Written by Sun Mengjie
It wasn't fate that pulled me in, it was just a matter of giving it a try.
From such a plausible beginning came a relationship that lasted more than a year, and I don't know if this is lucky or unfortunate. I couldn't figure out Zoe, who was sitting across from me, and I couldn't figure out what was going on in his heart. People say that men and women are different creatures, they have different ways of thinking and acting. Women are nine-pronged and entangled to the end; men are rampant and hit the nail on the head. I know I'm imagining things, but I can't settle down and think, "Let's just go on like this". And people only talk about irrelevant topics, and the more necessary it is, the less they know how to care about me.
"You take a long time to drink a cup of coffee. And no talking." Zoe muttered.
From black to teal, from a bare forehead to layered bangs, from the teenager I loved who would giggle at the sight of me to the so-and-so who now crosses her legs and frowns as she talks to me. My heart was like being thrown into the cold sea water, sinking deeper and deeper, gradually disappointed, and then turned into a roar of teeth and claws no one responded.
"Zoe." Unlike the countless times he'd flipped a coin at home like the last few times, torn between compromising his feelings or himself, this time he was completely determined to cut off contact with him. And yet, the entirety of her chest felt as empty as it had the previous times, unable to speak because she couldn't stand the sudden rise in pressure.
"What are you going to say?" He still hadn't stopped stirring the small spoon of coffee in his hand.
"Should we break up and see?" I held my breath and said shakily.
"What did you say?" I didn't dare to look up at his face, I knew how he looked sad knew how he looked wrecked but never knew or wanted to see him angry. But surprisingly, he put on a hangdog look like he didn't hear me. Probably just used to it.
"I say we break up. I mean it. Let's break up."
"Again?"
The air conditioning seemed to be turned down too low, so low that the coffee, which had only been on the shelf for a few minutes, was already cold enough to frostbite her lips, and the song "Gorgeous Adventure" by Elaine Chen was playing overhead at an inopportune time. What a damn cafe.
Hey Zoe, you should be tired of it too.
We have no reason to be apart, but there's no reason to stay together besides love. Zoe is tired of my willfulness my irrationality my inexplicability, I'm tired of his indifference his indifference his lack of tenderness his lack of care and his lack of understanding, he's tired of endless arguments and tears, and I'm tired of it too. But in the beginning, it wasn't like that.
When we started dating he would run to me every weekend from his school across town. Even though it took two transfers and two and a half hours of doing nothing alone, the first thing I saw every time I waited for him in front of the school was his unchanging smile. The bumpy road to the lips are white, but still do not want to show half a bit of fatigue. In the summer he would take the cold bottle of water in my hand, in the winter he would reach into my arms to take the hot water bag I put on my stomach, and then hug me tightly and hold me still for a few seconds. It's those few seconds, and maybe that's all a girl needs. No matter the crowds around him, no matter if it's raining or ironing in the sky, no matter if he's sweating or shivering, he'll come a long way just to hug me for a few seconds.
But boys aren't always thoughtful, romantic creatures with no ego. Soon he started complaining about being bogged down with homework, or club activities, or interpersonal dealings. If I knew this day would come, I wouldn't have been so nice to me in the first place... I would have compared you at the beginning to you later on.... I wanted to yell at him, but I couldn't say it. Because if he hadn't been nice to me in the first place, I would have blamed him again. I'm such a chatterbox, I just didn't know I was so mean at the time. My then-self would have just cried and yanked on my voice through the booze and said, "You don't like me anymore, why don't you like me anymore," and then pounded on his thin chest, ripping his buttons loose with no trace of strength at all, while still mooching tears and snot all over his shoulders.
Zoe could only struggle to hold my head in one hand painfully, the other dangling forlornly, and made no effort to avoid it. Each time, he didn't say a word, and it was only once in a while when I glanced up to see him blushing and biting his lip that I realized he was holding back, forcing himself to tolerate me. I couldn't tell if the feeling in my heart at that moment was one of gratitude or sadness. Zoe would hate me one day, I was so difficult and willful.
The first time we met was at the bachelor party organized by the association, the old-fashioned link, stepping on the balloon two three-legged something. I was arranged with a beer belly sagging to the knees of the senior boys, so a small girl just enrolled in school full of expectations of the fate of the object of the mood instantly be doused. I was so happy to have played those games that I still couldn't muster up the energy to come to the so-called celebration dinner when my sister came to invite me to eat with her.
Until I sulked and stuffed my mouth full of fish and meat during the meal, when the bell suddenly rang, I noticed the clean and fair boy on the opposite side of the table. When everyone was gossiping, he always smiled coyly at the side, not chatting but not appearing to be abrupt and inconspicuous, but it was the clear contours and distinctive features that attracted me. The game of kings was played afterward, and my sister coaxed me to hold my fingers together for three minutes while we were drawn.
I actually didn't mind much, because in my eyes at the time, the appearance of this youthful boy catered to my externalist vanity, and made up for the previous party that didn't exactly leave good memories. So when I shook his hand, I didn't hesitate at all and smiled in response to everyone's uproar. But to my surprise, the moment our hands touched, I felt a slight tremor coming from him, and I looked at him incredulously, his head lowered as if he didn't dare to look my way. He hadn't looked at me since he walked stiffly over to me and sat down on my left, I didn't think much of it at the time, but now it felt suspicious.
While I was staring at him suspiciously, his cell phone rang on the off chance that it was ringing again, and he let go of his hand in a panic, glanced at his schoolmates with an expression of a burden lifted, and said, "Going out to take a call." I was a little disappointed that he didn't pay any attention to me from the beginning to the end. I think it should be his girlfriend, or else he wouldn't mind so much, and put on a look of a little sheep escaping from the tiger's mouth. But what was the disappointment that flashed across his face when he let go?
