The Talk

"Stray, we need to talk, like, really fucking talk."

Talk? Was he serious?

Talk was what normal people did, and he had not done anything normal, at least not with me around. We had never talked talked. All the previous times when any kind of words was exchanged between us, they never constituted talking. It was always about him yelling or screaming at me, or if I had to refer to the more recent past, it was both of us in a fighting match.

But we had never talked, like, ever. And now he said he wanted to talk, but that was all he had said since then. Since then, everything had gone as quiet as the night sky. Though it was not an awkward, uncomfortable one. It was strange that while I had avoided the comforting words of all those people with whom I talked and shared things regularly, it was this break-in into my room from the person I wanted to avoid that had put me at awkward ease.

I was not sure how long this ease would last if he started talking about last night, and everything th