different

Half cigarette smoked she was starting to cry for the same exact reason that I was. We never knew different: different lives, different cities, different dreams, beds, nights watching our favorite seasons, cars and people. All we knew was simple: it was us.

The moon shone in the left side of her face while she spoke about how much she was going to miss me. I was too used to that conversation so I just stood quiet. What was I supposed to say? Or do? I always hated the fact that she smoked. It was not interesting or slightly sexy but I was going to miss that smell.  The fact that she spent money in cigarettes but not on herself made me angry but she always managed to save up money, we always did. Not a lot but some.

We ruined it. Not the money, but us. We were doing it over the years without realizing it, without even having conscience that our fights were because we didn’t want to be together but we didn’t know different. So we just stood like that for almost 6 years. Without love. And, believe me, living with someone – intimately – with someone you don’t love isn’t easy. She once told me that she didn’t love me but I never believed in that. How was I supposed to?

We broke apart, we swam from each other and not to each other. The hardest part was that, while we were swimming, we were sinking into the ocean.

She asked me if I wanted to smoke. I said yes. She was still crying. Smoother now. She handed me the cigarette but never looked at me. She was staring at the distance but I was staring at her. At her hair that she tied up because, accordingly to her, she “felt more comfortable not having hair everywhere”.

It tasted bad, worse than I expected. But while I was smoking, the anxiety flew away. I wondered what she was thinking. If it was about me, about us, about the TV show we never watched together because it just got “too bored” but, the truth, was that she didn’t want to sit on the couch with me since I’d always grab her and pull her nearer. She never told me that, I just knew it because she’d make that face she always does when she doesn’t like something.

The morning I gave up was the morning she told me everything. My heart didn’t break. The only thing I asked her was: “How could you live with me without loving me? You even said you wanted to have a baby, for Christ sake! “ and then I went to work. Didn’t hear her answer, didn’t care about what it was and never did. She just decided to say it, finally. Everything was different. She’d not come home after work, she’d never sleep in bed, not watch TV shows with me, not eat while I was eating, never went to the backyard while I was there and she always picked her clothes while I was making my dinner.

It was sickening.