The Last Meeting

It was an angry meeting.. If he could have, he would have hurled a stone at her. One of those stones she had kept trying to bounce off  the water for all these years. Years was it? or ages.. They had been together forever now! A school girl's crush at first, the shy shade of attraction in junior college, the stolen hugs of romance later and a strong rock, an anchor so recently. And now they were saying goodbye?

He could still say goodbye and walk away without being destroyed, if only she would behave like it had mattered to her. If she showed that each little sacrifice she made for him had truly been about love, and not about duty, that each lie she had told for him had been about importance than compulsion, that every gift was about significance and not social conduct.  It would greatly help, if she stopped telling how they were still going to live and be happy, instead of turning into zombies that walked the earth not because they wanted to, but because they had to... haunted by a past that was so beautiful that it made breathing difficult and ripping out the heart with bare hands felt easier than this dark torture. Where the hell were her tears? One drop and he would be able live, one drop and he would be released!

But she just sat there, staring at their pond, cuddling a little pebble, frequently breaking the reverie. This life has been made for bigger and better things than you and I. When we live it, we shall be happy. But he wanted to have the bigger and better with her. It's human to feel devastated, but time will heal us, and ten years from now you will be able to look back and smile. How do you know there is nothing better out there for us till we step out. We will no longer be bound by each other and will be free like birds to fly as high, to cross any border just as we please... and on and on her reasons went! 

He had a hundred on his phone, none good enough but she had sent a hundred. Now since they met she had muttered a hundred more. So mere reasons had been enough to break them apart? Mere reasons and twisted words to choose a different path? A new thought was creeping up, the thought he had so desperately battled to keep away.. was she happy doing this?

Reasons?! excuses more like, to break free and live. Live the bigger and better and test waters for the new. Excuses for she could no longer keep up the facade. This was how it had to end with reasons and lies.

As she cuddled the stone and looked out at the pond, she did not tell him for the first time in her life she was trying to find a reason, good enough, to stay alive!