HER:
I never meant to do this to you. I know you’ll never believe me. I just had to tell you. I didn’t mean to hurt you like this. I never planned on hurting you like this.

We just…We didn’t have chemistry anymore. I promised I’d never lie to you; and I couldn’t lie to you and keep continuously telling you that I loved you; that I always wanted to be with you; that I’d be yours for forever and always. I couldn’t do that to you. So I had to leave you.

But I’m so sorry it turned out this way. It was never supposed to turn out this way. It was never supposed to end like this. It was supposed to be so different; so much better, so much easier. It was never supposed to end like this. I promise.

Going anywhere with you was always fun. I could consistently count on a good time, no matter what you had planned for us to do that day, even if once I found out what we were doing I realized that I’d never done that sport or event before; I loved anything and everything that dealt with you. I was sure I’d love it because you’d specialized and picked it out specifically for me.

But this time? Well, this time was different. Because instead of it being just a ‘fun date to go get ice cream together’, it was a ‘ go get ice cream that ends in shattered remnants of your broken heart because I’m breaking up with you today date’. Yeah. It was like that.

I swallowed another large spoonful of my strawberry ice cream, shivering despite myself. The cold winter air combined with the deliciously teeth-chattering cold ice cream probably weren’t the best idea, but then again, none of our ideas for dates had ever been that brilliant. This was just another one of them.

He looked over at me curiously, tightening the grip on my hand as he obviously felt the shiver run down my back from the wonderfully deliciously chilly ice cream combined with the wintery fresh atmosphere our city was currently fighting against.

“You okay babe? Do you want to go back inside? Or we can always go back to the car and turn on the heater and finish our ice cream there. Or we—”

I had to stop him. I couldn’t let him do this to me. I couldn’t let him do this to himself.

“Nononononono.” I said that same letter over and over; like they were in a rush to get out and my brain couldn’t get the signal to my mouth fast enough, so they just came in a rush of word vomit; in a jumble of blurred speech; like I was speaking my own jargon that no one else knew—that no one else would ever know.

Like if I repeated it constantly, I would almost start to believe it. No, no, no, no, this wasn’t really happening. It wasn’t. Really, it wasn’t. They say that if you keep telling yourself something, one day, you’re going to wake up believing it, right? So if I keep repeating it, maybe I’d believe it.
I sighed, as he looked at me like he still didn’t believe me. I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t believe me, either.

“No it’s fine, really. I’m fine,” I protested, forcing out a painful grin at an anxious, frantic; desperate attempt to get him to realize that I really was fine; that he was fine; that we’d be fine. That I wasn’t really going to do this. I wasn’t really going to break his heart. That I couldn’t do this. Not to me, not to him, not to my family, not to his family. Not to any of us.

He gave me an unsure look, like he knew I wasn’t telling the truth but wasn’t going to push it any further, knowing that I’d tell him when I knew how to tell him; when I felt like telling him, and not a moment sooner.

He squeezed my hand even more tightly in his fiercely warm grip at a completely obvious (but I didn’t want to tell him this. It was so adorable how he tried to constantly keep my warm in the 20 degree weather even though it was a completely lost cause. I couldn’t ruin it for him and tell him to stop. I couldn’t ruin any of this for him) attempt to warm my icy hands as he discarded his empty Gotta Have It Coldstone Creamery paper ice cream container into the nearest parking lot trash can, before prying mine gently from the confines of my own freezing hands and discarding it, too, throwing it effortlessly in an arc over his head and into the trash can.

I hope he could do that with his feelings for me—simply throw them in a trash can, like it was no big deal. They’d be recycled right? He could find another who was so much better; right?

Then we were heading for the car; he was opening the passenger door for me; I was climbing in, buckling my seatbelt, he was closing his door, pulling his seatbelt over his chest as he cranked the engine of his BMW, lacing his fingers with my own in between our seats, resting our two intertwined hearts against the console for all the world to see.

I could do this, right? I could break our hearts apart? Even though I’d never get all of the parts of mine back? I could do this. It was for the best. For the both of us. Right? Yeah. Right.


