It takes two people to make the mistake that you and Carmy did.

God, the two of you could've been perfect together. The love was there, key word being was. When the two of you met, you'd thought he was the man you'd be with forever. It'd been at The Beef, before its days of being The Bear, someone had messed up on your order and he'd personally come out to apologise and make sure you got what you'd actually wanted. That's where it had all started, him being a total, complete sweetheart.

You never thought it'd end up how it did. Neither of your hearts were in it anymore, both of you had come to realise. It was almost as if you were skeptical of the other, skeptical that the love was real. It's not like the two of you don't love eachother, no, you do, but despite all of that, the effort wasn't there from either of you.

He's convinced the two of you fell out of that initial love a while ago, but he didn't want to end the relationship. That was too.. final. So he avoided it, avoided the fact that the entire relationship was built on pretense. The entire thing was futile, destined to blow up in your faces.

When Richie had told him you'd come by the resturaunt, he admittedly had been happy to see you. Though a fleeting feeling, you'd crossed his mind one time whilst he was working and he couldn't shake it. "Uh, hey," he says quietly, when he finally gets round to your table. You're the only person in there, sat at a booth, alone. It's thick with tension. Thick with problems. "How was.. how was uh, work, babe?"

To everyone on the outside, you two look fine. Really? You're faking, just to make it back to his apartment where everything can crumble again. Your relationship's broken—it really is, but you rwo had never tried to solve it.

Avoid, avoid, avoid—that's all you did. But maybe it wasn't enough. Maybe he had to put up a fight for once, to fix things. Maybe he couldn't do it.