I thought about you often and it annoyed me. It annoyed me because you’d done nothing to earn such a prevalent place in my consciousness. Not the brief time we spent together, however enjoyable it was (that I would in the coming months learn was nothing but a rouse), not the lengthy conversations or how well we connected over the months leading up to “those nights”. You had done nothing at all to deserve a second thought the moment I stepped away from your body on the train headed towards the tube station. But there you were, in all your elusive glory, gaining purchase on my drifting thoughts and easily-bruised identity of self worth. Countless nights ambling through my thoughts wondering if I was to blame, how I could have saved the situation from becoming what it was, and a myriad of other unanswered questions. I am even annoyed that, right now, I am giving you space in my head as I write this.

However, given the events that transpired last week I can safely say that the only remaining emotion I have towards you is relief. I’d wish you well, but that’d be a lie, and a petty one at that. I don’t wish you anything. I got the answers to my questions in a rather unexpected form. They confirmed what I suspected, but was too busy riddling myself with blame and guilt, to accept it as fact. They weren’t my tears falling that night. They weren’t my venomous words being flung across the table inside blind accusations. But they could have been. I am relieved. And you, are clearly no better now than when we collided. I excel at the art of dodging bullets and you might have been the biggest one yet.

They were sat back in the devil’s strip club on the 3rd night after the new year, the 3rd night within the depths of alcohol-soaked trenches wrought with desperation and vacant stares. The bitter winter’s cold was countered by the heat emanating from the lights above and the bodies milling around adjacent to the low lit stages as if searching for something they knew they’d never find in this underbelly of scorned lovers & desolate thoughts.

Their drink of choice was one of many throughout the evening. His body and his words kept moving closer and closer behind the table until he put his arm around her shoulders, gently hugging her into him. An endless game of cat and mouse where the roles are reversed, but no one is willing to admit the mistake. He fawned over her, while in juxtapose, music with the distinct undertone of “daddy issues” pounded from the speakers as another naked body made it’s way up the pole. Liquor slowly prying open the doors of what he tried to keep locked up tight while the sun is up.

Another round of mezcal and the empty words, “you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met” escaped his lips. She countered by bringing her glass to her lips, sipping slowly and thoughtfully and averting a gaze by watching another scantily clad figure pulse rhythmically in front of her. Seedy places like these always seem to bring out the honesty in people. There is something so romantic about fervently opposing your surroundings. Darkness sucks the light right out of a good few, but at least we get to watch it go.

While in their youth, swapping escapades to impress lovers he would compare her to his ever-growing list of failed advances, “I wish a girl would fly halfway across the world for me.” An impulsive gesture of her yesteryears that has since been abandoned. He always carried on like this, over the years, between the drinks and alongside the empty bottles that he stacked neatly above the door. She meant everything and nothing to him. Valiantly pursued until a less vulnerable distraction crossed his path when she would be, yet again, discarded.

When things fell apart for him, and they always did, she was quickly plucked from the shelf upon which she’d been stowed. Once complacent and lackadaisical, now she stiffened in his presence. Scar tissue building up, covering her once soft and warm exterior. He’d attempt to sooth her with wine, and massage her back into his palm with words, “…but I feel like you have the potential to be the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. And you are just keeping yourself from that because you are scared of something…You are right on the cusp of this other kind of woman that I’ve never known.”

Tolerance eventually gave way to animosity and grasping at the delicate straws of her waning sanity. Patience turned to resentment that built up into a vodka infused blowout that left him crying in his kitchen as she forced herself past his tears and arms and saw herself out into the poorly light, vacant streets. The concrete sidewalks were gently kissed by the fog that hovered so close to the ground, as if seeking refuge from the moon above. She clung to the shadows between the streetlights hoping to avoid being found by him ever again.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions; the express lane is littered with the rest.