216

It had been years since I'd seen her, years since I'd forgotten her voice, years since I thought about her every minute of the day. I was over her, everyone knew that.

When we bumped into each other at the checkout my heart barely skipped a beat. If only I could have told her how much I wasn't falling apart at the sight of her, how much I didn't feel sick at suddenly remembering what her voice sounded like and wondering how I'd ever forgotten it.

I needed something to say, something to show how mature I was now, how I was over her, how I'd become all the things she wanted me to be, something as funny as it was profound, but somehow my lips, my tongue and my vocal chords had gone renegade, split away from the rest of me, a rival faction ready to bring down my no longer broken heart and brain.

I found myself firing the words "Do you still love me?", without so much as a hello.
I prayed that she'd see the mess I was in and refuse to answer the question on the grounds that it had no right being there, but she didn't even have to think about it.

"No. No, I don't".

I hadn't felt so bad since the time she tore out my heart, took it into a tiny room with her new boyfriend and spat all over it. Then had sex right on top of it, and better sex than I'd ever given her, that's for sure, before handing it back to me covered in mud.

Ryan, Blackpool.