The dinner, its silent. It is not the quiet kind but the heavy kind of silent. The one that wraps around your ribs and makes breathing feel like a betrayal.
The room, it's dressed in perfection. The polished silverware, all aligned with the surgical precision and everything glistens under warm candlelight. Not a single petal of the white roses in the centrepiece dares to wilt. It looks like a scene pulled from a luxury magazine, a dream frozen in time.
But It isn't a dream and I am not dreaming.
I'm the rough breath behind the stillness and the chaos beneath the calm. And maybe, he is too.
Only he...he is perfect enough to hide it. He wears control like a tailored suit.
We sit two inches apart at a table that is built for ten. For a second, I laugh inside, wondering if its dining room or a conference hall.
For the first time, the inches felt like a mile apart.
A canyon of unanswered questions and untold truths lingers between us. All I hear is the clink of his fork meeting porcelain. The rhythmic motion of his chewing gives me the robotic vibe. There is not a single word, not a glance.
I start studying him like I used to, like I have the right. The slope of his nose, the tension in his jaw, the way he is holding his glass with three fingers and never let it tilt too far. He is older now, sharper. Not in a physical sense, but in spirit. Like time had chiselled him into something more untouchable. He was no more that boy but the mystery wrapped in a suit.
Now, everything about him screams distance.
He is not looking at me, not even once. And now he does, Oh god, my little heart. He looks at me just like his eyes will crack me from skin to bone. And it really does.
I try to break the silence, "What time do you usually dine?" I ask, pretending to adjust the fold of my napkin.
He doesn't look up. "Whenever I feel like it." He says, cold and precise.
Cold. Precise.
But then, he passes me a dish, smoothly and wordlessly. A bowl of salted green peas, my favourite. I guess there are also something that I like in this place, that rose garden and now this dish.
I stare at my hand that is froze mid-air. I hadn't eaten them in month.
I take them and eat slowly. Each bite, familiar one, a soft betrayal of my efforts to stay distant.
"Why did you call me here?" I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. The candle flames dance in his eyes, but he doesn't blink.
"We're going to be engaged within a week," he says simply. "I thought you might want to go shopping, dresses, jewellery, with your friends or..."
He paused. And the pause was too long, too careful.
"...If they can't come, I can arrange my time to go with you."
My fork stops midair.
He says it like he is willing to go, it didn't sound like schedules and arrangements.
I didn't answer. Then he slides a card across the table, no explanation.
I slide it back saying, "I can do my own shopping"
He looks up at me, "Didn't you read contract, love?"
I blinked, "Excuse me?"
"Its there, all your expenses are now mine."
I just take it without any word. Today night, I won't ask again why it's me? I won't ask the question that matters. I don't dare.
But still, why me?
Why now?
Why, after everything, did he come back for a girl whose heart he had broken in a single sentence? A girl who was humiliated just for one letter.
He is untouchable, proud, dangerous and he can choose anyone. A diamond. A crown jewels.
Instead, he picked the girl with nothing but scars and shadows.
The dinner end, without dessert. Without warmth. Without a shred of resolution.
He stands, adjusting his cufflinks with clinical grace, and ask me, "Shall we go now or you want to stay a little more."
Ahh this man, he is shocking me with his words today. Does he really think I want to stay here? I say, "I need to be home early."
Outside, the night breathes cool against my skin. He didn't call for a driver. He just walks with me to the car and open the door.
I slide in. He gets behind the wheel.
The engine hummed. The city rolls past in a blur of soft gold and silver light. The world keeps moving, unaware that I am sitting next to the echo of the boy I had once loved.
I look at him. Just once.
His profile is stone, beautiful but distant. Like a statue carved by regret.
And so, I say the one thing I shouldn't have.
"You could've sent your assistant."
He didn't turn. "I could've."
A beat.
Then he says "But I didn't."
That shuts me up.
I folded my hands neatly on my lap. I stare out the window, watching buildings slide by like pages in a book I don't remember writing. Lie the stories I'd never meant to be a part of. His car is quiet, just like him. I don't say a word after that neither he does. Only the city speaks through the glowing signboard and distant horns.
When we pull up to my house, he got out again. He opens my door, still no words.
I stand on the sidewalk, clutching the thin straps of my dress like they are my lifelines.
"Thank you," I said, unsure what I mean.
He looks at me finally.
"For what?"
I hesitate, For the silence, I suppose."
His lips almost twitched. Almost.
And then I turn. I walk away from the polished car and into the home that didn't feel like one now. Maybe it turned into a place of cracked walls, wilting flowers, and fading memories.
After getting into my room, I lay there, on my bed, I stare at the ceiling, my thoughts loud and directionless. The stars outside have long gone dim. The whispers are already starting, the ones that say.... I wasn't enough. That I am nothing more than a bankrupt girl wearing borrowed pearls, pretending to belong in a story written for someone else.
And still, I didn't know why he chose me.
Maybe I never would because he won't say and I'm tired of asking things that don't get answered.
Maybe I wasn't supposed to know. But I did know this, once in that dining room, he looked at me like I was his. And maybe that was the cruellest kindness of all. Because when the heart remembers what it once was, it also remembers what it lost.
And I am not sure I can survive losing him again, even if he is not mine.
Not now.
Not like this.
Not when he is inches away.
And still feels a mile apart.