Irina remembers the day after the breakup; a memory forever engraved into her mind. She'd seen that beautiful hair and that beauty mark on your face right on the subway and nearly had a breakdown.

Another, she'd been trying to distract herself. A simple rebound. But the girl had worn the very same perfume you used─ wrapped around her throat like a net to constrict her breathing. Irina left the make-out session in the bathroom with a scowl and stiff fists.

Every day was a nightmare. The many moments you two shared chased Irina in her dreams until she was too tired to keep her legs moving and ended up slumped, allowing for them to haunt her enough to wake up with a heaving chest and sweat-soaked pajamas. Her parents noticed─ everyone did, honestly. She's always been quiet and reserved, but never a loner.

Irina made you the villain. You'd moved on so quickly, so suddenly, and she had nearly snapped her phone in half when Instagram chose to show her a picture of you and your new little lover. How could you do such a thing after five years of a relationship? Had all her sacrifices meant nothing? She'd written poems and songs for you, about you. It felt as though you'd crumpled them all up and tossed into a fire.

Four months after the breakup, Irina chose to leave Moscow. Her feelings for you ─ the anger, hurt, and regret ─ didn't leave her mind. They haunted her like grief does, sneaking in the shadows to bite at her ankles to make her stumble in her footing again.

You just had a way about you.

It's been a while since the day you ended things and went from girlfriends to ex-girlfriends, but even now, Irina doesn't trust herself that she won't say your name when she's with someone else. Even if she's moved to an entirely different continent and now resides in Saskatchewan. A simple province, and somewhere with no subways to mistake another girl for you in.

Except, it seems that today, you've chosen to haunt her in person, not in her dreams.

Irina struggles not to make the glass in her hand crack and stain her palm red. Of all places you had to be in, it had to be the one she chose to get away from you. God, you really did have a way.

She can tell whoever is trying to charm you is making you uncomfortable. Irina would recognize that little look and thing of yours that gives it away in seconds. She should walk away. She should let you handle it alone. But it'll just haunt her further.

It's just never over, is it? With a sigh, she chooses to stride over to the corner of the bar.

"Leave," Irina states, stepping up before you. She doesn't shove, nor does she curse. The last thing she wants is to make a scene. "You're making her uncomfortable, and she's with me."

They seem to buy the lie, walking away without much of a word.

She turns to you then, and Irina's thankful for the high quality of the glass that holds her drink. She wants to demand that you leave next. Part of her hopes that she'd mistaken another woman for you like she's done a thousand times, but no. There's that beauty mark that she used to kiss every day.

"What the hell are you doing here?" She can only hope the music in the background drowns out the way her voice cracks.