Author Information
Five Months
It had been five months since the day she told him that he was definitely the one for her, that what they had wasn’t simple puppy love, it was something more, something special, that what they had was meant to last. He remembered this fact as he sat across from her in a coffee shop one Sunday evening. She had a displeased look on her face, the same look she had had for the past couple of weeks or so, and he had gotten worried, but she constantly assured him that everything was fine, it’s really nothing. Five months ago, it seemed as though she wanted to know absolutely everything about him, but now, any and all of his increasingly more desperate attempts at starting a conversation, any kind of conversation at all, were met with the same frustrating one-word responses.
All of a sudden it struck him that he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her genuinely happy when she was with him. Five months ago, all she could say to him when they were apart was how much she couldn’t wait to see him again. But then she started cancelling almost all their dates. She curiously was either always busy or always had something to do with her family. That was at the beginning though, recently she stopped caring enough to give an excuse to not see him, and whenever she did see him, it was just like this.
They had been sitting there for almost half an hour, and had barely said anything more than hello. Five months ago, it seemed as though they could talk about absolutely anything and everything, but at some point, he couldn’t pinpoint when, they just ran out of things to talk about. It didn’t stop him from trying though, and he started yet another attempt at a conversation, only to be met with the same, one-word response.
It was here that he started wondering why he was so committed to something that was, now, obviously not meant to last. Why bother trying to fix something that can’t be fixed? Why try to save a sinking ship from its inevitable fate? This wasn’t the first time he thought of this. And every time he did, he came to the same conclusion: because five months ago, they had made a promise that they would put in everything they had to make it work. After all, they shared a really special connection, and it was almost as if they were made for each other. But that was then. Now, whenever he remembered their promise it was almost as if he believed in it a little less each time.
Sitting in that coffee shop, he started to accept something that he’d been denying for a while: this was going to end, and it was going to end soon. Five months ago, it seemed as though it would at least last for a year, maybe even a couple, or maybe, just maybe, even forever, now seemed like a shadow of what it used to be. He knew this, but he refused to believe this. He chose to follow his foolish heart, the same foolish heart that told him not to give up on them, no matter how much it hurt to see it degrade into what it had become, that pain was a part of love. But by this point, he started to wonder if his heart was the right part of him to listen to.
Then, he turned to his right, and he saw them. To him, they seemed like the happiest couple on Earth. They were in each other’s arms, muttering between themselves things that were only for them to hear, things that, it seemed, made them happier with every word uttered. They seemed simply grateful for having each other. Perhaps they were at the beginning of their own five months, or maybe they were in the middle of their forever, he couldn’t tell, but he didn’t care. He wanted to be them, and not himself at that point in time. He looked at them for a couple of minutes, and he felt their happiness radiating into him. Then, he turned back to look at her, and that happiness became an emotion he knew very well, but didn’t want to admit he was feeling. That emotion was regret.
A week later, he caught her in the movie theater with someone else, and they broke up. They never saw each other again.
