Sitting on the faux-wood benches of the food court, staring out into a sea of half-familiar faces. The air is thick with the smell of americanized foreign cuisine; the General Tsao's chicken comes with minute rice, you eat your sushi with a fork. The illusion that you're hopping across continents just by walking down the row of booths.

I try not to look at you as the words come out of my mouth. "It's the only possible solution."

And all of a sudden, all those cold nights and lonely bus rides where I only had my thoughts to keep my company, they all add up to this. These words. Every reason I've given myself (and there have been plenty): school is making us too busy, we've spent too much time apart, we've lost our spark ... All those shiny, boxed-in, pre-fab statements have been set aside and I've bared my soul to you.

It's not that I don't care anymore, I tell you. It's become too hard, too complicated, too much of a chore. It's not fun anymore, I say, and immediately I regret it, because that's what made the tears come. Not mine, yours.

I stare blankly off to the side. The table next to us is littered with the debris of past meals. A napkin, a straw, a single stale fry on the industrial spackled brown tabletop.

I don't want to watch you cry, because that just amplifies my own shrugging nonchalance. I've thought about it so much I've sucked the emotion from it, and I can't feel anything about it anymore.

The people around us come in tides, the lunch crowd, the stragglers, the pre-teen loiterers. I can't take my eyes off the next table, still empty, still dirty, no one daring to bother with it, like the last christmas tree in the lot. I have to look at it because the alternative is just too much to handle. In this mess and chaos it's a beacon, something to hold on to, if I just keep staring maybe this will all just go away ...

You ask, you beg, and I just keep repeating the same things. I can't do it anymore. You make allusions to the future, give yourself false hope, and I let you, because I don't have the energy to tell you the truth, that there will be no phone call in a couple of months, no reunion at some guy's party, not now, not ever.

I can't even say I'm sorry because I don't understand why I would say it, in what circumstances. What am I sorry for? We both knew what was coming, it was going to happen, it was inevitable.

Soon enough we'll start talking about each other again, in the past tense. Like we're mourning each other. And slowly and surely you'll find someone new and it'll be like it was before, shiny and perfect and wonderful.

And I will go on not feeling, because I've convinced myself that that's the solution, that I can protect myself from hurt and pain by shutting down, by closing myself off.

And when we'll see each other again and you're happy and I'm nothing, you'll wonder how we ever could have had anything in common, you and this cold, empty shell of a person, this girl always looking for something to lock eyes on, something to hold on to, someone to love.