It was only later that I realized that those two phone calls were just from people in the same dormitory, in order to urge him to hurry back to school while the door was closed, because he had only come from another school that night to support his sister. They had been good friends since high school, and had visited each other a few times when they went to college and got into the same city. We exchanged cell phone numbers before we broke up, and then carefully and without surprise began to get acquainted. Therefore I more than once little woman complained that that kind of encounter real not romantic at all, at that time really should not casually agree with him.
"Which told?" It was his only argument tinged with jealousy, "Don't we have the same ringtone? Isn't it fate? Isn't that your favorite kind of thing?"
The ringtone was Elaine Chen's "Gorgeous Adventure," a poem that kept repeating "I don't want to let go, I don't want to let you go.
It was probably fate. I sometimes snicker at that thought. Since then I've always listened to the song with a tinge of affection for Zoe, and I don't know if that's good or bad. As a matter of fact, everything I do since then is colored by his feelings. For example, I cared a lot about his relationship with that schoolmate. There are some things that he would tell her but not me, and when I ask him to explain, I just get an answer like "we're just good friends" or something like that. The more jealous I am, the more he is wringing his hands and refusing to tell me about his relationship with his sister. I have fought with him and broken up with him, but he always looks as if everything is in his control, and he has everything under control. I just hate this kind of self-righteousness of his, ate up I can't leave him in the end still obediently return to his side of the appearance.
Like a punishment, I don't want to reveal myself to him anymore, I want to keep at least a minimum of self-respect, and if I have to let go someday, it will be easier. But I feel that the further away from him I get, the more overwhelmed I become, but then there is a vicious cycle of not wanting to lower my face and reveal too much of myself to him.
While I've been through countless breakups, my tears are still pouring out as if I'm realizing for the first time that I'm not going to be able to stay together for the rest of my life. Whenever the words "this life" come up, they are mixed with countless heartbreaking and sweet memories. Although half of my heart wanted him to keep me, I couldn't tell him. The more you care about someone, the more you can't say the words "loneliness".
Zoe majored in English, and I knew nothing about English. I remember a time when he used his soft, silky voice to read a text in front of me, and I heard the word "struggle". Looking at the boy pacing in front of me, occasionally stealing glances at me, I suddenly felt love for a word that meant conflict and struggle for some reason.
"What the hell do you want?" Zoe texted. We hadn't seen each other in a month, and he'd only contacted me once in that time. It was the longest we'd lasted. Each fight or cold war would get longer and longer, and I always had a feeling that there would come a day when just because of a chicken scratch, we'd be gone for life, neither of us in touch.
Suddenly, the cell phone rang. I picked up the phone and Zoe's drunken voice floated out.
"What did I do wrong?" I fell silent, trying my hardest to keep the tears from flowing.
"Give me a reason!" He repeated over and over, his voice gradually pulling out a rasp, intermittently interspersed with the sound of the table shaking, "Give me a fresh, decent reason!"
You've done nothing wrong, I thought in my heart, and I know you understand that I'm not disgusted with what you've done wrong. I still love you and you love me. It just doesn't feel right anymore. Or maybe from the bottom of my heart, I'm just a restless and overbearing woman who just wants someone to comfort me when I'm lonely. When you didn't show up, I started shamelessly expecting someone else.
Although I know that not noticing my loneliness is not really your fault in the final analysis.
"Every time you break up with me you will count the grievances you have suffered before, how come it doesn't ring true this time? Is it because you're sick of it yourself?"
"Didn't you blame me for hanging out with my schoolmates all the time, didn't you blame me for not caring enough about you, why don't you say it now why don't you say it?!"
He was getting more and more agitated, I choked this clearing my throat and forced my teeth to say, "There's no reason." I whispered to the other end of the line, "But there's no reason to stay together other than love."
There was silence on the other end. After a long time, as if she had used her last strength, Zoe said with an innocent accent, "Isn't having love enough?"
I curled up on the sofa, holding the receiver, surrounded by silence, only to hear his vague words in my heart words cut and threw, "Do you think that I asked my schoolmate to introduce us to each other, spent all the effort to ask her about you to understand you, and finally have to make it look as if it was destined to meet, specially change the ringtone with the same ringtone as yours, so it is not enough to love you? I don't think I love you enough. Do you think that I can let every woman have a little trouble once a week, once a month, and then have no complaints? Do you think I'm just a machine that has to be good to you all the time and exist for you with no ego?!"
I whimpered, unable to say anything else. I didn't know what was wrong or right anymore. The last of my defenses crumbled slickly like butter melted by a literal fire, then flowed throughout my body, lubricating every cell that had made up its mind to leave him.
"Then why didn't you tell me?" I asked, crying.
"I thought you'd understand." He cried on the other end of the phone, his voice getting softer and softer, "I thought love was enough." I could visualize his furrowed brows together, and eyes that were red from crying only for me. All of a sudden, he felt like the pathetic Little Red Riding Hood, and I was the cruel, heartless wolf woman.
That year, Zoe went to a school on the other side of the city to see his high school friend, and saw a girl in his friend's club, with bangs and shoulder length hair, and a smile as bright as the sun, and he immediately felt the so-called destiny ______ of that which he had always scoffed at and thought to be full of nothingness. So after those years, no matter that girl from Qi Liu Haier into oblique bangs or center parted, from shoulder length hair into long hair or short hair, he has been like a sunflower to her, tightly holding the thin red line between them.
I hope this helps