The silence ensued. So I finally braved a glance over at him. When he knew I was looking—but didn't have the heart to meet my gaze—he nodded.

"Why?" I asked.

"You're leaving, Zar. I can't make distance work."

"I'll be back in a month."

"Yeah, but so much will change by then."

Shaking my head, I replied, "No. It really won't."

"You had to know this was coming for us. We have been distant."

"You have been distant."

"Sorry." He still wasn't looking at me.

"Do I really have to be the first girl you asked out and first you dump?" my voice croaked.

"You're too smart for me. You know that."

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, trying to keep the tears from escaping. Hoping I could stay strong. Hoping I could be the snappy girl that intrigued him two months ago. "Why, really?"

He shrugged. "We're just not a good fit."

"I literally said that before you asked me out. And you insisted this would be—"

"I know! I know... I'm sorry. I just... I hoped this would be different. I really wanted to like you. And I did for so much longer than the others, but..."

"I don't get it, Ro. Why are you so unable to commit?"

Another shrug.

"Tell me."

"We're not close enough for that, Zar."

"Close enough for me to go down on you," I scoffed.

He bit his lip and rubbed the back of his neck. "I hope we can stay friends?"

"You're either with me or nothing, Ro."

"Okay," he whispered, nodding slowly. Then he got to his feet. "I'll see you around."

"Wait!" I lept of my swing and grabbed his wrist. "Why? Really? Give me something concrete. Why now? Why wait until the day before I'm leaving? Surely a part of you was willing to wait—"

"Sarah confessed last night at a party that she likes me," he blurted out, unable to meet my eyes. "And she just got her Ps and a car. So we can go places over the summer. But the condition is that I date her."

"You're... breaking up with me so that you can hook up with some other girl while I'm away?"

He was full of shrugs. I knew this wasn't the full reason.

"You can't just wait for me?"

"I could, but... We never go anywhere, Zar. I want to get out of this stupid neighbourhood. I want something new. You haven't even bothered to get your licence even though you could months ago."

"What does a bloody licence have to do with anything?" The remnants of my British accent were slipping in. It always became thicker the angrier I got.

"Maybe if you had a car and we could go places, this would have been—"

"You said you like just hanging out. The two of us."

"It was nice for the first couple of weeks, but then..." he trailed off.

When the silence continued, neither of us making eye contact, I finally whispered, "You'd rather give me a stupid reason than know the real one, right? This isn't it."

"I think it's best that you remember me this way. You deserve a guy who properly likes you, Zar. You really do. And I haven't said that to any exes before."

"Probably because you never dump any..."

"They normally get fed up with me being distant."

"Is... is there another girl? Surely it's not just about Sarah?"

The look in his eye said it all. There was someone who had his heart.

"Why don't you just tell her?"

"She's not... She'd never go for someone as dumb as me."

"I did?"

But his expression revealed what his words were trying to hide.

Nodding slowly, I whispered what he was holding back, "I was practice. If you ever got the real courage... Right."

"I really would like to remain friends."

"I don't think that's possible, Ro. Enjoy your stupid car rides with Sarah and breaking her heart too because of whomever this girl is. You bloody wanker."

He really didn't deserve my final comment, but I couldn't help it slipping out of my mouth. It was all I could do to stop the quivering lip that took hold of me the moment I turned away from him. To stop the tears falling from my eyes before he knew he had shattered me to pieces.

But when I knew I was far enough away, when I had closed the front door behind me, I let it all escape, barely noticing when mum had wrapped her arms around me.

╚═══━━━─── ∘◦ ❈ ◦∘ ───━━━═══╝

And so that's where I'm at. Heartbroken, demolished, every other adjective you can think of that might describe the gaping hole in my chest and the numbness in my movements.

The early hours of the morning passed in a blur as I triple-checked my luggage, as mum drove me to the airport, as I went through the check-in process, and as I waited at the gate for my flight to arrive.

Mum gave me endless hugs, made me promise to call her once a week, and, next thing I knew, I was walking down the jetway to the plane.

I would have been terrified to be taking this journey alone. It was twenty-four hours in the air from Townsville, Australia to London, United Kingdom. And an additional nine hours of layover for stopping in Sydney and Singapore to change planes.

But thanks to Rowan, it was difficult to feel anything. 

As the engines roared beneath me and the plane backed out of the gateway, the surge of memories began to take hold of my brain once more, screaming at me to remember them instead of listening to the lady giving the safety demonstration.

Closing my eyes, I let them win. And with each plane ride I boarded after that, I let my mind show me the past two months again and again until I knew every single experience we shared together back to front, reminding me what I'd miss. Reminding me what I had lost. Reminding me he wouldn't be waiting when I got back.

The first day of Christmas was longer than any I had had before. Not just because I had literally nothing to do thousands of metres up in the air, but also because the plane was flying against time, with the clocks barely having changed by the time I landed in the next country. When we hit the tarmac in Singapore, back home it would have been midnight. But instead, it was still 9pm. And I had six hours to kill until my next flight. Until maybe I could sleep the pain away.

On the first day of Christmas, I slowly began to accept that there was no 'true love' for me. Because the one I thought I loved gave me the worst present of all: a breakup just before I leave.