Graveyard of Hearts

4. Break Down

"Wh..." Rachael starts to say but her voice waivers. "What?"

"I think we should break up," I say quietly and it feels just as bad saying it the second time. Cameron and Alex stand up to leave the room but stop once they hear the word that leaves Rachael's mouth.

"No," she says and Cameron's jaw drops with amazement. He turns to Alex and his eyes go wide.

"No?" I ask, surprise laced in my voice.

"No," she states again. "There's no way in hell we're breaking up are you serious?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" I question her. I can see Cameron and Alex standing nervously in my peripherals, they want to leave but they want to watch too.

"How could you just give up everything we have. All of the time we have invested in our relationship? It doesn't make sense. It's irresponsible," she says.

I give her a weird look. "Irresponsible?" I repeat back to her but as a question. "You're joking, right? I try to make this decision and you're making it sound like I'm quitting a job or something."

"The answer is no, Nash. That's the end of it. We're going to talk about this and make it work."

Cameron coughs from the side of the room and I turn towards him. "We should go," I say, and take Rachael's hand. We push past Cameron and Alex and out the front door.

"No?" I say again still with amazement.

She nods her head. "You heard right."

"I can't believe you," I say and walk towards my car.

"What Nash? What can't you believe?" She says following me.

"I just can't believe you, Rachel. Simple as that.. I can't believe you'd do something like that." I get in my car and pull out of Cameron's driveway. I look in my mirror and see her still standing there. My drive home is silent, no music, no noise, just driving.

She is the type of girl to do that. She's tough and stubborn and its part of what I like so much about her.

It's funny, the things that make us fall in love with someone are the same things that make us fall out of love. You notice little quirks and little idiosyncrasies and fall in love with them. The things that make them different than anyone else you've ever met before. But eventually the stubbornness turns into an inability to compromise. Her quietness has turned into our lack of communication.

We've become to comfortable. Too comfortable to find anything new to love about each other. Too comfortable to realize that we're taking everything for granted. People usually strive for comfortability and here I am cursing it. From the outside it looks like I should be saying "I made it" or "we made it". We have a house together and a life and friends and we have dinner parties and game nights and group trips and it's such a great, easy, fun life that I've just become so bored with. Not because of her, not because of my friends or my job or my house or any of those things, just because of me.

How much I wish it was her fault some days. Or someone... somethings fault. Anything. Something to blame this feeling on instead of just attaching a question mark to it.

I pull into my driveway and park outside the garage. The weight of the day keeping me stationary, forcing me to think about what's happened.