Finally, it was confirmed. Her heart was broken in that single moment that could have shattered time. He was seeing someone. He was over her. It all made sense.

Or did it?

Did any of it make any sense? How could someone tell another person that they love them and move on in a matter of months? What in god’s name could she have said to make this right again? What did the truth matter any more?

            So instead, she settled with a “You can do whatever you want.” There was a biting chill in those six words; an empty reality that tore at her heart. It was true; he could do whatever he wanted. She had forfeited the right to claim any decision over his life. She let him leave with her promise of friendship. She walked away from it all a second time. With a sinking feeling of finality that wrought tears. She knew however, that they had left a million questions in their wake.

            So in the next weeks, there was a hostility writhing beneath the surface of their friendship that had not been there before. It was has if the world had lurched them into a very angry place and neither of them could vent any of the pent-up frustration. She was unusually short with the clients on the phone. There was certain maliciousness in his teasing of Dwight. And even in their coldness with others, they could not find any relief with the anger inside.

            Each was angry at the other for, ironically, the anger. It was an extremely looping paradox that only the other could expunge. The pain and love that was withheld from the other would be enough to destroy the greatest person, but not these two. These two seemed to be bursting with the passion, both good and bad, but each refused to let it out. So when a small piece of it was, at last, revealed, the rest quickly followed suite in a last-ditch effort to create what could have been.