So everything fades, and everything breaks, and you never really do know why, do you? You sit there and try to analyze what went wrong, what you could have done, or not done, to prevent this break— this break-up— from happening.

Except there´s so many things to choose from that you don´t know where to start, and you don´t even think you really want to know where to start. Because starting means remembering, and remembering means thinking, and thinking means knowing who´s to blame. And knowing who´s to blame means you have to admit it.

You analyze anyway, though, don´t you? Because you can´t help it. Because you´re obsessing, even as your telling yourself not to, about the why´s and the where for´s and the did not´s. Because he was there, he was always there, and now he´s not, and you still can´t wrap your brain around that fact. Because there´s nothing else to do, really, now that he´s not there.

And who, exactly, was it that made the first move becomes the million dollar question. Was it Tenoch, for looking the way he did at you with want and lust and something that you still haven´t been able to decipher? Was it you, looking back with the same and initiating contact with a palm to his chin and plea in your eyes?

That line of questioning yields nothing of course, so you move on to the when. When exactly was it you started to see this person, this guy you considered a brother, a Charolastras, to be someone you wanted something more with? You remember that sock to your gut when you saw him with Luisa and wonder whether that had more to do with jealousy of him, or jealousy of her.

You wonder what made you think it was okay to fuck Ana. You wonder if that was the lust you thought it was, or if maybe that wasn´t something more. Some kind of physical manifestation of something your subconscious was trying to tell you even then. Something you didn´t want to accept even now, even after it was already obvious.

That´s when you always start to remember, when you feel it again. When you feel his breath on your face, and those eyes burning into yours. You feel the heat radiating off of his hands as he doesn´t touch you, but might as well have. You feel that electrical current that somehow pulled you together until your hand was moving to his face and his lips were moving towards yours. The shock of time standing still as finally you touch, then speeding up as you just can´t get enough.

Flashes of skin, bare and searing, passing over you in slow caresses that leave you mumbling things so quickly you don´t even know what you´re saying. Hair tickling your belly as you grab it and pull and say ‘more, now.´ Not knowing exactly whose tongue is doing what where, only that it feels so good you can´t bother to care. That ache in your chest as they´ve fallen asleep curled on each other an you, and you watch Tenoch sleep and wonder when exactly that became something that brought you pleasure.

And the ache stays, and sprouts roots, and grows fungus, because it was the end just as much as it was the beginning, wasn´t it? You had one night to have what you never knew you wanted, and then it was ripped away and apart and burned at the stake. One night to hold back the tears that come when you realize you´re in love with your best friend, and then a lifetime to force them back when you realize it´ll never come to be again.

So you went back to it like it was nothing, except there was that tiny little imperceptible tear in the fabric. You could run your fingers over it and know it was barely a scratch, but you also knew that was just what it appeared to be from the outside. You knew the inside was the Grand Canyon, but the rain hadn´t eroded the outside away just yet to show the truth.

The two of you begin to drift. Your girls break up with you. He says ‘no, I can´t today, but tomorrow definitely´ and you pretend you believe him. You say ‘yeah, of course nothing´s changed,´ and smile despite the fact that you´re lying to the person you´re not supposed to have to lie to ever. You pick up your shattered pieces and allow it to happen as you go your separate ways.

Now you sit in a coffee shop and think about how you just drank the most bitter and sickening coffee you´ve ever tasted in your life, except you know it was just brewed today and it´s not really the coffee that´s twisting your guts. You watch him walk out of your life and know that this, definitely, irrefutably, is the end of the era.

No more Charolastras, no more brothers. No more going over to Tenoch´s house to escape the pure shit that is yours. No more getting high together and laughing so hard you forget the ugliness that exists around you. No more inside jokes, and no more shared smiles, and no more Tenoch.

It might as well be no more you.

[ additional notes ] 'this break-- this break up--' is stolen lovingly and adoringly from Cameron Crowe. It's a line he used in Jerry Maguire