Things between us had fallen apart beyond repair, and our wedding day cemented our dissolution. “The view of the ocean’s nice. And the stars are bright tonight, no light pollution, you know?” Lizzie said, her banter uncharacteristically optimistic but expression cold, still looking like the Michelin tire man, padded with layers of tulle and lace. Cigarette stuck in her mouth and she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“Liz,” I said tentatively, a question. Giving pause, my cufflinks hitting the bedside table cut our tense silence like so much glass shattering. Her head turned ever so slightly in my direction, and it was the only indication I received that Liz was conscious of me at all.

“No,” Liz said. I looked at her in confusion, my brows furrowed at the back of her head, as she was still turned to more pressing endeavours in the black night out the window. “I know what typical honeymoon customs dictate Cameron, but no,” she elaborated in a thick exhalation of smoke. Catching her meaning, I scoffed lightly in derision and shook my head.

“This isn’t about sex Liz.”

“No?”

“No Liz.” I stared at the back of her head, incredulous, in the hope of getting some sort of response, any emotion at all, but found the back of her head to be as mystifying and unhelpful as the front. “Can’t you even deign look at me?”

“You want to get into it Cameron? Alright, let’s go,” she responded, voice almost coming across heated, turning on the window seat to face me and extinguishing her cigarette in the ashtray beside her.

“You’re unbelievable. You don’t have the right to be angry with me Liz. I’ve put up with your everything. Your ups, your downs, and, ultimately, for what? I just don’t know anymore.” I shrugged in genuine uncertainty, still feeling naked under her gaze after all these years.

“You couldn’t have come out with this breaking development, oh, say, ten hours ago?” Liz asked, sharp as ever, wit cutting. She folded her arms across her chest with a disapproving expression painted on her features, and I felt the idiot, as usual. But, for once, I was not to be deterred or interrupted. I found myself all too eager to self destruct before the both of us.

“That’s just it Liz,” I replied unsmiling, “this isn’t a new development. I guess I was fooling myself by thinking that somehow, magically, getting married would just fix everything that was wrong. I was just trying to band-aid a fucking broken arm with this one. And do you know what? Fine, I’ll take the blame for that, but, why won’t you just leave me Liz? You obviously take no pleasure in being with me. Every day seems like a struggle for you.”

Liz looked at me for a moment, her stand-offish countenance faltering. “I wouldn’t be here with you now Cam if I didn’t want to be.” She almost appeared real to me then, breaking out of Robo-Liz, I felt her. Something in her manner told me she was sorry. But one act of goodness, of love and passion, simply wasn’t enough to free the condemnation she had earned for years of passive aggression and unfeeling gestures.

“I’m sorry, it’s just not enough,” I replied after a moment, finding myself the one apologizing again. “You’re clearly not hap–”

“You’re right, I’m not! I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I just can’t make myself happy.” Getting up, Liz stood before me, arms now spread in supplication. “I thought that you were the one person I didn’t have to put on a show for, but apparently you just want to see me pretend. It’s not that easy, being ‘happy’ you know. Not the way you’re conditioned to see happiness. Happiness doesn’t mean a smiling face Cameron.”

Liz looked at me with shining eyes, cheeks flushed with emotion. “I think I’ve realized that I won’t ever be happy, but you’re the one thing that makes me come close,” Liz said, voice almost breaking, and cracking a dam that would have released a torrent of emotion. “I just feel like a city under siege, and my walls are barely standing right now. I’m all alone.”

“You’re not alone Liz!” I roared, unable to keep my silence any longer. She made my heart hurt, but there was nothing for it. I had already begun our final undoing, and I couldn’t stop now, so I just kept on firing away.

“You’re too independent! I’m always here for you, but you never want me, never need me. You just don’t need me Lizzie,” I said, falling into silence, words no longer spilling from me like a pot of water boiling over. “You render me useless,” I finished, letting out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, eyes breaking away from Liz, unable to watch her go to pieces in front of me. Not man enough to watch the hurt I had inflicted.

When I looked up again, tears had finally spilled from Liz’s eyes and spider-webbed her eyelashes. After all, I still wanted to rush to her, to crush her in my arms, but the bridges you burn can’t be rebuilt in an instant.

“I’m sorry I broke your heart,” she said to me, voice scarcely revealing her sadness, already detaching her escape pod and floating off into space away from me. Just like that she was impassive once more, walled in, and I was an even more unwelcome outsider than I had ever been before. But her reversion back to my dead shell of a lover incensed me to rekindle our feud.

“I’m not. I’m just sorry I didn’t break yours Lizzie. I’m sorry that you don’t feel anything at all,” I struck out maliciously. My last words were my most unkind, and I was ashamed of myself. I came to the realization then that people really do blunder around hurting the people they love the most acutely.

“Can you just go?” I asked, my guilty conscience beginning to grow and swell and itch. My nerve of steel faltering when I needed it more than ever.

“Me leave?” Liz asked, her eyes wide in surprise, red-rimmed, but the sheen of tears gone from her cheeks, wiped away with a hasty hand.

“Yes, get out. Fuck chivalry,” I barked, words falling sharp even on my own ears.

As she went, Liz scooped up her shoes and tucked her purse under one arm as she departed, defeated once and for all. Just as she was about to walk out the door, she stopped dead in her tracks. “You don’t even know how much I love you,” Liz said, voice muted and sullen, her back to me, but face turned over one shoulder to watch me as she started to move away from me again. As she left. She wasn’t strong or independent now. I fed her to the wolves and, this time, I had rendered myself useless.

There she was, out in the hall, walking away from me, barefoot, shoes in one hand, dress held raised with the other. And there I stood in the doorway, the biggest fool of all, on the inside alone, yet again unable to be the man Liz needed, perpetually inept in love.