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by Lucy Cho, 17

She didn’t know when it had started. Perhaps it had been their first date, his hand in hers, eyes crinkling softly and a promise of another, again, next time. Perhaps it had been their first fight, a year into their relationship, harsh words falling from lips loosened from alcohol. Perhaps it had been a year before they parted, arriving at the house that had long ceased to be a home, cold, dark, and quiet from misuse. 

Perhaps it had been the first time they had met, fingers brushing, deep eyes meeting hers, knowing that he would be it for her. She loved him, would never stop loving him, even years later, long after they had last spoken. 

In some twisted way, it was reassuring. She would never lose him, even after all that had happened. Through mutual friends, through social media accounts she could never bring herself to delete, through word of mouth, she could keep an eye on him. He never properly entered another relationship after what they had had. He was as affected by her, by them, as she was. 

They were parallel lines, spending most of their early lives preparing for the one moment, the meeting of two souls so intrinsically connected, only to part and grow further and further away from one another, never to properly meet again.

Their love had been once in a lifetime, but they had never had time, and when they did it was never the right time. Date nights held on her one night-off after months of night shifts, brunch trips delayed by the incessant ringing of the phone, and promises of later, again, next time that were never fulfilled. Just missing each other, her heading home as he pulls out of the driveway, him arriving to a just-barely cooled dinner and a note.

When they were younger, more eager, more naive, they would have waited even just a minute more for the other, but the unrelenting tides of time pushed them forth, away from delusions of grandeur and could have, would haves. 

Even when a shift would end particularly early, the other would be sound asleep. Any possible intimacy dismissed by their lives, and both unable to do much past a gentle brush of hands before being swept away once more. In a way, they were destined to grow apart, just as they had been destined to meet.

Still, they made do. When they met with friends, they played the happy, successful couple, hiding the fact that they had seen the other just as much as they had seen the friends. They found date times. They lay next to each other every night they could spend together. If one fell ill, the other would take time off, and sit right by them.

And it was fine. It was fine that she saw the love of her life looking right back at her once a week. It was fine that she hadn’t had a full conversation with him in months. It was fine, because at least she had him, and he had her, and they could see each other at all.

Then he began to come back at the same time as her on her early days. She would have been worried but quietly, almost shamefully, overjoyed if it had simply been him coming home late. But the late nights came with passing out on the couch, with the smell of cheap beer from his beautiful mouth, and with anger. 

With the late nights came arguments that they had both been too asleep, too tired, or too desperate for time together to have beforehand. With the late nights came grievances she hadn’t even known she had, and anger from him like she had never seen before. 

Morning afters were quiet, with him being too hungover to speak properly, and no sign of remembering any of what had occurred the night before. After long months of enduring the quiet tears in their shared room as he lay on the couch, she resolved to break it off. 

She made more time for him. Any time she could fit into their busy schedules, she tried to break it off. But everytime she would look at him and open her mouth, he would smile his wide smile, gummy and full of teeth, and she would stop. She knew she couldn’t afford to keep this up, but the sight of him lighting up as she neared, prevented her, everytime.

This warmth clashed with the sight of him at night, eyes crazed, gait unsteady, and mouth full of cold, cold venom, which had become all too common. Still, she could not bring herself to simply leave him either, not when he would murmur “I love you” into her skin when he thought she was asleep, even when hungover, not when he would bring her flowers every minor anniversary, left on the table for her to see whenever she managed to come home, and not when he looked at her like he had seen her hang the stars up in the sky herself. 

It was long after they had settled into this routine, her tears permanently staining her pillow and the warmth between them having become ever so slightly stifling, that she finally fully resolved herself to end what they had herself. She couldn’t keep up with the whiplash she got every morning after a night of screaming, and it would have to end. She tried to preserve them, one last time, with the request that he not drink that night. 

He returned home drunker than he had been any other night, far past intoxicated. Without time to even pick a fight, he had vomited on the cold kitchen floor and collapsed into it. She entered the house to his unresponsive body, and a quiet acceptance of their end. He had rejected her last olive branch, and she was done.

She quickly dialled the emergency services, keeping her tears to a minimum as she read out their address. In the time until they arrived, she searched around the house for any belongings she had left outside their room. She would be packing soon, and she needed it to be discreet for the duration of his recovery. She couldn’t stay with him any longer, but he was still her love, her only, and she wouldn’t allow him to fall any deeper down his hole of alcoholism than he had. 

It was then that she had found the letter. A recruitment letter for him, to his dream job, position, salary, and city. And with it, a rejection letter in his distinct scrawl, inconsistent but clearly legible, stark black ink drying on white paper, detailing his dedication to her and her life and her place. She understood, at that moment, that this could spell out nothing but their end. 

The road to his recovery was long and arduous, but she could not dream of leaving him. Even as withdrawal symptoms struck him, and previously spoken drunk words left his sober lips, and she had to drop everything after he had another episode, another relapse, she knew that it would be so much worse if she left, and if she had left before. 

A long year passed, and with it, he grew steadier and more settled. And with this newfound steadiness and vitality came new offers, each better than the last, which he rejected each time. She waited, quietly, for him to fully recover. 

One ordinary morning, abruptly and without warning, she took time off work. She had already arranged to move to a new apartment, and would be allowed to move in that day. She packed her bags as quietly and quickly as she could, then walked down to the kitchen, where he sat. He looked up at her, then down at the bags, and up at her again, and stopped, staring at her inquisitively.

“We’re over.” she said, words tasting bitter on her tongue, like a pill too large to swallow. At the uncomfortable molding over her lips around the words, the eight letters and three syllables to end what they had, just like the eight letters and three syllables that had started them, she grimaced.

Then, without a word, she grabbed her bags and stepped out into the driveway and into her car. She left, and she could feel her heart break all over again, just as it had when she had first realized it had to end. She cried and cried, pulling over when her tears blurred her vision too much for her to drive properly. She cried for the could haves and the would haves, and she cried because neither of them would ever have what they had again. Then, as resolutely as she had decided to leave, she started the car again, rubbing away her tears and going to her new place, her new life.

Unbeknownst to her, however, she had left one of her books at the old house. It had been left in the kitchen the day he had collapsed, and she had felt too heartbroken to properly look there for anything she may have left.

He stood up, numb, and walked over to it. Finding the page she had dog-eared, he smiled at the memory of the habit he had previously found so disconcerting and obnoxious. The book opened to the page, with one singular quote on it. 

“Time is the currency of relationships.” 

And it was then that he finally cried.

San Diego, California

Reader’s note: This story made me tear up! It is a phenomenal representation of a toxic relationship—how they can still be full of love but have it not work out anyway.