She had lied with abandon to ruin him out of spite, but she had, ultimately, failed to do so. So now she sentenced him to endless pain, as she would never see her way to making amends. She was cruel, a cruelty borne of having loved, though she denied it. There was no other justification for her vehemence and the hurt she felt. She feigned that she was the bearer of truth, though she lied. 

He needed to hate her, but he couldn’t. He knew why she’d done it, and he understood the conflicting interests that drove her to it, that it was not entirely her design. But she was still unnecessarily cruel and believed herself superior. 

He could be cruel as well. 

He’d already convicted her of her past decisions, things she could not deny, depraved decisions, which had, eventually, turned on her and led her to become the vindictive person she now was. But he could have maimed her heart further. 

He could have pointed out that she was a shallow, vain, spoiled asshole, with no justification for her vanity. That she acted like a child, and pathetically sought constant pity. That her niceness was a premeditated act. She was neurotic to a fault, and, no matter how she denied it, she was shallowly looking for a man who could afford a beach house. Her faith was a ruse, as she did not actually follow it, and she, in a mark of extreme self-loathing, prided herself on being a doormat. She overdid her sports fanaticism, clearly to compensate for something she hadn’t gotten from men, a completely unhealthy addiction to competition, though she denied it. And probably the saddest thing was that she acted stupid when she wasn’t, letting what was expected of her overrule what she knew was right and what she really wanted. 

She was anorexically thin and she looked fifteen years older than she was, and she was already old. Her hair was as fake as her relationships and the dye added to her age. Her legs were too short and scrawny and her hands too big. She had no ass. And her voice was two octaves lower than it should have been for her size, often disconcertingly raspy, likely from years of smoking, which had aided the sun in giving her her deep lines. 

It was objective truth. The reality was that, given her age, looks, and neuroses, though her friends lied to her, the only other men who would want her would be users, losers with large wallets, who had been cast off by women who found out what they really were. Men looking for someone they could put down and control or an easy lay, especially those who’d known her for years and had only come sniffing around recently. They’d had their shot and hadn’t wanted it, and that was before she had succumbed to her age and neuroses. It was cruel to say, but it was true. She had to know it was. 

No man who chose her now would have put in the time as he had, the time needed to see the inner beauty that she kept hidden in the place where the cruelty and vindictiveness did not dwell, where her heart truly lived. It was a fact. He’d never loved her for her outside, though what he’d seen inside her had led him to see her exterior as something beautiful, something he needed, desired. No other man would ever see it. There simply wasn’t enough time, and none of them were close enough to her to ever get there nor had the actual interest. 

Some might claim that, if he’d said that to her, it would have been done to manipulate, to crush her self-esteem, meant to control. But they would be so ridiculously wrong. They were facts … and they were things he’d grown to love about her … It had taken quite a long time. Time she no longer had, and proximity no one else had. They were not the marks of attractiveness that men sought, and she knew it. She knew it enough to want to fix her face, but that would have only brought her even worse men. 

And she could turn it around on him just as easily. He was poor and did not want to be a go-getter. He lived at home (though she had always refused to acknowledge that he actually didn’t. It was his house and his mom was elderly.) He had a shitty car. He could not completely get rid of his belly. His hair sucked. He had too many birth marks. His nose was crooked from having been broken too many times and his eyes were too small. He complained too much or didn’t talk at all. But she, as he had, had gotten to know who he really was, and, though she would deny it, had wanted him. Yet, she still let herself succumb to peer pressure like the childish woman she was. 

And, so, it was a fact that any other man who came after her only saw an easy mark, a subservient woman without the means to have an ego, though she did, someone who would jump at the chance for their attention and do whatever she was asked, granted he was approved of by her friends and had the right means. So her choices became being alone for the rest of her life or, once again, selling herself to a man who didn’t really love her for the sake of convenience. And she had put herself there. He hadn’t. 

And what was also a fact was that, since she had rejected him out of hand, based upon the opinions of others, she had given up on her humanity, on real love, on a genuine life. She couldn’t get past her conditioning and realize that none of the other shit she fixated on mattered at all, that she had lived without it for years. It didn’t matter, but it was all that mattered to her because that is what she had been taught to respect. 

So he would live in endless sorrow, going through the motions until he died. And she would either live the same, but pretending for everyone ese’s sake but her own, or she would choose another fake relationship with someone who would, no doubt, become an emotionally abusive asshole in short order. 

IT WAS THE MOST NEEDLESSLY STUPID SITUATION IN EXISTENCE. 

The unstated fact was they had been exactly what the other needed. They meshed like magnets. She was soil and he was water. And it was so sad, because he knew damn well what she really wanted, beyond all the shallow bullshit. She wanted someone to hug her and look at her with unconditional love. And he had. She yearned for it. He had felt it in her, the desperation for it. She wanted someone who dreamed about her and only her. And he had. He was the only one who did. He told her the undiluted truth, which she needed to hear, but she could not stand his honesty because all she’d ever know were lies. Just as souls, they needed each other for completeness. But she had denied herself and stabbed him to appease everyone else. And now they were both fucked, because he was as much part of her soul now as she was his. 

And now that was all there would ever be, because she had convinced herself that running away from it all would solve all her problems. So, though he would always love her, he hoped that she’d rot in her fakeness, bring on her own damnation, as she had done before, though he knew she’d even fake happiness to spite him.