harder to breathe

"Does it kill? Does it burn? Is it painful to learn that its me that has all the control?"

It had taken awhile, but her plan had come together well. Of course, she had never suspected otherwise. Beth had perfected this game.

In the beginning, she had really hoped things would be different. That Will would be different from those other guys. That he was interested in more than her body. But she was wrong. Beth wavered for a moment recalling the way her hope and desire had been killed with one quick conversation. Will made it perfectly and painfully clear that this was just a sex thing. Of course, she had controlled her reaction and agreed convincingly.

Now here she was four months later. The so-called sex thing had continued. And Beth had spent these four months lying to herself, burying any real feelings she had for Will and encouraging the notion that he should be treated just like any other guy from her past. Use then lose.
Beth recognized the perfect moment a week away. Will had suddenly become a little more tender when they had sex. He had shown signs of jealousy when he saw another guy approach her. He had called her a few times just to chat.

Beth turned to him that morning after she got dressed, after a night of putting in some of her best work. She told him that she thought they should end things, that she was ready to move on to a new fling, that this had just gotten a little stale. And of course that they should still remain friends.

She saw it. That look of surprise, disappointment, confusion. The look of being hurt. She knew that look because she had felt it, and now Beth was supposed to be relishing in passing that hurt along to him. Instead, her own hurt surfaced suddenly and threatened to break her whole facade. She grabbed her things, threw a quick goodbye over her shoulder, and left him there alone in his apartment trying to figure out what had just happened.

Beth made it to her car, which was thankfully parked out of sight from Will's apartment. The tears came streaming down despite her best effort to calm herself. She wiped them away frantically, knowing that no matter how bad she felt now her pride would never let her change her mind. This was done.