THAT'S HOW WE PARTED...

'You didn't have to come'...He said, looking away...It's more than half an hour we were together that evening, and he hadn't looked into my eyes, not even once...And it had left me clueless, whether it was really that he didn't want to, or he just couldn't...Regardless of the reason, I knew exactly what was going to happen, at the end of that evening and that had made me get few painful pangs in my stomach...I wished, I could make that moment stop, and not let the evening come...I just wished…

As I ran my fingers aimlessly over the coffee menu, I asked, 'So'...My eyes met his, briefly, and the next moment he looked away, again...'You say', all he said...Yes, I had to say…Yes, I had to ask…I wanted to ask him, why did he send me the text which he had the previous evening...I wanted to ask him, what had made him take such a decision...I wanted to ask him, didn't he think about me, even once, before he had made up his mind...I wanted to ask him, how, once sweet, innocent and always soft spoken ‘Baby’ of mine could be so brave to say what he had, in that text…But, no word came out of my mind...i kept numb…I sighed...I looked away too, to hide my tears, which had refused to listen to me anymore...And I went back to the previous evening, when I had to witness one of the most difficult moment of my life, followed by one of the most painful evenings of my life...

It was the last day of my internship...Summer had really taken a cruel peak that year, and with an internship that made me have more than 5 meetings back-to-back, everyday, I was almost in the verge of getting insane...Thankfully, everything had a point where it ended, and the internship was coming to an end that day...And I was happy, I had enough reasons to be happy...One, a very important one, being I was going to meet him...It was more than a quarter of the year I hadn't met him...Unfortunately, his internship was in a different city and the freaky maddening schedule of assignments of the internship had made both of us give very little time to each other...To make things even crazier, after a maddening fight over all the useless reasons a month back, it was rare that we were able to have a heart-to-heart conversation...Therefore, with all the reasons together, end of the internship was something I had been looking forward to with all my heart... And I was sure; he was waiting for the same too…Although, now I realized his reasons were not the same as I imagines them to be…

That evening, however, things were not stored for me, as I would have liked them to be...As the day was turning to be a beautiful evening, and I was at the zenith of my happiness, I had a text message on my phone...It was from him...It was a short message, but one of its kind...One of those kind, that had the power to devastate my life...One of those kind, that had the power to turn my life into a living hell...And one of those kind, that had the power to turn me lifeless...And, truly it did...The 2 liner read, 'I think we should go our own ways...We're not meant to be together'...The rest of the evening was something I would never like to remember in any point of my life...For few hours, I was not able to realize, what had happened...And when I did, I knew my whole world was crashing down...

After a sleepless night that followed the evening, I had got into the first bus I could know would reach the small town I intended to go...And now I was there, in front of him...Sitting in the same coffee shop, where we had sat six months before too...But things were not same this evening, as they were six months back…Then we were happy, and now we were not...Then, I was myself, enjoying with the guy I love, my hands in his...And today, we were sitting far across from each other, and our hearts even further...We were not into each other anymore...My soul inside was screaming helplessly…In that scream, my voice had lost its existence, and I had ended up sitting numb and quite...

'Ma'am, your coffee', the uniformed waiter at the coffee shop brought the coffee he ordered for me...He knew everything about me, including the coffee I would like to have...But today, that hadn't made me happy, my inside was crying, screaming and cursing him, 'cuz, it knew, any of what he was doing for me today, was not more than just a gentle gesture and that he didn't care for me anymore...My inside was soaked in some stupid arrogance which kept telling me that I should yell at the silent guy in front of me, cuz despite of knowing how much he was wanted in my life, he had decided to move away from me...My inside was dipped in endless tears, which kept reminding me that the guy sitting in front of me was not mine anymore...And, every time I started looking at those eyes of him, my own eyes betrayed me...'Cuz, unlike always, I couldn’t see the love and care they reflected for me..'.Cuz unlike always, they didn't speak to me...And unlike always they didn't seem familiar to me...

It was more than a couple of hours, we sat that way...and more than a couple of coffees, we ordered, just to leave untouched...Words were rare, feelings were dry, tears were more...Neither of us knew, what to say, how to behave, how to react...All we were doing was stealing few looks at each other...Time was passing by...I knew I had very less time with him, and I didn't want it...I wished I could make the clock stop running...I wished I could make the last sunrays of the day stop...I wished I could just get into his arms and forget the world...I wished I could just realize that all that was happening around me was just in my imagination and in real I was with him, holding his hands...I wished he would just call me his Princess and make me feel the luckiest girl around...But I knew, none of it was going to happen...I knew, that, once we were out of this place, we would never meet each other again...I knew, no matter what, we were already miles away from each other...I knew, the 'WE' that always existed, was already a history...

'I will leave then'...I said as I walked to the bus station where my return bus was waiting...He handed me my bag...It was dark everywhere, the lights away had made the place a magical one...The bus had started getting occupied...As he handed my ticket, he arranged my disobedient hair on my face...I was shivering...The touch of his hand, which was so familiar to me was still the same...And it made me get chills through my veins...My eyes dampened...He could know that...He wiped them off...For the first time in that evening he took me in his arms...He kissed my eyes...I didn't resist...Neither my tears, nor my increasing sob, nor him...

I let myself sob, and sob, and sob...Right in his arms...'Cuz I knew, that was the last time I was crying like that, I knew, that was the end of it all, I knew that was the moment when we were closing the most beautiful chapter of my life...I didn't know, for how long I was in his arms, crying my heart out...But when I did, it was time, I got into the bus...To start a journey, all alone...It was also the time, I got into the paths of life..To start a ride, all alone, where I didn't have him...'Cuz it was the time, we have chosen to go our different ways...

Yes, it was the time, we had departed, from each other, from being one...Yes, it was how we parted...Our ways, towards two separate ones…Parallel…And never to meet again… Anywhere…