More Canyons

Figure I might as well just paste in the whole thing, so I don't have to be linking all over the place, and to make it a bit easier to follow:

He wakes up in the middle of the night and hears her breathing echoing in the darkness. There is a gap between them, a chasm two feet wide with no bottom in sight, its walls worn away by months of injured silences and suppressed glances. How did they get there, they who had it all; who had nothing but each other. He is afraid if he reaches across he will fall, and yet he can already feel himself slipping and sliding, scrabbling for purchase in the slick soil and finding none. She's there but she is gone, miles away from him even when he looks her in the eyes. And he, where is he, where does that leave him? Where does he go from there?
Years later he wakes up and hears her no longer, feels her no more. She has gone, a decision made both by and without him. The world has moved on, and what does it all mean? Beside him lies another; her and not her, and he is sliding again, the world tilting around him. He is afraid, but of what: the darkness which hides, or the light which reveals? She is screaming in her sleep beside him, "Don't let me go, don't let me down, don't say you will," but he is unable to hear. The gap is widening again, widening and deepening, and he is digging, digging his own grave inch by inch and second by second.
He tosses his covers back and walks to the kitchen; hesitates, then flips the light on. Water; cleansing, freezing the lump threatening to overwhelm him and the life he has made. He holds the glass to his forehead, focusing on that point where flesh meets glass, feeling the liquid coolness travel down his body for one long moment. He finishes the water and goes back to bed. Even before he has pulled the covers back over him, he knows that she is awake beside him, her silence accusing him in the night, her hunched shoulder blades pregnant with tears prepared to fall. This is the moment. This is their moment, the moment they have been speeding towards since he first caught sight of her that night in the bar. And here, now, in this moment, he begins to feel real once more.
"Are you awake?"
Another lie. He knows she is. But this is the only way they can communicate, the only way they have ever been able to. She knows the moment is approaching, can feel its proximity, has been seeing it on the edges of her vision for the past week and yet cannot bring herself to speak, cannot seem to remember how to move her lips, tongue and breath to form words.
"Mmmm?"
"We need to talk."
"Can't it wait till morning?"
"No, it can't."
"Fine. I'll go make some coffee, then." She sits up, grinding her palms into her eyes and sweeping her hair back, taking her time and extending the moment, hoping against hope that he will reconsider, that she can buy herself one more morning. He knows exactly what she is doing, has done it himself, but remains silent. Watching. Waiting. He owes her that much, at least: these precious minutes where they can pretend this is just another soul-baring conversation, another rung on the ladder of intimacy. She knows that he knows and hates him for it, hates his smug consideration, his indulgence. As if she needed it from him. She did, once; needed and wanted it, but that time has long since passed, unmentioned and unmourned, just one more step on their path to this place, this moment.
She walks to the kitchen and flips on the radio while her body goes through its morning ritual of making coffee, 3 hours too soon. Standing before the sink, she realizes she is standing precisely where he was minutes before, feeling the leftover warmth of his footprints which had been cooling in the night air. She wonders what she will say, if she will have the strength and if there's even a point, or if he has decided this like so many other things: alone.