The end of summer

He’d been seeing her for a month now.
Though he had difficulty remembering the night they met, he felt he could remember every moment of his life since then.
Juddering, sensual moments in her company; anxious tedious times without her. Each second of this month seemed engraved upon his mind, and would be forever after.
Long summer nights spent wrapped together. Closeness, he always wanted her nearby, despite the humidity and the natural heat. She told him once that she liked to sweat. She told him everything he’d ever wanted a woman to tell him.
And, on balconied mornings, watching the sun rise over the city, he’d open himself up to her, pouring it all free, bathing her in himself to see if she could stand it.
When she went, his sweat would turn cold. His mind raced with fear. Would she return that evening? Why would she come back? Why did she ever have to leave?
That evening he resolved to remedy this issue. His was a turbulent mind, but within it he saw a straight line heading towards clarity and followed it there. Followed it to the roof terrace with a glass of 30 year old Macallan in hand, sullied by a single ice-cube.
When she arrived, she followed his hand-drawn paper signs and arrows, through the apartment and out onto the roof terrace.
The garden was blooming with lavender and hydrangea bushes, the drone of insects was louder than the traffic, up there in the clouds.
He said he had something important to ask her, so she sat upon a low brick wall. She lit two cigarettes, one for each of them, though he set his down on the brickwork.
Then he poured himself upon her once more. He gushed, he cried a little, he got on bended knee before his proposal was done.
And she accepted, with crystalline tears streaking her own beaming face. They stood and embraced as the sun dropped lower behind the skyscrapers.
They talked and drank for the rest of the night, though she said she couldn’t stay with him - she needed to go home. To go home and pick up some things. She could not be dissuaded.
He held onto her company for as long as he could. She unclasped herself around 3am.
The CCTV cameras in the lift recorded her face, smiling broadly for the entire duration of her ride to the ground floor.
One also recorded the moment when her face turned to horror, upon the opening of the lift doors onto the lobby. A different camera watched as one gunshot pierced her breast, and another struck her temple.
Her fiancé, high up in the penthouse, was already sweating without her near. He had resolved to go after her, to retrieve her and he was already punching the button to call the elevator.
He was already watching so eagerly as the blessed machine joyously counted the floors - up, up, up - up to his high apartment.