"It's been a year since I've been inside a shopping mall," I explained to her. "I just grew weary of our commerce-as-culture mentality."

it had lasted for so long because we were agreed on its impossibility. ludicrous and attenuated, sustained in holiday flights, hour-long calls, mantras of love: all that emotional cryogenesis.

"i luv you," he said in this baby-ish voice that made me want to lean over and kiss him.

My eyes met his; his eyes met mine.

"It's not like I don't see us getting back together sometime."

"Are you dating already?"

Two o'clock am on the edge of a country road, halfway to nowhere.

He says, "Whoa. Did you see that meteor coming through the big dipper?"

She turns. "Yes, but if you believe that pointing it out gives you good reason to put your arms about me, perhaps you should try again."

We sit, knees touching, at 3am on a Tuesday.

"Last year, did you like me?" he asks.

"Yeah," I say. "Was I that obvious?"

"Kinda. I liked you a lot, too." He laughs.

"Well, it's okay," I say, looking at my shoes. "We wouldn't have worked anyway."

I didn't expect him to actually show up.

"Thanks. You didn't have to do this for me, you know."

He gave me this slightly sad half smile; we'd broken up a few months ago, badly. At least on my part.

"Ever been in love?" she asked.

I thought: Yes, the kind of love poorly written about in novels at the grocery store check-out line. We lasted less than seven months, and I only call it love for lack of a better word -- I think of it as love because it is the closest I have ever come.

"I've never broken anything in my life."

"Except my heart."

He looks at me with that pleading look I've seen so many times before. Anger swells inside me as I remember how long I thought that look was genuine.

"Why do you have to be like this? Why can't we still be friends?"

Sighing, I flick my cigarette over the railing, watching it arc its way to the pavement.

As long as I looked at the floor, I was okay. But every time I looked in his eyes, it was like I was in a movie, and I was locked into following the script.

So he ended up stung by something I didn't even mean to say. But I couldn't have rescinded it anyway, could I?

"I think you must play Scrabble," he said. "You use words to distance yourself, to build walls."

She didn't laugh, as he'd hoped she might. "I don't play well." She admitted, looking at her hands. "I'm too generous with my letters."

In the pause that followed, a corner of her mouth turned. He smiled. "Every letter reaches its destination," he offered, leaning back to survey the room. "Eventually."

I will never set a fire in his eyes; I have caught only his fancy, not his soul.

"You don't taste the same."

"What? What do you mean, taste?"

"When I kiss you. You used to taste like vanilla. Now you taste like licorice and cigarette smoke."

Pause.

Lying on his bed, he held the phone to his ear. As his knees curled up to his chest and the tears began to flow she continued to speak.

New friends. New experiences. A new boyfriend -- her new love.

And you said it was all your fault, because I was innocent.

I couldn't possibly know any better.

Couldn't know about breaking hearts.

he: "we can't do this, you know."

me: --silence--

he: "are you there?"

me: "yes."