Last Dinner Table

Written by Ludmila Barros

I couldn’t understand what was happening. I was sitting in that table waiting for the waiter bring me the check. He left, no turning back, no wondering, no second thoughts. I believed our relationship was fine, not that good, but not that bad. His reaction was a total surprise for me. My head turned into pain and sadness and sorrow.

To be brutally honest, I loved him, more than I could imagine. I kept remembering our moments together, all the dates in fancy restaurants and loving in cheap motels, everything surrounded by laughter and, again, love. I was recreation all those scenarios looking for holes, looking for missing parts, for some kind of clue. I was looking for something to comfort myself, something to make me believe that it was all there, that he was giving me all the hints that he didn’t love me back.

Yet, I couldn’t find any.

He said there was another woman in his life. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t. Not because of the cheating, I just couldn’t admit to myself that the adorable man that loved me for so many years had felt for another so easily. I am not that replaceable, at least I don’t think so. Or am I? Am I so ordinary, so common that it is easy to put something, someone in my place? Is it? Is that the answer?

All those years of giving myself, almost devoting my life to him are in the trash, they’re gone, far gone. My mom was actually making plans for the wedding, not that he ever proposed, but she was hopeful that it was going to happen, sooner or later. And, sincerely, I did believe too. I could picture in my head telling my parents that it was over, that my long term relationship with him was over. My mom would cry a little bit and my dad would be mad, saying that he wasted my life, the golden years of my womanhood, that by now I could have married a good man from the church.

I remember how we met in the church. His family had just moved to the neighbourhood and his mother forced him to go there every sunday. He made friends with the worst boys in the town, that used to make fun of me because I was a bit chubby at the time. And, obviously, he stopped going to the church, making his mom mad.

He didn’t talk to me again till I grew up, till I became a full developed teenager. He said he was sorry about the way he treated me, that he did it because the other guys were doing it and he didn’t want to be left out. After some time we were officially dating. He kept trying to convince me to have sex with him, I resisted for a while, but looking back now, I guess I was already in love with him.

After that, in the beginning of our relationship he seemed to like me more than I liked him. He was the one to ask me to meet my parents formally. We went to prom together and then we got in college. Yet, despite the fact that we were in different states, our love remained strong. My girl friends in college used to tell me that he was totally cheating on me, that it was impossible that he stayed loyal to me. They used to say that because of the huge amount of photos he would appear in fraternity parties, drunk as a skunk, always with some girls around. But I continued to believe in him. He would deny every kind of silly accusation I could make. Nevertheless, everything was alright when we got back to our home town for some of the vacation days.

We graduated in the same year and we both decided to definitely go back to our town. I insisted on we living together, but he said no. He said that we were too young to make this kind of commitment. He said he didn’t see himself marrying so young. I agreed after some thought, we were in fact very young. Once again he put some reason in my mind. Then I decided to live my live to the fullest. We traveled. We made friends. We fought. We enjoyed ourselves.

And now he broke up with me, it’s like all these years meant nothing to him. He was going to live in New York because of a proposal and he meet someone there and wanted to give it a shot. It appear that I wasn’t worth that shot.

And I still can’t find a reason.