The house was dark when you arrived home.  You followed Chansung inside, kicking your heels hurriedly to keep up with him as he made his way to the kitchen.  “Hey Hwang, you alright?”  You kept your voice light, but you weren’t blind.  He has not been acting himself since the drive home from the small café you took him to for lunch.

“Uhm.”  He muttered without looking at you, reversing his grey ball cap before taking a bottle of water from the fridge to drink.

“You’ve been acting weird.  You were all chatty earlier and now – well, I can’t even get a word out of you.  What gives?”  You took the bottle from his hand to drink for yourself.  There was hoping in you that time and being home might lift his sour mood.

Chansung stared at you for several seconds, the only movement in the entire room was him tugging at the neckline of his black shirt like he was loosening a noose and then he just walked passed you and went straight to his room, slamming the door shut as he went.

You started pacing, your jaw twisting in irritation.  You just don’t understand what suddenly happened.  You slammed the water bottle down the counter and walked towards his door, but before you could knock on it, he all of a sudden opens it and sees you standing there.  “You know what’s wrong?”  He held the door knob with his knuckles turning white over it.  “You are.”

You couldn’t have been just hearing it.  “Excuse me?”  His words were too perfectly enunciated for you to have imagined it.

“Stop stalking Tom.”  You watched Chansung’s jaw grinding, a muscle in his cheek twitching over and over. 

“When did I ever?”  You were infuriated with the way he has been acting, but now the tone of his voice and the accusations spilling from his mouth was sending sparks crawling down your spine causing your whole body to be charged and awake, but you tried to keep your calm, counted to 10, took a deep breath and let the air out slowly with your eyes closed.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You left your laptop in the kitchen open with Tom’s page.  Wouldn’t that be considered stalking?”  He scoffed, staring you down with an incredulous mask on his face.

You drew in a deep breath and started fidgeting with your pockets.  The familiar painful appearance polished your face.  You let the question simmer down in your brain and processed it before giving a reply.  You weren’t sure what to tell him exactly.  There was no excuse you could give him.  “So what if I did?  Did it affect you in any way that you have to be this mad at me?”

Chansung’s lips sketched in a cynical smile.  “You took me to the same café you and Tom used to go to and ordered us the same food you used to eat with him on a rainy Saturday.”  His mouth flexed in a motion that vaguely resembled a smile.  “If that nice old waiting staff didn’t ask about Tom, I wouldn’t have known your little tradition with him.  Did you think you might actually bump into him there?  Or perhaps…”  He sighed before he continued.  “I hate being used for things like this.”  His face morphed into an unfamiliar hostility, his expression sharpening like a knife as he emanated anger directed towards you.  It’s not like him.  This isn’t the Chansung you have known.

“It was a good café that serves great all-day breakfast food and besides, you said you loved those fruit pancakes you had.  You almost ed to their strawberry milkshake.”  You blinked back and tried to suppress the anger that was rising in you.  “And I never used you in anyway.”  You gestured helplessly.

“Well, I feel like a stand-in for who you really want to be with.”  Chansung said with indignation. 

“It’s just lunch.”  You couldn’t look at him and instead you twisted your engagement ring around your fourth finger, hyper aware of the circle that you had worn for so long that it didn’t even register anymore.  Twist.  Twist.  Twist.

“You couldn’t even take that off.”  He eyes your ring.  “It’s not yours anymore you know.  And Tom’s not yours anymore either.”  He said so quietly that the sound seems like that of thunder.

“I know.”  You said as a treacherous tear crawled down your cheeks that you hurriedly wiped away.

“If you know, then stop acting so pathetic.”  He blurted out of frustration.  “It’s almost disgusting really.”  He regretted his words as soon as he spoke it.  He stared into the depths of your eyes and saw a well of sadness in them…and definitely knows he put them there.

You stayed quiet for a while before you spoke.  Calmed yourself down with heavy breaths.  “Pathetic and disgusting.  Yup, that’s what I have reduced myself into.”  You nodded your head and wiped the tears that fell as you fought to let any more fall.  You went back to your usual composed self, the hurt building up inside, but you wouldn’t let him see it anymore.  “Good enough I haven’t been reduced to being rude and mean.”  You tried with your best efforts to smile and hide the pain.  “I’m sorry.  Maybe, I just didn’t consider your feelings.  I was too busy thinking the world owed me because I was dumped.”  You dug your nails in your palms to keep yourself from crying.  “You might have been feeling so uncomfortable all this time.  Me and my dramas in life.”  You laughed short and bitterly.  “Anyway, if you need for me to leave…well, I’ll move out within the week if that’s okay with you.”  You stepped back and walked off towards your room.

He called your name.  “That’s not what I meant, I just –“  You shut the door gently, unable to hear the rest of what he had to say.

You know Tom should’ve been flushed out of your system by now, but you couldn’t help but think about him from time to time, couldn’t help but wait for him to come back in your arms.  Hoping that he loved you as much as you loved him.  That maybe there’s a reason behind why he couldn’t be with you other than realizing he has no love for you.  Maybe you just weren’t ready to accept the end of your relationship, you don’t think anyone could be ready for the end.  But it ended and now all you could do is to love him from afar, to look at his pictures, his posts, wonder how he is and hope that he’s miserable without you.

