One-shots

Fragmented

"But I hold you tight and have a walk in that park we've loved,
but the conversation is dry.
Oh my god I'm trying to keep you in love."
- Settle Down, Gentle Bones

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It was a shit excuse, and I shouldn't have said what I said. The only thing she deserved was the truth, and even I couldn't give her that.

"You really know how to hurt me, don't you?"

"I'm only doing this because I love you."

She burst into tears after I said that, because she knew it was because I didn't love her. I couldn't. I didn't have the power to. I wouldn't love her enough, I didn't allow myself to.

She deserved so much love in her life, and happiness too. She was the epitome of those two things. If someone were to ask me to explain or describe what love or happiness was, I'd just say her name.

"Aiko."

"What do you want?"

"Stop walking away from me."

She stopped walking. "Why?"

"I don't understand."

"Your eyes used to light up whenever you saw me. Now they just looked tired and weary, like I'm just someone else you have to deal with."

"It's still the same way."

"It isn't the same anymore, Cayo."

That happened a week before the thought of breaking up with her even occurred in my head; before I even realized that losing feelings for her was actually possible for me.

I didn't want to hurt her intentionally. Isn't that funny? We try so hard not to hurt a person; we try so hard to just keep them together, and we hold on too tight that we just end up breaking them anyway.

It hurt me that she could tell what was wrong before I even realized it myself.

I did try to fix things. I really did. I told myself that every relationship went through this phase, where they think they're losing feelings for their partner. I thought it was just a phase I was going through. I did the things I did when our relationship was just fresh, but it made my thoughts even worse. I wonder what made me stop treating her like a queen, like I first did.

"Hey, I love you."

"That was pretty random, but hey, I love you too." She tried to smile as she said this, but it didn't quite reach her eyes like it always did whenever I said those three words.

"I just wanted you to know."

"Is something wrong, Cayo?"

She looked so pained. She could see right through me. At that moment, I didn't know if I was hurting because she was, or because I got caught. At this moment, I still don't know what the answer is.

"Nothing's wrong, babe."

"Babe? The last time you called me that was when we were sixteen."

And that was true. I decided that she should be called by her actual name, because I realized nicknames were shit. We started out as friends, we started out by just calling each other by the names that our friends call us, so I wanted to keep it that way.

Thinking about the last few days before the end of our relationship hurts, because that's when I could feel everything just slowly falling apart. For the last few days, nothing was ever the same anymore, and both of us were just too tired to fix whatever was broken. Or maybe it's that we both knew nothing could be fixed, so we didn't try at all.