“I have to go, leave. I’ve spent too much time with you already. I know you don’t believe me, but there are other people who want to see me.

“How could you even think that? I spent almost the entire weekend with you. I didn’t go out last night because of you. You wanted me to stay home, and I stayed home. I stayed up all night with you and fell asleep with you still rambling away. You never stop talking, do you? You can’t always do this to me. I am going out tonight and there’s nothing you can say that will change my mind.

“Oh, really? Well, those people have things, important things, that they want to do with me, and those things don’t require you. Now that I’m thinking about it, going out with them—and we’re heading to a demolition derby with no big screen, for your information—is the furthest thing from being with you as I could possibly get without doing something drastic. And I’m almost at that point.

“Yes, I’m angry. Don’t I look angry? You knew that I had to leave and then you pull this shit. Your games aren’t fair. I warned you this very morning that I was leaving tonight and then you start talking about what you planned to show me, how you planned to make me feel, only if I stayed with you tonight. I can’t stand this. I won’t let you do it. You have to understand—and I know you do understand even though you don’t talk about it—I have a life outside of you, and I’m not going to let you close me out of that life any longer. No, I won’t listen to you. Stop trying to tempt me! It won’t work. Shut up!

“Oh, so when your temptations don’t work you look at me like that. I can’t stand it when you look at me in that way. You know what way I’m talking about. You just blink off and I know you’re still there, but you don’t say anything. And your face, your face is unreadable, blank, empty. You portray no emotions and I have to—you know I can’t handle seeing you like that. Stop it already! At least talk to me before I leave.

“Of course we have things to talk about. What have we been doing all day? You don’t call this communicating? You hurt me by saying that we have nothing to talk about anymore. We spend so much time together that, of course, it will begin to sound a little repetitive. But that’s a good thing. I finish your sentences, complete your thoughts. That’s important. It’s important in any relationship for there to be a connection, and we have a great connection. And we have a relationship. We do spend quality time together.

“I remember that time almost too well. I was just as surprised as you at the outcome! It was so unexpected and tragic, but, yeah, funny too. That’s what I’m talking about. We’ve shared so much and seen so much that we’ll always have stuff to talk about. And there’s so much more that we can do together. Don’t ever think differently. I love spending time with you.

“No, that doesn’t mean that you can come with me. This is what I was talking about. We were getting on good and then you bring this up again. It’s not right that you keep trying to get involved in every aspect of my life. There has to be part of me that doesn’t belong to you. You must know that. How would you feel if whenever I was with you, I spent all my time talking to someone else? Would you like it? I need some space. You need to let me live my life without you.

“It’s not you. Of course it’s not you. The world doesn’t revolve completely around you—

“Okay, that was unfair. You are important. I think you’re very important, and so do a lot of people, especially when they get a chance to know you. Even my friends like you. They just don’t want to hang out with you there tonight. It’s a guy’s night out, and we’re not going to a type of place that you’d like. It’s not as if they’re more important than you. You know that. That’s not why I’m leaving you.

“No. I never said I was going to leave you. I just meant that I was going away for the night. I’ll be back. Do you think I could ever leave you? I wouldn’t survive an evening without you. I need you: I need your constant chatter, your chipper personality, your changing whims. It’s just that I need to get away for the night. You must understand. It’s not like we’ve never been apart.

“Those times don’t count. Do you think I count going to the bathroom without you? Yes, I can sometimes hear you, but that’s not the same. I’m not with you. And what happens when I go out? Yes, you sometimes meet me where I’m going, but not always. Can’t you remember all the times I’ve been without you for days at a time with no contact? That one time I hiked up Dreaded Peak with Johnny and the crew. You didn’t pull this kind of shits that time—we even watched the video of my trip together. What makes tonight so damn different?

“We all get lonely sometimes, but that’s no reason to bring that up. Maybe it’s time we had that talk. I didn’t want to go there, but since we’re coming clean tonight, there’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while but I haven’t found the right moment. I don’t think there will ever be a right moment, but here goes. I’ve not told you about this in the past, but sometimes—I know I shouldn’t go there, but it’s too important not to say—sometimes I feel that our time together is wasted. That, I don’t know. That perhaps when we’re together I could be doing other things, things that don’t involve you. And maybe, just maybe, I would be happier doing those things. Do you know what I mean?