You sat at the edge of the bed when the engagement ring on your fourth finger caught your attention.  You stared at it, twisting your hand back and forth to see if the stone would catch any sparkle in the dimness, but it stared back flat and dead as glass.  Chansung’s right, it’s not yours anymore.  You fell onto the soft bed and pulled the blankets up until they shut out the little remaining light in the room and sobbed.  And unlike before…there was no one to hold you.

---

It was a dreary Saturday morning and you laze around to the sound of the rain splattering large messy drops against your bedroom windows.  It was forming a lovely syncopated rhythm against the glass in tune with the steady sound of Tom’s breathing and the beating of his heart.

“I’m craving for some chocolate-coconut crepe.”  You draped your arms around Tom.

“And fruit pancakes with strawberry milkshake.”  He smiles and kisses the top of your head.  “Should we go to our usual place?”

“Uhm.”  You nod looking at him.  “You know, I would cry if they close that place.”

“Me too.  I want to have to be able to order our usual right there on rainy days till were 90.”

“90 huh?  You think we’ll still be together by then?”

Tom held your hand in his to look at the ring on your finger.  “You know, some believe that the engagement ring is placed on the fourth finger because it has a vein that connects directly to the heart.”  The tone in his voice was light as he laced his hand with yours.  “But do you know what that ring really means?”

“It’s a subtle substitute for a brand…saying that I have an owner.”  Your eyes twinkled along with your ring.

His lips curved into a smile as color brightened his cheeks.  “It means you are tied to me…and I to you…we…are bound…forever.”  He held your hand close to his heart.  “You’re all mine, your body, your heart, your soul…all mine…and I all yours.”

---

Three soft knocks and you heard Chansung call out your name behind your closed door.  “Can I come in?”

You rolled over in bed and sighed thinking it’s amazing that he has more to say after all that.  “Yeah, sure.  Come in.  Your house anyway.”  You sat up before he opened the door.

Chansung swallowed down the apple bobbing on his throat.  He rests his palm flat against door ready to push it open.  He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the door sighing deeply before slightly pushing it open just enough to fit his head in.  “My fault.”  Chansung said softly poking his head through the door.  “I’m sorry.  Forgive me?”

“Fault is mine.”  You immediately felt your palms shoot up to press against the tears unwillingly pooling in your eyes.

He pushes the door completely wide open, slowly walked inside the room and sat quietly beside you.  His heart felt like it was being torn in two as he looked at you looking broken.  He was drowning in a deep dark ocean of guilt.  The fresh coating of tears in your eyes that you have tried to suppress sparkled in the light and was filling his heart with remorse and clenching his gut with shame.  “I don’t want you to move out.  Forgive me?”

“It’s not like I can just move out right away anyway.”  You smiled softly at him, a touch of sadness in it.

“I didn’t mean to judge you like that.  For a moment, I forgot what you went through, what you’re going through.”  He began and continued when you looked at him.  “It hurt my pride a little … feeling like I wasn’t supposed to be the one sitting across you on that table eating that food and enjoying your company…got a little … jealous…”He rolls his eyes and let out a sigh.  “… I guess or something like that.”  He arched an eyebrow at you reproachfully.  “Forgive me?”

“You’re right though, I was trying to relive him.  I guess I was still waiting for him in a way, deep, deep down in my subconscious I can’t let him go.”  You lifted your hand out front and splayed your fingers out to look at your ring.  “I was looking forward to sharing my life with someone.  I know it’s not the thing these days.  I know I’m supposed to want more than to be a wife and a mother, but that’s what I’ve always wanted.  I’ll quit being a publicist and have a comfortable home filled with love and laughter.  I’ll always have a full cookie jar and lots of big family dinners and noisy breakfasts, lazy weekends at the park and all that domestic stuff.”  You wiped away the tears stinging your eyes.  “I was ready to have that…and then in an instant it was taken away from me.  I guess I was trying to hold on to that.  I’m sorry.”

Chansung held his hand out to you, eyebrows raised hopefully.  “Let me take it off you?”  Without saying a word you put your hand in his, noticing how small yours looked in comparison.  He slowly took off your ring and placed it on your palm.  “Keep it, but don’t wear it anymore.”  He smiled and you reciprocated.  “Forgive me?”

You scratched your chin with the tip of a finger as your face crinkled thoughtfully.  “One large Margherita pizza and a couple of beers – your treat of course – and you’re forgiven.”

“I can’t believe you’re still hungry, but I like that.  This will be our own tradition.”

STEP 5:  Kill Uncertainty.

Stop expecting, stop waiting.  Enough with holding your phone and waiting for that person to call.  Stop going to the same places you used to go to together hanging on to the chance that you might bump into them by chance.  Instead tell yourself that this is over and that there is nothing to wait for any longer.

You both need a clean break—how else are you both going to move on and build a life for yourselves without each other if one of you keeps hanging about?  It’s time to learn to keep your distance.

People usually accept death faster than they accept breakups.  It is because they know the deceased isn’t coming back, if they do, it will be just mostly scary.  In short, uncertainty prolongs the pain and what hurts the most is the uncertainty, not the breakup itself.