I am filled with mixed emotions as I drive to Theresa's house to pick up the last of my belongings on this hot summers day. Apprehension lurks in the background of my mind, while anger simmers not far from the surface. But most of all, sorrow dominates my state of mind. And my heart. Over the previous month I have struggled to keep myself together, reflecting over what went wrong and wondering if or how I could have done things differently. Our break up was not particularly nasty, but it was a long time coming. She and I have plenty of history and I feel that picking up the dregs of my belongings that remain at her place will be the last and final act in this little drama that was once something special and great for the both of us.
I can remember a time, not really that long ago, when I was happy and felt lucky to be with her every day. Even just one year before we broke up, I remember how we had danced at our friends Karla and Tom's wedding reception, and I had looked at Theresa, so beautiful and perfect. I had thought to myself that it was about time I bought her a ring and popped the big question. Like I said, we once had it really great. The fact is I still miss us and what we had. Well, I miss all the good times. And there were plenty of them too. I have gone over our relationship many times in my head, remembering how happy we once were, and how we could maybe have worked through our problems better. I think about how, when we first met, we became inseparable, and my mind often drifts to that night we met at Karla's party.
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I had first seen her standing across the room, chatting and laughing with Karla. She really stood out from the crowd because she was tall, at least six foot, which is almost as tall as me. She had thick long dark hair that fell down to the middle of her back like a wild glossy black waterfall. Her facial profile was strong, but her features softened when she laughed. I noticed that her legs were impossibly long and that her skin was a medium brown complexion that looked unbelievably flawless and silky smooth.
Karla noticed me watching them both across the room, her face lighting up with a smile and she waved me over to them. She introduced me to Theresa, this impossible beauty with whom she was chatting, and who smiled as I looked into her dark eyes. I smiled back and we shook hands and I noted how her handshake was as firm as mine. Our first ever contact.
She spoke with a thick Kiwi accent and we hit it off with each other right from the very start, spending the next few hours chatting, drinking and dancing together. We were both enthralled by each other and at the end of the night I asked Theresa for her phone number, which she gave willingly and asked me for mine too. "Just in case you don't call," she laughed, and then flashed me a beautiful smile. She was as keen on me as I was keen on her.
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We started dating and everything went smoothly. She and I seemed to have a strong connection, getting along with each other like a house on fire. After our first date we agreed that we both wanted to keep seeing each other. I couldn't stop thinking of her, and later on she confessed to me that she couldn't have got me out of her mind even if she had tried. We spent hours talking on the phone and at some point we discussed how we thought we should try and take our budding relationship slowly. We told each other how, in the past, we had both taken things much too fast with our respective ex's, and those never worked out. That's the funny thing about ex's I suppose. Theresa and I managed to 'take things slow' for just three dates before our collective wills broke and we ended up back at my place, stripping each other naked and making wild passionate love with each other for the first time. And when I say wild, I mean wild, as we spent four or five hours in insatiable ecstasy with each other!
That night we discovered that we were very compatible in the bedroom. And the lounge room. And the kitchen. And the bathroom. Our loving became a very regular occurrence and she was a very passionate lover, to which I responded in kind. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. We spent more and more time at each other's places, spending whole weekends in each other's arms, sharing our bodies and giving each other the greatest pleasure. We fell madly and utterly in love. We discussed things about our respective lives, such as our dreams and aspirations for the future. We talked about how many children we wanted, agreeing that two would be perfect, and we even decided on what we would name them.
I admired her determination, her ambitions and her strong will. She was loud, confidant and passionate about many things, and I found these qualities very attractive. And I found her physically beautiful, like no other woman I had met, with her two big dark eyes and full lips that were so very often formed into a big, gorgeous smile that dominated her strong face. And her beautiful body, that was muscular like an athlete, yet feminine like a swim suit model, with her magnificently firm breasts.
She would tell me that she loved my intelligence and the way I look at things with different eyes to most people. She also told me that she loved the fact that I am strong, but that I have a refreshing sensitive side too. She would tell me that she loved how I make her laugh, and how I make her feel so wanted and sexy in a way no other man has ever made her feel. She told me that she loves me and that she knows I truly love her, like no one before.
