Selective Amnesia
“What?” he said to the red headed girl
who had been eyeing him quite distastefully.
The girl just smirked and went on to
drink her third glass of martini, pretending nobody had spoken to her.
“I bet she’s thinking this guy is
just too stupid he doesn’t get the clues,” he said more to the bartender who
poured her another round.
“Well, that’s an improvement. Let’s
cheer to that!” she said derisively.
“Well I’m sorry if I didn’t bother
to ask if you were coming.” He downed a shot of vodka, his first for the night.
Or more like his first glass in a year.
She eyed him disapprovingly as he
motioned for the bartender to pour him another shot. “Old habits are really
hard to break.”
“Got a problem with that? I don’t
think you had any business with me anyways,” he exhaled and turned to look at
her and almost instantly regretted the decision. He was caught off guard by her
hazelnut eyes. “You already left, remember?”
And then there was nothing but the
sound of jazz music on the background and the constant murmur of the people who
haven’t seen each other in a decade.
“You left me over a bottle of whisky
and my inability to read between the lines.”
“I see you haven’t changed much in a
year. I left you because you wouldn’t stop blaming yourself for the death of
Sofia. I left because you let yourself succumb to emptiness and alcohol. I left
you because, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, you aren’t the only one
hurting. She wasn’t just your little princess. She was ours. I left because you
haven’t realized that I’m hurting just as much as you do. Or maybe I’m hurting
more because I had to wake up each day and see the man I dedicated my whole
life to sink so low.”
He couldn’t think of any argument to
rebut her with. They used to have friendly debates over something so silly and
now he realized just how badly he missed that. He wanted to wipe the tears from
her eyes, to hold her in his hand as if she was the most delicate thing in the
world but the moment he acted on his thoughts, she was already halfway out of
her seat.
“You always remembered why I left
but never why I stayed.”
