I knew I had fucked up. The look on his face, that moment when I understood why people say eyes are the gateway to your soul. He just stood there, quiet, emotionless. The silence was so thick, and it burned my ears.

"Well, I guess we're all just dying of something." That's all he said. Looking me dead in the eye, that's all he could muster up. There was no fight left in him, I'd worn that out of him years ago.

The moment was happening and yet it didn't register it was real to me. I was watching an after school special, an episode of some teen drama, not my life, my words, my apartment. There was a studio audience looking at us, some wide mouthed, others shaking their head and the giant red applause sign was dark, un-illuminated, and dead.

He was now looking at the ground, as if he forgot his next line or he was waiting for me say mine so we could move on, but there was nothing. No producer in our ears feeding us lines, or some stressed out floor manager shaking cues at us for what to do next. I was so lost and really had no idea what to do next.

He shifted his focus so he was looking up, not quite at me but enough that I could see his eyes and the array of emotions and thoughts going through his head. It's funny, the whole line about seeing your life flash before your eyes before you die kind of hold true. I'm looking at him, looking away and I can see myself in his eyes. A little squished up, fish eyed version of myself starring blankly at him, and in my head I'm going through all the things we'd done together. All the places we'd been. The awkward first few dates. The first time we had sex. When he was sick. When I was sick. All of it. It's this montage with a little bit of a blurred focus and they're all leading up to this moment. This is all happening and I still don't know what to do now.

He clears his through and I can see tears welling in his eyes. I'm not emotionally shut off but I literally don't know what to do in this moment. I used to see him cry and have this insane sense of panic wash over me, and an overwhelming need to make it stop by whatever means necessary. But this time it was me. How do you stop yourself? How do I make this all go away? Why did I even say those stupid, life altering words. Why did I fuck things up like I always do.

"I still love you." I say, weak but in completely honesty.

"Just not enough? He says, looking at the ground again.

"I don't know. I don't know why I do anything that I do. I'm fucked up. I'm a mess. You deserve better than me-"

"Don't you dare." He cuts me off. "Don't you fucking dare Alex. Try and blame this one ME? Make this something about how I'm feeling?! Who the fuck are you? I can't even believe you right now. Who have you become? This is not the man I've spent the past 6 years of my life with. You are turning into a hollow shell of the man I love."

I deserved that. I really did. I don't even know how I came up with the sentence that got us here. "I just don't want to die with regrets." I still don't even really know what I meant by it, or if I meant it at all. Maybe I heard it in a movie. There's just times where you have something perfect in and imperfect moment, and you don't know what to do. Or say. So you quote a movie, or a song, or something you don't really know. You just say it to fill the space. To fill some invisible void.

"You can't even say anything back now? Really Alex?" My mind was blank, I tried opening my mouth to use some other line I heard once and nothing was coming. All I could think about was "Austa-la-vista baby" or "I'll never let go" or some cheesy line from a song.

"Love will tear us apart." I say this and instantly regret it. I wasn't thinking. I was just speaking, moving for the sake of motion.

"What?! Did you really just quote The Cure? That's the best you could do?" He's laughing, but not in the way that would means everything's fine now, in a way that means the exact opposite.

He started frantically running his hands though his hair, starting a sentence only to have it interject with another, and another, and another until finally he was silent again, the studio audience on the edge of it's seats.

"I need to go." He grabbed a duffel bag, one of mine to be exact but I knew not to bring this up. He calmly open the drawers grabbed a bunch of his shirts, pants, underwear. I was expecting dramatics, slamming of doors, clothes flying everywhere but all his movements seemed calm and calculated. He popped into the bathroom, sticking all the essentials into a toiletry bag and I walked over to his duffle bag. I was so emotionally removed I just needed to physically feel that he was leaving.

"Don't touch it." He said, pulling the bag away from me and stuffing the last of his things in the bag. He zipped it up, again with grace and no dramatics. It was sending my brain for a spin, I needed the dramatics, I needed something to make this seem real and bring me back to this room.

Standing in front of me, I could feel heat just emanating from him. The warmth of his body was immense, and then he turned to face me. Our faces all but a couple feet from each others. We stood there, just looking at each other, him looking at me, me looking at him, looking at the little tiny fish eyed version of myself in his eyes.

He leaned in and kissed me hard, right on the mouth, and it was in that moment I knew I had actually lost him. It's like the curtain had fallen and people we're giving us a standing ovation and I started balling. He left the room and I was standing there in silence. Alone. My ears burning.

All I wanted was to live without regrets and it suddenly dawned on me that this was one I would have to live with forever.