You knew you’d lost Simon the day he started to treat you differently. The nights on the couch weren’t spent cuddling anymore, he didn’t squeeze your hip when he walked past you, he didn’t come back from the grocery store with your favourite snacks. He grew colder, putting up a steel wall, becoming even more impenetrable than he already was.

Then, he became meaner. Spilling water on the table became a lecture about your incompetence, stumbling while walking became a rant on how you weren’t able to do anything by yourself, and if you gave wrong directions when driving, he would threaten to leave you out in the cold, because you couldn’t even put in the little effort to do things right.

Simon had stopped being yours, you were sure of it, and the more you tried to endure it, the more you started to drift away, too. The love simply wasn’t there anymore, you’d grown apart, and no matter how much it hurt you, you had to cut things off for the wellbeing and the sanity of you both.

“I met a girl,” he said one night, while eating the dinner you had made, in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with you. “Her name’s Julie. She’s nice, I feel like I can tell her everything.” He explained with the most deadpan voice, as if talking about the most trivial thing, and not as if he was proving all your paranoias right, creating a chasm inside your chest.

“Good, then I’d say you can pack your stuff and leave.” You mirrored his tone, putting the fork down; you couldn’t possibly eat anymore. Simon hummed in understanding, there was no point in fighting back, you couldn’t have dug your claws into something that was no longer in your reach.

He’d stood up and silently packed his stuff right away, leaving his keys on the bowl by the door. He had no intentions of coming back. While standing on the threshold, he turned around, looking at you, still sitting at the table. “We’ll…stay friends, right?” He asked quietly, but loud enough for you to hear it.