He couldn’t help but think, as he pulled his jacket tighter around his body and trudged forward, that this moment could have been taken straight from a movie.
It was raining. A full moon was shining down from a sky full of stars. The sidewalk on which he walked was shadowed by the branches of elm trees. And then there he was, the main character, the guy walking alone through a park as he thought about the girl he could no longer have. It was typical for a blockbuster.
But this wasn’t a movie. In movies, things got better. He couldn’t see this ever getting better.
If it were a movie, he might suddenly feel his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. If it were a movie, he might answer it to hear her voice on the other end. She might begin explaining the misunderstanding, or maybe she would inform him that she had made a mistake, and that she didn’t want to be with anyone but him.
But this wasn’t a movie.
She wasn’t going to call him. She wasn’t going to tell him it was a misunderstanding, because it wasn’t. She wasn’t going to say that she had made a mistake, because she hadn’t. Her new guy was a thousand times better than he was and there was no way to deny it.
He wished she had done something wrong, something to make him angry with her. If she had it would be easier for him to let go. He would be able to tell himself that he was better off without her, that he didn’t need someone like that in his life.
But she’d done nothing wrong. She was still as perfect as she was the day he met her… now she had just met someone else who was perfect as well. He couldn’t make himself think it was her fault that he wasn’t perfect.
And so he walked along with his broken heart in tow, kicking stones halfheartedly out of his way. He passed a teenage girl, huddled under an umbrella as she walked her dog. He passed an old married couple, the man pushing his wife in her wheelchair.
It was the perfect set for a movie. Squirrels were scampering in the trees above. Puddles were accumulating on the sidewalk, attracting birds.
He wished it was a movie; in movies, things got better.
This wasn’t going to get better.