The cigarette burnt out at the tip of his fingers but he didn’t notice. His head was squirming with the thoughts of what could have been. He couldn’t touch the bottle of whiskey that lay unopened by his bed side because he knew it would make him weak, he knew it will kill the resolve, make him forget the pact that he made with himself- it would make him call her.

She laughed at the joke that her friend made up, maybe a little harder than she intended to. These were fun days, she was finally free to do what she wanted, finally free from the shackles that she thought had been placed upon her by him. No one fucking told her what to do or what not to! Then how could he? Even their last fight was as trivial as they come but she never had thought it would come to this. As her dear old friend lay his hands on her shoulders to tell another of his jokes, she felt her back stiffen and wondered why wouldn’t he call, he always calls?!

Ego kills more than life ever promises, he always believed he had known that. But this time he wanted her to understand, to feel his absence. They had been fighting for too damn long, all that he wanted with her was to miss him.

She gulped another shot as the jockey on the radio promised a night of uninterrupted rock and roll. She had never been too much into this kind of music but the mellow high of the cocktail of vodka shots and weed had her gyrating to Alice Cooper’s Poison. On the back of her mind played the songs on which they always used to dance together, steal a kiss when they thought none of their friends were looking. She smiled at her recollection, should she let go and give him a call? Should she just forget everything? Her friend shook her to get her back to the real world with another shot in his hands. She laughed and gulped it down just as the music began to fade away.

He always looked at the stars whenever he felt lost, there was something very soothing about the way they stayed still, serine, while the world around them moved. He couldn’t help but recollect the memory of them lying under the stars, kissing each other to bits and how that night went on, how he thought that their honeymoon would never end. There is something very disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.

The shots were having their effect, ‘oh I feel great’, she thought! The radio started blaring Sweet Child and she kicked it off, these were the songs he played out to her, she didn’t want to think about all that now. It would send the memories kicking in, or would make get emotional, it would make her miss him. She didn’t know if she could handle all that now. A tear escaped her eyes and she had to resist the temptation of letting them flow. Her friend gently brought his hands and wiped them off and she suddenly felt very warm.

He felt for his pack of smokes, but it was empty. Fuck it, he thought, it was time to go inside. He had been out in the open for the past couple of hours now. As he entered the room he saw his phone lying there and felt an overwhelming desire to pick it up and give her a call. Nothing much, just to see how she is doing. He found himself debating the same question again but with a little weaker resolve.

As he wiped her tears off, she found himself looking into his eyes and she kissed him before she knew it. She kissed him again and just as she felt his hand slipped under her dress, the phone rang.

The night whistled past by as he lay dreamlessly on the five inch mattress he pretended to call his bed. The cigarette whistled a soft cry as he blew a gush of smoke up in the thin air- at least something was moving apart from his dangling legs. His heart had been silent for some time now, or so he thought. It had stopped aching that bad a little while ago though- the only key was being patient and watch what breaks down first– his body or his mind. For the first few days, he called on his dear old friends, whiskey and weed, and they entertained him to the full. He would drink himself senseless to sleep and wake up with a hangover. Some of the days, it was a splitting pain, his temples contracting and contorting to blow out the brains, others, it was not so bad. His days were a haze, went past him. But even though it being the midst of summers, he had never felt so cold.

Lying down, he knew he shouldn’t think of her but inadvertently every chain of thoughts ended up with her memories. He realized shutting her out will be an exercise in extreme futility but each recollection of the past made him yearn for what he had lost. His heart made him cough up tears and yelled for him to pick up the phone and call her, hear her voice for one last time. “Once, and that’s it”, it said.

He picked up the phone. Her number was the only one he remembered. He picked up another cigarette and lit it up, had to calm down the nerves before he could utter a single intelligible syllable. He had left smoking when he was with her, without, it acted as a placeholder for his addiction to love. The addiction to her puffed-up cheeks, her honey-almond voice, her kissable lips, her big brown eyes, her perfect breasts, her beautiful lovely ass. He pictured her naked, next to him, as he typed her number. The warning on the cigarette box caught his attention and he pictured her saying no to every advances he made. He forced himself to lay the phone down and think of all he had been through. Was it all worth this, “hell! yeah it was”, his heart said, and he knew it were true. But deep inside, the knowledge of his inability to handle another breakdown called searing through and knocked him to consciousness, to think straight. “This can wait when I am ready”, he thought.

Till then, some glasses of whiskey will do. Or a bottle of wine. Maybe a couple of prostitutes. Or might be, time.