“I know, I know. I don’t always have these thoughts, it’s just when I spend all my time with you, that’s when I begin to think this way. No, I’m not unhappy. It’s not a question of happiness in quotation marks, whatever that means. It’s just sometimes I begin to think that I’m missing out on opportunities. That if you weren’t there, I would be doing important work. I’d be a better person, help other people and maybe help myself, if you know what I mean.

“You’re right. No. I was being terribly unfair to you. I’m just tired and I wanted to see my friends tonight, but I shouldn’t have said those things. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean them, it’s just you pushed me, and I sometimes push back. I don’t always think before I push, but you should have known that I didn’t mean it. That I could never stay away from you for long.

“Please don’t say that. Never say that. What I said was just a reaction to the tremendous pressure you’re putting me under. It is the truth, but a different type of truth. Ah, you don’t understand. We’re very different and I’m trying to explain this to you. While you fulfill many of my needs, there are parts of me that crave things that you can’t provide.

“Let me finish, please. It’s when those parts of me start to cry out that I get this way. It’s not you. You know it’s not you. It’s me. It’s the weather. It’s everything. I just wanted to go out tonight, to be with my friends. But I shouldn’t have said everything I said. I shouldn’t have gone where I went. If in the future they invent a time machine, this would be the moment that I would go back to. I would tell myself to shut up and don’t go there. Ah. I don’t think there’s a time machine in my future.

“See. I can still make you smile. I’m so sorry. I’m tired and hungry—no, I’ll stop making excuses. I’ll just accept that what I did was my fault and I’m a horrible person who will do anything to make it up to you. Can you ever forgive me? What would it take for you to forgive me?

“Yes, I’ll call my friends right away. I’ll tell them that I can’t go out. I’m sure they’ll understand. Even if they don’t, I don’t care. We’ll stay home together, just you and me, just like always. Come here. Let me give you a hug. We will never fight again. Okay, I know that’s not true, but I’ll promise never to hold anything from you. I’ll share my feelings so they don’t boil over like this again. We’ll watch whatever you want. I could never survive, not even for a minute, without you. You know you’re my favorite. I love you, and always have loved you. You are my dearest, my sweetest, my television.”

Wow. That was rather terrible, but fun to write. It sucked up about 1,100 words before I started running out of things to talk about. I added another 400 words after editing. To make it more interesting, I’d probably have to remove 600 words to make it readable, but I’m not doing that here. It needs more meat, but I don’t know what type. Now I’m just babbling. It is what it is. Dialogue has never been my strong point, but single character stories are. It’s so much easier not having to worry about a second character.

Before she asks, no, Doolies, this story has nothing to do with you. Not everything is about you! I live me own life! Please let me live it! (That’s a joke. A funny, funny joke. Yeah. Just keep repeating that to yourself. It’s a funny, funny joke.)

This writing took me a few hours to draft. This, obviously, is all filler now. I have about three-hundred more words to write to call it a 2,000-word day. I’m not sure how I’m going to do this once I can’t add these musings comments to my writing. When I first started drafting the above story, I was rather anxious that I would run out of room before finishing it and getting to the cheesy ending. Have you gone back through it and seen my Sixth Sense moments? The ideas seemed much funnier and cleverer before I wrote it. But, as I said at the beginning of this filler section, it was terribly fun to write. The grammar was a bit difficult to pull off. I figured that the readers would figure out that they’re reading only one side (the only side, as it turns out) of the conversation, since a single quotation mark at the beginning of the paragraph usually means that the dialogue continues onto the next paragraph. At least that was my intention. If you read it as if two people were talking, I doubt it’d make much sense.

Halloween is only three days away, which means that there’s only three days of training until the Marathon. Doolies suggested that I blow off trying to meet the 2,000-word goal tonight. That perhaps I need a rest before I begin. (She had ulterior motives, viz., video game time.) But, nah. Even though I was tired before I returned to finish this entry after dinner, once I started typing, I started enjoying myself again. If I could find another hour or so to write every day, and perhaps another hour’s worth of interesting material to write about, then this would be even more fun.

Wow. I found a toolbar item that keeps the count on the menu bar. Regrettably, it doesn’t constantly update. You have to manually press the button to recount the total. Okay, the total paragraph should push me over the mark. Here we go:

Word count: 2,018; writing time: 2 hours; word count after editing: 2,062; editing time: 15 minutes; caffeination: tall mocha+vanilla coke; feeling: satisfied. Final eight words to make 2,000: priceless (man, that was cheesy).