"Let's break up!", Samuel said with hesistancy in his voice. He looked at her, hoping she would not agree to it. Even if she didn't love him yet, he could deal with that if she just showed a sign of reluctance to ending their one-year relationship. If she didn't agree to end the relationship, he would wait for her. Wait for her to love him.

  Tris was confused at first. She didn't know why he would suggest that. Did he mean it? She was silent for a few seconds before she finally opened her mouth to speak.

  "Yeah, right. We should break up.", Tris said coldly as she turned to head outside the coffee shop. Samuel felt his heart rip into a million pieces as he slowly turned his head to the ground.

  "Before you leave, let me ask you this one question." Samuel said in a low voice, stopping her in her tracks.

Tris turned back to face Samuel. "Ask it."

"Did you ever love me? Even for a moment?", Samuel asked her, shifting his gaze from the floor to fix them on her. He was waiting for her response. 

   Tris, unable to answer his question, stayed silent and looked at him remorsefully. She was sad. Sad that she had hurt his feelings, sad that she couldn't love him. She had thought that she would love him with time which was why she had agreed to date him. But she was wrong. She couldn't love him. After dating him for a year, she had more reasons to like him but they just weren't enough to love him. She didn't know how to tell him that so she stayed silent.

   Her silence was louder than anything she could have said and Samuel knew the answer to his question. She had never loved him, not even for a moment. He felt as if his heart had been broken all over again.

"What was I thinking? What was I expecting?", he thought to himself.

He was so low in spirit that he could only croak, "Take care".

  "You too.", Tris replied him in a low voice and quietly walked to the entrance of the door. She waited for him to leave the coffee shop before she stepped outside and locked the door.

  Tris started to walk to the bus station but decided to stop and sit on the park bench under some cherry trees. She thought about her breakup with Samuel and how she had hurt him because she couldn't love him. Samuel was a good person, a good boyfriend to her. 

  "I'm the bad girl.", she whispered to herself.

   After a few minutes of thinking, she stood up to leave. As soon as she got up from the bench, she saw a leaf fall on the bench. She picked it up and looking at it, she thought of someone - Tony. Her childhood best friend, her first love whom she had not seen or heard from in ten years.

   

  Even at her lowest, she always thought of him. He was the one person that she had loved with all her heart but he wasn't there with her. Maybe that was why loving someone else was hard. Because Tony had taken up all the space in her heart.

"I think it's time to let Tony go. So that I can have enough space in my heart to love someone else. So that I would stop hurting.", she said under her breath before inhaling deeply.