7. Heartbreak

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heartbreak (n.)

        overwhelming distress

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He died without meaning to. It was one of those unplanned deaths that you go into thinking that everything will turn out fine.

That was a lie.

He knew it from the second she said that she didn't know how she felt anymore. Uncertainty led to an unloving type of love. The kind that you fake until you've made it or at least got there halfway alive.

She didn't need to tell him she was lacking the emotion and that the oxytocin being released in her brain was intensifying the bad memories instead of reminding her of the solutions they had come up with together. She didn't need to say that she didn't love him, or hate him, but that she'd simply gone numb. She didn't have to keep on pretending and lie through the same lips she once passionately kissed him with. She didn't need to say anything at all. He could tell. It was written all over her face. The lack of that one emotion made a complete difference.

"This can't work if we're not both feeling it." And she was right. Love was a two-way window. But now, she wasn't sure if she could see through the glass clearly.

He didn't say or do anything for fear the blood might spill from his eyes. Or that the tears might fall from the skies. Or that the screams would sound from his mouth. Or that the weakness might uncover the doubt. Or that his heart would break up like glass and the broken shards might pierce his chest and fall to the ground as he drowned in his blood and in her stare and clung to some imaginary lifeline as he gasped for air.

He could picture it alright. It was as if it were already happening. He was counting down the seconds until his death. And she just stood there waiting for him to die. Watching as Death played tug of war with his heart, hands crossed, feet tapping as if the eternities couldn't go by fast enough.

The graveyard had a spot for him. The funeral could quickly be arranged. But he hadn't thought about it. Or expected it to change. At least, not this fast.

You would've thought that they would've been something.

It was not her fault she had not learned to love.