Farewell Indeed

“Where have you been all these years?” There was not a drop of emotion in his tone.

I was never one to tell a person I just saw after how many years everything. “Away… Doing some stuff,” I replied, matching his voice’s monotony. It had been years since I last saw his face, almost 10years. Here I was, at 25, juggling many part-time jobs and trainings that the stress seemed to pile up so I decided to take the weekend off and hit the beach. Who knew that he’d end up on the same beach as I. I heaved a heavy sigh and stared at the sea’s infinite blue.

“Why did you go,” he asked me. He asked me this before, I remember. “I thought you loved me… Then what’s the whole idea of running away with him?”

I gave him the same answer that I gave him 9 years back. “I’m sorry about that.” What was I supposed to say, anyway? Nothing was going to change the way I treated him in the past and asking me the same old questions won’t correct my past mistakes.

Like many girls in high school, I adored the idea of being in a relationship with a guy. I liked the attention, the sweet nothings, and mushy conversations. These made me happy. But unlike others who get bitten by the love bug, I don’t dive in with my whole heart unguarded. I don’t enter a relationship with promises of forever and commitment, because I was a fickle girl and I always put my own interests ahead of anyone else’s. He was my first boyfriend, one who I didn’t intend to have as my last. This was all just a teenage phase to me. Unfortunately, we weren’t on the same wavelength there. And as fickle as I was, I left him for someone else with whom I took interest upon.

“How are you two now?”

I answered him with all honesty. “We two broke up couple of years back... We never worked out.” He must have thought that I was the same old dreamy-eyed fickle-minded girl that he was with almost 10 years ago, knowing I still didn’t end up with the guy I replaced him with. But time has a way of changing people and their perceptions. Time allows us to grow, become wiser, more mature, and let go of our childish pasts. “He just wasn’t the one for me. I guess, I was looking for something else, something I didn’t know was very much within reach during those days.”

I looked at him and I don’t know if there was a moment when a certain emotion showed on his face. But whatever it was, it left as fast as it came. I then saw an approaching figure behind him. I smiled. He must have been confused with this because he turned around only to be shocked to see a face of slight familiarity approach us.

“Dear, I’ve been looking all over for you,” the man approaching said. “Everyone else is waiting by the cottage.”

I looked at the man I was conversing with, the man who was once part of a very distant past and said, “I would like you to meet… my fiancée.”