“Hey Aiden?” I asked hesitantly, learning back in the passenger seat, enveloping the warmth that came from the heated leather seats. The warmth combined with our sleepy I was from our date almost made me forget how I would soon be picking up the shattered remains of my heart. Almost.

There was no response as he continued to dig through his stack of CD’s, reaching across me to get into the dashboard compartment, his torso stretched over mine, his arms grazing my stomach as he flipped through CD after CD, intent on finding that one special one that he just had to play for me.

“Aiden.”

Silence.

“Aiden, really. This is serious. Listen to me.”

“Okay, okay. I’m listening, I’m listening. Whatcha got to say baby?”

“I can’t do this, Aiden.”

He turned to look at me questioningly, but then shrugged, shutting the dashboard compartment and adjusting himself back into the driver’s seat, pulling the seatbelt over his chest as he said happily,

“Okay, that’s fine. I mean, we didn’t have to, I just thought, you know…Listening to music and talking would be a fine way to wind down our date and all, but we can always just go over to my house and chill or something. I didn’t know it was an issue. You know you can always tell me anything.”

He didn’t get it. I hoped he would take this ‘tell me anything’ that I was about to tell him the right way. “No, Aiden, wait,” I stopped him, reaching out to hold his bicep in my hands as he reached for the stick shift to pull into reverse; out of my apartment’s parking lot to take us to his own residence.

“No. I don’t mean that I can’t do tonight—I mean,” I paused, laughing ironically to myself. That was exactly what I meant. “I can’t do tonight, but…But that’s not what I mean, Aiden. I can’t do tomorrow, either.” We’d had plans to take his ‘Little Brother’ that he sponsored from his church to the zoo and out to lunch tomorrow.

“Oh, well, that’s fine! We can always reschedule. I mean, Aaron will be kind of pissed off, being the little temperamental eight years old that he is, but he’ll get over it. Aaron and I can always come get you after church on Sunday if you can’t do it Saturday? I know you like to sleep in, but please, Adee, do this for Aaron. He’s so infatuated with you…Can’t you just…Not sleep in for once?”

The more naïve and innocent he became in this conversation, the more shattered my heart become, the bigger the tears were that welled up like an ocean behind my eyes.

“No, Aiden,” my voice was strangled and pained and I knew he’d react accordingly; because that was the kind of amazing boyfriend that he was. The amazing boyfriend I was breaking up with. “I mean that I can’t do this. I can’t do us. I want us…I want us to breakup.”

His face was torn; like I just told him that I’d hit his beloved dog with my car and my God I was sorry, it was an accident; but his face was portraying the fact that that didn’t necessarily make up for it; that it was just an accident, but my God, that didn’t really make it any better, now did it.

He took my face in his large, warm hands hesitantly, cradling my face like it was the most precious diamond; the most precious piece of glassware in the entire world, like I was the most precious, beautiful human being he’d ever seen and he wouldn’t dare let me fall and break—like he didn’t want my heart which he held so precariously, so carefully, to fall to the ground far far below and shatter to a million pieces.

“Wh-What are you trying to say, Adee? I don’t understand. I thought we were happy, I thought…I thought we were going to make it through anything and everything, I thought…I thought you loved me?”

“God, Adee, I thought you loved me.” I shook my head ferociously; he didn’t understand, letting out a strangled cry in frustration; in desperation, trying to pry my face away from his hands, but he held steady, simply pulling me into his chest amidst my desperate fighting, as the first tear cascaded down my face at his words.

“ I had the ring, and it was all picked out and I took your two best friends and they helped me…And it took forever to find one that we all three agreed that you’d love, but we did it, Adee, we did it and its underneath my mattress and I made reservations to your favorite restaurant even though it’s in Florida I was going to borrow my Uncle’s jet and fly us out and God d**n it Adee you can’t…I don’t…Can’t we work this out?”

I let out a heartbreaking sob and desperately shoved him away.

“No Aiden, you didn’t. Please God I’m begging you, tell me you didn’t—” I asked softly, completely unsure, wanting to hear the answer, but desperately hoping that he was making a desperate joke to try to get me to stay with him.

