Relief
Breakups are usually messy. This one, thankfully, wasn't.
She hugged him close, ear to cheek, her arm tight around the nape of his neck, and breathed him in.
"Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
They stepped back, and smiled at each other as friends for a second, their eyes finally speaking to each other after so many months of casual evasion as lovers.
It wasn't that things had gone bad, or that there had been someone else. They'd just drifted apart gradually as their pathways in life had diverged. Idealists often preach mutual tolerance and accomodation. Realists realise that sometimes... you just need something... else.
They were both realists.
She broke their visual embrance and turned away, leaning over to slide into the seat of the waiting cab.
"Paddington station, please."
She didn't look back as the cab pulled away, and she knew that he wouldn't either. Instead she watched the vivid red and gold hues that autumn, freshly risen from the dead had painted in the trees, the sky and the sidewalks. She watched the way the sunlight streamed almost parallel to the ground, creeping around street corners, probing its way under closed doors, catching her eyes at certain angles and blinding her, even in its dying moments. She watched pedestrians hurrying on their ways, pulling their long coats tight around them as the wind, for the first time in a long while caressed then with icy tendrils, as a spring day metamorphosed into an autumn evening.
She was surprised. She'd expected to feel something... sadness. Regret. Resentment.
But all she felt was relief.
