the cereal out of the way. The metal spoon starts tapping on the sides.

           Clank clink

I can feel pressure tighten my chest.

Then you do it again. It’s such a pointless thing to do.

            Clank clink

I can tell my face is flushed, as I try to swallow my heart, which starts to feel rushed.

Then you do it again, as if to make a habit out of it.

Clank clink

“What’s wrong with you?” My tone is harsh as I didn’t even realize I had thought up words to say.

Your eyes dart up, looking just as agitated as I.

Then on purpose.

Clank clink

My teeth click, and I spill my words like vomit. Not anything I can remember, not anything I would repeat. It was the heat of the moment that caused my voice to work faster than my thoughts. But to fight fire with fire, your words break through the thickness of the space in retort, scratching the nerves in my brain, like digging your fingernails into my skin. I can’t stand your voice as much as you mine, but I’ll use mine to stop yours, like you to me. A problem that cycles because neither of us can think a rational thought.

Feeling fatigued, perhaps running out of things to say, you lift your bowl and bring it down on the harsh table wood, trying to prove a point. It shatters, and the glass mixes itself with the milk, breaking us out of our haze. Silence falls as you are just as shocked as me. Frozen and avoiding each other’s gaze, you leave the room and come back with some towels. I finish my food quickly so I can return to my room.

If it is any consolation, I would have probably given some kind of apology if you’d given me one first. Then again, it’s likely I wouldn’t have. No, I would have, but after the air conditioning is fixed first.