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After a wonderful year and a half as a couple we were still blissfully happy and so we decided to move in together. I agreed that I would move out of my place and into hers. Initially things were fantastic. We loved the idea of living together under the same roof. We still couldn't keep our hands off one another, and we now had even more opportunity to do so. We loved the feeling of being domestic with each other, of cooking dinner together each night, washing up the dishes and then crashing on the lounge to watch the television. We mainly loved the familiarity of being together all the time.
But that is where the problems started. It was just little things at first. For example, we had small arguments over the cleaning responsibilities. Apparently my efforts at cleaning weren't up to her standard. She felt I spent too much money and time on toys like my Xbox. I felt she spent too much money on shoes and dresses. She said I spent too much time watching football with my mates and not spending enough time with her on weekends. I felt she spent too much time shopping with, or chatting on the phone to her friends, and not enough time with me. We both have very strong wills and this caused us to clash. But these were all small issues and we both thought we could work through them. We were deeply in love and we only had eyes for each other. Our sex life was out of this world and we still had a lot of fun together, making each other laugh. So, despite having a number of small issues, we were mostly happy.
Sometimes I still reminisce about the long happy drives in the countryside Theresa and I used to take on weekends, or the holidays we had, interstate and overseas. Every now and then she and I would go to a night club and stay up dancing until early in the morning, just for a fun night out. Afterwards we would catch a taxi back to our place, getting a kick out of pretending to be strangers who had just picked one another up in the club for a one night stand, giggling and kissing passionately in the back seat, giving ourselves and the taxi driver a little thrill. More often than not though, we just had quiet nights at home watching DVDs on the lounge, lying against one another. Then there was the trip we took to her native New Zealand, to visit her family. Her mum commented on how good we look together and her father told me in private that he is happy because of his daughter's happiness. I guess he was thanking me for that.
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After four years together things had changed. We fought on a regular basis. I don't even remember why we fought half of the time. Our rows weren't particularly feisty to begin with, just tit for tat, and being the stubborn people we are, neither of us would give any ground. But over time our arguments became heated. There were times that she and I said some hurtful words to each other in the heat of the moment. Things tended to escalate from there. There was never any violence between us but we both managed to inflict damage on one another's hearts and soul with barbed words. We would both end up very upset and she would sometimes cry. I would try to comfort her, realising that we had gone too far, but it would be too late and she just wanted me to leave her alone. Then I would end up sleeping in the spare room. I began to spend more time at work, just to avoid our fights.
Our sex life began to suffer because neither of us felt like being intimate with the person who was making the other so upset. We tried to talk things through but sometimes I felt I was talking to a brick wall. She may have felt the same way about me too. We stopped having sex a couple of months before we broke up. Neither of us was initiating sex at all by that stage, which was so unlike our former insatiable selves who couldn't keep our hands of each other. The lack of sex was a symptom of the other issues we had, but it became the catalyst for our break up. We sat down one day to discuss how we felt, or no longer felt, and we admitted our relationship had become too toxic and decided it was best to part ways.
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I haven't seen her for the entire month since we broke up but I know that my flame still burns for her. I still can't stop thinking about her and how we both ended up in this unhappy place where we thought we would be happier without each other. That is why my emotions overwhelm me. I feel a twinge of nerves as I press the doorbell, wondering how she will receive me. Theresa answers the door and I can't help but think that she looks amazing, as she always has in my eyes. She is wearing a casual black singlet top that barely contains her breasts, and tight little shorts that expose her long legs, but I know she isn't trying to look sexy on my account because this is the familiar comfortable getup that she wears around the house on hot summer days.
She gives me no smile and responds to my greeting with a curt, "Hello." But we still manage to give each other a quick hug. She invites me in to collect the last of my belongings, which includes a box of photo albums and some books that I had left on the bookshelf. At first she is cold, ignoring me and going about her own business as if I wasn't there.