I sit back down. At least there’s that—that the rest of the breakup doesn’t happen with me in a half-hovering position, my butt sticking out in the air. My face freezes, blank, empty. But as the camera zooms in, you can see a hint of fear.

Our eyes meet. When you’re with someone there’s a secret kind of look that passes between you that you take for granted. Something in their eyes that tells you that they are home for you.

It wasn’t there anymore.

Later I’d wonder if it had been gone for weeks or months and I hadn’t noticed.

“What’s wrong?” I say.

I’d never been broken up with before, but the scene was so familiar that I knew my lines. Do scenes like this happen so often in real life that they end up in the movies, or are the movies giving us a convenient script for inconvenient conversations?

“I’m sorry.” Her chin trembles. “I don’t want to be in a relationship with you anymore.”

The fact that she’s close to crying freaks me out more than anything. You might think that’s totally normal behavior, but Hannah is levelheaded and logical to the point of coming across kind of cold if you don’t know her. She isn’t often overcome by emotion. Or at least she doesn’t express it the same way as most people.

If you look close now you will see a minute shift in my expression from blankness to utter devastation. It’s all in the eyes. That’s the moment when everything I’d planned went up in smoke. Back then I really, truly bought into the dream that we would be the one in a million first love that lasts forever.

“But why?”

This question makes me cringe. But at the time I had to ask. I loved her so much and I was so happy I couldn’t understand what she meant. Even now when I think about it I have to shield myself from the answer.

“I love you. But I’m not in love with you.”

It’s such a cliché I didn’t even really know what it meant. How was in love different from love?

“I want us to still be friends, but I understand it might take some time.”

This was my big chance to play it cool and salvage some dignity.

“But I love you,” I whined instead. “I think you’re the best person I’ve literally ever met and I’m going to die if you leave me.”

Don’t say a word. I already know.

“Saoirse,” she said, and she squeezed my hand on the table. It felt familiar and alien at the same time. “You’ll be OK. I promise.”

“Why now? What changed?”