When up-and-coming model Isabelle meets talented but jaded photographer Milo, sparks fly despite their age difference. Their romance becomes the talk of the New York City fashion scene, fueling rumors and speculation about their scandalous affair. A...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
On the way home in the car, she no longer felt anything. But numbness.
She felt numb.
She wondered to herself if they just broke up. They were definitely on a break.
So this is how it was, he no longer held responsibility for her or for her feelings. Is that what a breakup was?
The shock of the day hadn't fully worn off of her yet. Stepping inside the empty apartment, she cried some more.
Moving from the couch to the floor, and eventually, after a scalding hot shower, into the bed somehow.
When she woke up, the first thought in her mind was alone again.
That was her natural state, really. Either by purpose or circumstance, she found herself living a solitary existence for the most part. Sometimes it suited her, but sometimes, especially in the evening and the weekends, it broke her.
All of a sudden, she felt like an Angus steak, seared on the hot grill.
Her nerves were burnt to a crisp. Her little moment of insanity. She was going to relish it, laughing out loud in an empty room.
It was so like her. To get everything she ever dreamed of, just to walk away. For fear of not being able to withold it all. It was so much easier to let it shatter her.
Then she let the silence take up the space, but it only brought her feelings and thoughts to the forefront.
Him him him.
She wasn't fully sure what happened alst night, but spomething inevitable shifted. A crack in the faultline of her life...their relationship.
She actually wasn't sure if they were ever going to be able to bounvce back form this, she frealized as she was brsuhing her teeth mechanically.
She forgot all about Jake until her breakfast - a piece of toast. In fact, in comparison to what happend with milo after, that seemed like a little blip.
Then she felt like throwing up again, mostly due to the fact that she self created her own demise.
But was it really all her? Maybe Milo also had a role to play hre, for better or worse.
She realized her jaw was acing - she was grinding again. Scolding herself for not going to get that botox injection in her jaw for her muscles.
She didn't do anything else to her face, which was outrageous - scandalous even - for someone in her sitaution.
She stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes oticeably puffy from all the crying she did.
She turned around from the mirror and closed here yes, fingers to her temple. Partly to try to dissipitate the poiundong headache she had, partyl to try to remeber and shield herself all at once form the embrassemtn of last night.
Isabelle dindt knwo what got int oher, but maybe it wasnt al lbad. Maybe it was time she stood up for herself.
And if Milo runs the second their relationsip reuqores hard work, then be it.
Yet, she didnt feel ti was fully that either.
Was it goging to be the waiting game now? Who was going to break first. Is that what was happenign now?
Would he even miss her?
Was the scrutiny of thier relationsup that she aws so afraid of, worthy of outweighing the realtionshup itself?
She wondered if she should call her therapist, but she already knew what she was going to say....Human beings are complex, Isabelle. There could be a myriad of reasons why you both pulled away.
She listed them off in her head...vulneraiility, trauma, false ecpecatons, exteranl presures, bad communication.
Textbook.
She knew she wouldn't score 100 on any of those categories but she was willing to at least think about her own personal issues. And maybe she went too hard at pointing his out to himself, but he had to own up to his own issues as well.
Maybe she was testing him, she now realized. Putting up resistance to see if he would fight. Not back, but for them.
For us, she thought.
As her frustration grew, so did her restlessness.
This was her new relity now.
Constatnyl thinking bout something so close to her in distance, yet now so far away emoitonally, or in possibiltiy.
And the worst part of it, she realized, what that I never let you know how I felt.
