Heartless

“I am over you”, she said blandly, over the perfectly loud music, not in anger or love or passion or hope. She said it as if just stating a fact, like she was informing me that the sky was blue or the Earth was round or like she would if I asked her the day of our first kiss (she always remembered, she was so good with dates). I stared into her dark eyes, waiting for her to say anything else.

I couldn’t see my face at that moment, but I am as sure as I can be that my eyes were begging. I swallowed.

I looked at her, illuminated by the flashing lights of the club, waiting for her next words, for the but. Nothing came. She just kept staring back into my eyes as I searched for any sign of a lie in hers. I didn’t find it, but maybe I didn’t look enough, I told myself. Maybe. She seemed honest, too honest, maybe more than I had ever seen before. More than when she said no when I asked if what I said drunkenly hurt her or if she minded staying home with me instead of going out just tonight i promise or just one last time please please please.

I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to scream louder than the very loud music, louder than the very very loud thoughts, to scream until I stopped feeling so small she could squeeze me between her thin fingers. I wanted to scream myself into the size I once was when I stood next to her. I wanted to scream at her why why why are you saying these lies just to hurt me, how could you be so heartless after I loved you so much, I loved you, I love you, why can’t you appreciate that, I love you you bitch. But I also wanted to pull her body close to mine and kiss her, and more than anything I wanted her to kiss me back, and I was drunk, confused, a little very surprised with her confidence and way smaller than I was used to being, so I stayed frozen, staring at her.

She looked so beautiful. She always did when I missed her. The longer we spent apart, the more beautiful she was. The colorful lights illuminated her perfect face, changing from pink to red to yellow to green to blue. Behind her, bodies merged into each other, completely interchangeable, and everything was dark. She was the light, and I just watched.

She started to turn away from me, officially nothing else to say, and I grabbed her hand. Please, I whispered, though I don’t think she heard. She didn’t look back like she used to all those times before. She untangled her hands from mine, back still turned to me, and she kept walking. I waited. I looked at her walking away and waited for the moment when she would look back. The moment she would run back to me, the moment I would find the lie in her eyes.

But from a moment to the next, just like that, her body merged into all the other ones, and I no longer could see her. Everything was dark and then colorful, but the lights weren’t illuminating anything specific. One second she was there, right in my hand, about to look back, I’m sure, and then she wasn’t anymore. Just like that.

In that moment, as I had in more ways than one lost her, it crossed my mind that maybe it was true. Maybe she was really over me. Maybe she wasn’t coming back. I ignored the thought and waited a few more minutes, and still nothing. So I shruged and went to buy myself another drink. Okay, not today, I thought to myself. I’ll text her in a week. Make her think I don’t want her anymore, make her almost sure I have given up on it, and then a glimpse of hope. She won’t resist. She never does. I bought my drink, absolutely sure of it.

What I didn’t know then, as I sipped my twenty dollar whiskey, was that I could not have been more wrong. That I would text her the next day, the moment I woke up, and that she wouldn’t answer. That I would go back to my initial strategy and wait long enough for her to think I had given up. That the thought that O actually had would be a relief for her, and when I called her again she would block my number. That she was really, truly over me, that it was the hardest thing she ever had to do, and that it hurt her more than I could ever imagine, but she still did. She was over me.

I didn’t know then that I would go on feeling small for a very long time, and I definitely didn’t know I deserved it. What I didn’t understand and would keep not understanding for years to come was that she wasn’t making me feel small; she had simply stopped letting me believe I wasn’t.

What I didn’t know was that I would go on living my tiny little life, and when I finally understood how small I really was, she would be living the big life she deserved.

I didn’t know exactly what I had just lost, and I also would never know what she had lost because of me.

I give it two weeks for her to come back, I thought as I took another sip of my drink.