—You didn’t think this was love, did you?

I slapped him in the face, hard, before I could stop myself. By the time I regained my senses, I found myself with my hands strangling his neck as I held him down on the kitchen table, despite his being four inches taller than me. His face turned bright red as he struggled to get my hands off his neck. There were tears in his bloodshot eyes. The tears from my own eyes splashed his face and ran down his cheek. I let go. When I realized what I had done, it was too late, and after a few coughs, he got up from the table as if nothing had happened and put on his coat with his usual, sloth-like movements. Then he slung his ancient backpack on his shoulder and went out the front door, leaving me behind. I did not go after him. Instead, I went directly to the balcony as soon as he had left. I opened the window and stared out at his back. I stared and stared. I just knew this was the last I would ever see of him. I stared until he disappeared completely, until he became a dot that faded away, keeping him in my sight until the end.

A few days later, I rang the bell at the gate of his house. No one answered, no matter how many times I pressed. His gate, which once made a sound like a crying person as it opened, remained closed.

I left a letter in his letterbox. Well, not really a letter, just some ripped-out pages from the diary I had kept while we were together. Thirty pages overflowing with my emotions from the times I had spent with him. I didn’t even recall what I’d written. Just like I didn’t know what we had been, in the end. On the last page of my diary, I wrote that I hoped he would consider seeing me again, that I would wait for him to call me. I tossed it in his letterbox like throwing rubbish into a bin, this piece of my raw and still-beating heart.

Two weeks later came a text message.

Why don’t you try becoming a writer?

There was no answer to my plea.

This bastard, to the bitter end, said only exactly what he wanted to say, never failing to condescend to me. All sorts of replies flitted through my head; I ended up putting my phone down. I made the decision, for the first and last time in our relationship, to choose what was best for me. Closing my eyes, I pressed Delete on his number. The digits came to mind as clearly as if they’d been branded down my cheek from my eyelid to my upper lip, but someday, I knew, even this would fade from memory.

In the end, we didn’t even eat a plate of warm pasta together.