Just like that

It's so funny how I have submitted multiple stories about the boy I loved for six months during lockdown and not one about the girl who I loved for six years

When the word "ex" is brought up, the majority of afflictions are levied on the failed romances: the partner who couldn't commit or the lover who cannot compromise. But what about the ex-best-friend?

The break-up or rather ghosting of mourning the ex-best-friend cuts deep, when you least expect it, the trinkets scratch at the surface reminding, reminiscing, romantising.

This isn't a conventional "love" story. It's a story about: picking out ants from the pineapples we bought off a side-stall in Asia, it's trying to calm the taxi-woman down whilst you're in the back seat of her car trying not to throw up, it's the dirty old men who bought over an extortionate priced amount of champagne for us to devour, it's the lying on the dewy grass outside the funfair with the sun seeping into our skin, it's the taste of that awful mixture of sambuca and rennie, it's the swaying of our hips in our denim shorts at the summer music festival with cigarette smoke in our lungs, it's the learning life through living with you.

How petty it seems to be loving a six month boy who never loved me back, when a six year love ended just like that.