Why was it so quiet? It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The cafe hummed with the low murmur of people pretending they had nowhere else to be. A new age version of the classic about a cold cold heart played imperceptibly in the background. A testament to how we tried to cling onto a time when it wasn’t so quiet.

She sat there facing the window staring at the cup in front of her. It had gone cold an hour ago, but she didn’t care. He sat across her, his face silhouetted against the sun kissed French window. He was tapping his fingers against the chipped ceramic mug.

They weren’t fighting. That would have been easier.

“Maybe this is just what we need” he said. His voice was barely audible over the clatter of plates and cutlery.

She parted her lips but the words were caught in her throat. Need? She thought. This wasn’t a need. This was a surrender. She knew he was calling it.

The air between them felt like a rubber band stretched to the penultimate moment before you knew it would snap. She wanted to scream and shout and shake him by the shoulders until the light came back into his dead eyes. She wanted him to see again. But she sat there. Still. Watching as he tore down everything they had built. Brick by brick.

“You’re okay with this?” She finally asked, her voice cutting through the air a little too sharply.

He kept looking down at the mug, as if it contained all the answers, and said “I think its for the best.”

She swallowed hard. She wanted to tell him about the night they sat on the roof of her apartment building, looking into the starry sky as they mapped their future like the constellations that spanned the sky. I’ll never stop fighting for us he had said. She wanted to remind him of the plans they had made. The house by the beach. The walk they would take the walk to the pier every evening to watch the sunset. The bench they would sit at when their hair had turned grey and wrinkled fingers intertwined symbiotically. The dog that they would name Diego who would sit at their feet so fiercely loyal and protective.

But she didn’t. She could see it in his eyes. He was already gone. He wasn’t the kind of person to fight. Not any more. Life had worn him down. Polished the sharp edges that had once made him recklessly bold. He would have walked through a thunderstorm just to prove a point. Now he carried an umbrella even when the forecast was clear. Constantly afraid of being burnt.

“I don’t understand. When did it become so easy for you to just give up?” She said.

“I’m not giving up. I’m being realistic.” He replied.

Realistic. She hated that word. It was what people said when they were too afraid to take a chance. To roll the dice. To want something bad enough.

“That’s just another word for scared. Don’t you want this? To want us?” She said.

He flinched. A shred of annoyance caused his eyebrows to furrow for the tiniest second. Anyone else might have missed it but she didn’t.

He took a deep breath and exhaled “I don’t know if I have it in me any more.”

And that was it. That was when she realised why he wasn’t fighting back. It wasn’t because he didn’t think they had a chance to win. It was because, somewhere along the way he had decided that it was better to settle for mediocrity that’s risk the heartbreak of wanting it too much.

She blinked back the tears as she stood up. The chair scraped the floor. Loud enough to make heads turn.

“Where are you going?” He asked. There was a tinge of panic in his voice.

“I don’t know.” She said “But I can’t stay here fighting for the both of us.”

She grabbed her coat and meandered through the tables till she reached the door. For a moment she thought he had followed her. That at any moment she would feel his strong grip on her shoulder pulling her back. But he didn’t. She caught him still staring at the cup as she walked out into the crisp December air.

She didn’t cry. Not until she turned the corner, when suddenly the world felt too big but at the same time too empty. She grabbed the coarse brick wall as she tried helplessly to calm her breath which came in quick short gasps.

It would’ve been easier if they had fought. If he had shouted or slammed the cup on the table. Something. Anything. At least then she would have known there was still something worth fighting for.

But he didn’t. He just called it.