This was all a joke, now wasn’t it?

“I did Adee, I did. You can’t…You can’t tell me you don’t love me. Don’t tell me you don’t love me! Why are you doing this, Adee? I did everything I could, I know I don’t have much to give you but I gave you everything I had. I gave you everything and…and you can’t just take it and shatter it to the ground, like these past three and half years haven’t meant anything to you…I gave you the world, Adee. Don’t you…Don’t you want the world from me? I can give you the world. I can give you anything. Please, I don’t understand…I don’t…”

The first tear cascaded down his face, followed by another, and then another. With each tear of his own, my heart beat against my chest; almost racketing; banging to be let out; to desperately tell him this was all a disgustingly devious joke and we’d be fine; we’d be okay. But I couldn’t. This wasn’t just some joke. With each heartbreaking tear of his that fell, my heart banged; begging to be let out; to help; to make this all better. Like our hearts were connected; and what broke his heart broke mine. And since I was breaking his heart, in essence, I myself, ironically enough was breaking my own heart.

His tears looked like crystals as they fell; sparkling against his skin, the moon far beyond him gently lighting his face. Almost like he was a devastatingly heartbroken angel. My angel. I’d never seen him cry before. His tears were like the shattered remnants of his heart; each tear another crack, another split to his heart as I broke it into a million little pieces.

I pulled him urgently into my chest, stroking his hair as I urgently tried to think of the words to put his heart back together but break it all over again in the same line—to make this as sincere, as innocent, but as strict and unsympathetic as possible. I couldn’t break my heart; my angel’s heart. I couldn’t…I couldn’t do this.

I had to…I had to do this. I had to. He didn’t mean anything—nothing at all. I could do this, right? Even as he sobbed wet, hot tears against my tee shirt, even as he held me around the waist as tightly as he could as he buried his face within my tee shirt; his grip almost suffocating me. His body racketed with the sobs which he cried into me. He loved me so much that even when I was the one causing him the pain, he ran to me for comfort.

And it was tear-jerking; even more heartbreaking that I had to do this—that I had to now become neither his girlfriend, best friend, nor his source of overall comfort, no matter what. I could do this. He’d be fine without me. He’d find someone so much better; so much more amazing than me; right?
“I know this is going to sound way too cliché and predictable. But I love you. I’m just…I’m not IN LOVE with you anymore, Aiden. I’m so sorry Aiden. I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry I have to do this to you.” With a deep breath, I pried his tight knit fingers apart from around my waist.
I held his tear-stricken face in my hands, wiping furiously away at the distraught tears which continuously poured from his heartbroken, completely lifeless; emotionless eyes; which I knew I had caused; drawing all of the life out of him as I desperately tried to duck-tape the pieces of his heart back together and give back to him; even though I knew he’d never take it back from me; never want it back, before I had to leave for forever. I pressed a gentle, innocent kiss to his forehead before unbuckling my seatbelt.
I opened the passenger door, grabbed my purse from the floor of his car, and with one last brokenhearted smile, I was gone, out into the midnight blue freezing cold atmosphere. Just the perfect atmosphere for my perfectly shattered heart; perfect icicle pieces of something that was supposed to be warm and happily beating for that special someone that loved you for you, just because you were you.
But the problem was Aiden had those warm, happily beating pieces of my heart—I’d never get them back. He was the one that made me happy; the one that I was comfortable with no matter what; the one who I could be me with him and not care what he thought because I knew he’d love me no matter what.
I waited until I’d slammed the car door behind me, until I’d sprinted up the stairs into my apartment complex, into the the elevator, the doors sliding shut behind me, to slid to the floor. Let my purse fall to the floor next to me.
And let the heartbreaking, wrenching sobs racket throughout my chest; my heart colliding with a painful, heart destroying racket with each sob, tears cascading down my face in a never ending salty waterfall. What we had had was amazing; was wonderful; had been so simple and effortless. What we had was something special. And I would always miss it. I would miss it for forever and always wish I could have it back.