How Can I Love the Heartbreak

ONE: I choose to wait and take a few steps back

No more intro. Warning na agad. This chapter contains scenes that depict sexual scenarios in vivid detail. Skip the second half if you don't like that. You won't miss much I guess.

And we begin.

Disclaimer: Please do not distribute, copy, or utilize part of or the whole story without permission from the author.

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ONE

'I choose to wait and take a few steps back'

There are ring marks on the table where the glass of cold water has condensed after sitting there for the last hour. On the wall the clock ticks loudly, ticking and ticking, like the beat of her heart as it cracks slowly, slowly splitting at the seams. The words seem to have gone and disappeared at this point, a tangled mess where lost words fall to, and her mind has long since retired, finding solace in the memories. But her heart, her heart remains a different story, steadfast, holding on to the same thread of faith and devotion she has always held on to.

Her heart chooses to wait, takes a few steps back and assesses the wreckage left behind by the makings of their own foolish pride. But her heart breaks, shatters as every second passes and the world outside falls deeper into the darkness of the night, and all the while the door remains firmly closed.

A sigh escapes her lips as she looks up at the clock and finds that the time turned another hour. She has been waiting there for a little over an hour, turning two in fact, and at this point, she has to concede and admit defeat.

He isn't coming, her traitorous mind dictates, and she tries not to let that get to her, tries not to allow the tears to fall. They do anyway, out of their own volition, and the tracks mark her cheeks, even as she brushes them away.

She had asked him, repeatedly, to come home on time today, because she wanted them to have dinner together. She'd planned to cook for him and try and bring back a little romance into their lives. They've been so busy lately, they barely had time to see each other. But she wanted them to make time, had asked him — and is actually only short of begging him — to be there, to show up...for her. She had wanted him to choose her, even just this one time, over his work.

But she surmises...he hadn't. He didn't.

It happens, she tells herself, as many times as it takes until her heart believes it.

And it does, it does happen. In fact, it has been happening a lot lately — dozens of missed calls, messages without responses, dates that never seem to happen — and it's been so easy to blame him for all of it, to tell herself that she had tried, and she had done her part, but that doesn't feel exclusively true either. She might have tried, but so did he, and they've both kept trying until there seems to be nothing left, no more moves left to make.

She clenches her fingers into fists as she stands up to clean up the table, admitting — at least to herself — that this has been a futile attempt to ignite a fire that has been fizzling out before they had noticed. But there are embers there, she tells herself, and the embers can still turn to fire.

She tries to dig around her brain and remind herself when and where this started, but she can't seem to recall. Was it that time he had been jealous of her boss and she'd called him ridiculous? Was it that time she didn't make it to one of their dates because she had work? Was it in between all his late hours and her overseas trips? It's hard to tell now, hard to pinpoint the exact reason, the exact time when it all went awry. It seems so hard to tell now why.