Now he's gone and it all hurts more than I ever wanted to know.

"What do you think about us?" he asked.
Confounded and caught off guard, thinking that this sort of
conversation has been avoided for at least seven months, I was unsure
of what to say. Maybe I was shocked, afraid of what might come out of
my mouth.
"I don't know", those were the only words I could find.
And it went back and forth like that for some awful fifteen minutes
where he rephrased the question and where I avoided answering.
Finally, most likely made impatient from my efforts to dodge his
inquisition, words I never anticipated fluttered from his lips and
pierced tiny holes in my heart and then bigger ones that left me empty
and angry.

He began, "You're so hard to read".
"I get that a lot", the words hitting the air like ice.
I could tell that I wasn't going to like what I was going to hear
because he wouldn't look at me and I couldn't look at him.
"I guess I never wanted this to get serious because I always knew I'd
be leaving. So I had this mindset that so long as I didn't let it
happen everything would be fine. And I guess that worked, because it
never got serious. But all along I told myself that as soon as things
got clingy or one of us got needy, it would be over. It never got that
way and so here we are".

I just sat in silence. I had no idea what he wanted me to say and
honestly, I couldn't piece together a coherent response, I couldn't
even react.

"I'm leaving tomorrow for a year and a half"

"Yeah, I know that. I've known that for a long time", wondering what
the point of stating that was.

"I don't know if things would have been different if I didn't have
that mindset. I enjoyed most of the time I spent with you but I just
don't know. Once I told you that I was leaving I thought it would be over. I thought you'd be gone".

What do you mean you just don't know. And then it hit me. Emotions I
hadn't known were there washed over me and I felt used and broken and
like an idiot. Because I thought there was something there all along
and that it was being ignored because the end was always drawing
nearer, pushed away because it would hurt to much to accept it and
then lose it. I was sure there was something behind the way he looked
into my eyes and the way he kissed me and the way he touched me like
he needed me. But here he was telling me that none of that was true,
that it was all in my head.

I stared at the ground, determined to keep from him that he had just
broken my heart, made me lose faith in my own feelings.

"Are we on the same page?" he turned to look at me when he asked.

"Yes", I replied even though there were so many things I wanted to
say, so many things I needed to say and never will get to. I wanted to
tell him that I could have felt more for him and I that I wanted to
feel more for him but never admitted those feelings to myself or to
him because I knew he was vanishing from my life. I wondered if what I
wanted to say was any different than what he had said. And I think it
was very different. What he told me was that he didn't allow himself
to feel anything more because he didn't want to and that it worked,
what I wanted to say was that I felt something more but couldn't let
myself and now was failing miserably.

We sat there on his back porch in silence, being suffocated by the
humidity. I stood up suddenly, grabbed the plates we had eaten cake
off of and brought them inside and washed them. I had to run away, I
couldn't sit there any longer and lie to him. I couldn't deny what I
was feeling on the inside but I couldn't tell him either. His roommate
came home and I was saved. He was supposed to go to dinner at 8:00pm
with some friends. I wasn't directly invited so when I said I was
going home he asked if I was coming with, I said I'd go home and take
a shower then let him know. Then, like a child, I snapped "you don't
have to invite me if you don't want me there". And then I walked
through the house to the front door, leaving him and his roommate on
the back porch.

I drove home in a fury, with tears streaking wildly down my face,
trying to control my sobbing so that I could see the road. I got home
and turned the shower on cold, collapsing on the floor, tremors of
emotions rendering my motor skills useless. I turned off the water and
walked to my bedroom and sat on my bed, the one we had shared so many
times, dripping wet the cold water evaporating from my skin into the
sticky air. I picked up the phone and called him. I told him I wasn't
coming to dinner and when he asked why I wanted to say because I hate
you but I said it was because I didn't want to. He told me that he
thought I should come and so I agreed, mostly because I wanted the
chance to explain to him how I really felt. But fuck, I was in no mood
to be social, to smile and laugh at other people's jokes, to look at
his friends sitting next to their cute little girlfriends at the
dinner table. So I found some clothes and walked out the door with wet
hair and no make up and I got to his house and when I walked in and
saw him I wanted to hit him to somehow hurt him the way he hurt me.

Dinner was awful, I couldn't eat, I didn't talk to him but instead
shamelessly flirted with the waiter and any other male within reach of
conversation. Afterwards everyone went back to his house and we sat on
that damned porch again. Everyone was getting drunk and I refused to
even drink a beer, knowing quite well that alcohol and pent up
emotions don't mix well for me. Because after one beer would come
twelve more and after that I would most likely find a corner to cry
in. So I sat there miserable and all I wanted to do was go home but I
didn't want to leave on such awkward terms, without the chance to say
what I meant.

Someone decided it was time to go to the bar and that was the last
place I wanted to be. For once, I expressed my opinion and told him I
was going home.

"Do you mind if I come with?" he asked.

I wanted to say no, I really did but instead replied "It will cost you $50".

And for the last time he took off my clothes and stared into my eyes
and fucked with my emotions.

In the morning he kissed me goodbye and I told him to be safe. Then he
walked out the door.

Now I want to delete all the nice things I ever said about him, erase all the feelings I've ever felt for him because each time I remember something he said or something he did it doesn't feel the same.