Despair In The Apartment Lounge

63| a choice of you

It's funny, but it had never occurred to me how much I've actually missed you within that gap.

There would be moments where I would think of you, naturally so, and other moments where I would have the sudden urge to know how you were doing in life. But there had never emerged a deeper longing for you again -the kind similar to how when we had first begun to date and the very prospect of kissing you had wind me up so much, or when we had split our different ways and the longing for your improbable return had been so excruciatingly punishing.

I hadn't longed for you that way again.

But now you're sat across from me, and I've come to the realization that I have missed you.

A group of rowdy young college students are seated behind us, brazenly mocking the stale pastries and the over-expensive espresso that you are currently sipping on. Of course what they're saying is true, the pastries are always either burnt or nearing raw and the coffee expensive yet repulsively sweet. The only reason we had voluntarily come here ourselves was because it had been the location of our third date (you had suddenly wanted to feel nostalgic, therefore pitching in the idea to visit the places of our first few dates).

But their jeering are beginning to vex you, evident as you frequently gander to their direction to only sigh heavily at the end, no longer squinting and nodding at me unfortunately.

So I cut my story short, a new one that you've never heard of, and I ask;

"Alexa, love, d'you want to leave now?"

"Very much so, yes."

You answer, already gathering your belongings as I wait to put your devilishly red coat around your shoulders.

Once on pavement, we guffawed loudly as I fought to enclose my hands around your fists, trying to stop you from flipping off the obtrusive flock of college kids we were losing sight of. As our laughter began to die down and as you sighed heavily again into my side, though this time in a pleasant context, you turned your head to me and grinned.

Not your usual tight smile, but your beautifully wide grin that causes the skin at the edges of your mouth to crease and the person seeing it to automatically mimic its size. And then you began to ask;

"So, where do we go next?"

"Alex... Where do we go from here?"

Courage is beginning to run scarce as he avoids her hopelessly hopeful eyes, aiming his own to the no-longer steaming cups of coffee between them. When, unsurprisingly, the sight offers him no answer, he peers out the window to find a small group of (seemingly looking;) respectful paparazzi.

His previous statement had been met with a silence that offered no clear indication of where this conversation was leading them. The words floating tangibly in the air.

From her place, it seems that from very the moment she had entered the diner till now, Alex had been deliberating every passing second that they were sharing together -which is true, but what she doesn't know is what exactly it is that he is deliberating.

In her mind there are only two possible purposes of their little meeting today, as well as the reason to why he had commenced it:

1) he's come to liberate her from the purgatory state in which he had put her in the last five months; where she knows nothing and is sure of nothing in regards of their relationship/friendship, if they even still have one. Five punishing months of pure uncertainty. So finally, he's come to tell her that they can't conceivably keep going on together because she is too tiring to continue on with, and because he is too tired to continue on with her.