Saturday 10th January 2009

by Tina

The day Noah broke up with her, Mitchie didn’t cry.

She didn’t expect it. Yes, they have been having arguments recently, but she never thought of them as major arguments. She figured they were just having some rough grounds that everyone in a relationship passes through. She had them with Leon, and she’s having them now with Noah. The only difference with Leon and Noah is that Leon turned out to be a total monster, while with Noah, Mitchie was sure he wasn’t like that.

Until he broke up with her.

No, she didn’t cry. She didn’t do anything. How could she, when the breakup came from a form of a text messages, in exactly 16 words:

im sory, i dnt thnk its rly wrkng out betwn d 2 of us. its ovr.

Mitchie stared at her phone for a long time, willing the message to go away, or that Noah would send a follow up text saying that he sent her the wrong message. But if he did send her the wrong message, then whose was it for? Mitchie didn’t know if she’d like that alternative better or not.

She should have started crying buckets now. But her eyes were dry. She had always been a crybaby when she and Noah fought, but today there was nothing pricking the backs of her eyes, no liquid filling her eyes that she could hardly see until she allows them to fall down her cheeks.

Mitchie picked her phone up and found the message staring back at her. She read the sixteen words for the nth time that afternoon and wondered briefly what Noah was feeling when he sent the message. Was he sad? Was he just fed up? Did he think about it for a really long time? Did he even think of talking to Mitchie about it, instead of sending the message? What made him decide it’s over when it was just yesterday that they had a really good time together?

So many questions, and just sixteen words facing Mitchie. He did not even bother to write the words completely.

No explanations. Nothing.

She wanted to cry. But instead, she just sat there, on the couch, holding her phone, a million thoughts running through her mind. Not a single tear.

Mitchie closed the message — she didn’t have the heart to delete it just yet — and stared blankly at the main screen of her phone. She knew she should have called Noah as soon as she got the message, but she knew she can’t bear to talk to him just yet. His sixteen words for a hundred of hers, it doesn’t seem fair. Just like how she can’t cry, she can’t talk to her — ex? — boyfriend just yet.

Her fingers started scrolling through her address book, looking for a name. Once she found it, she found herself making a call and then putting her phone to her ear. Mitchie listened to the ringing, counting them in her head as she waited for the answer.

“Hello?”

“Carol?” Mitchie was surprised to hear that her voice was clear and calm, like nothing had happened.

“Yes Mitchie? What’s up?”

“It’s over. Noah just broke up with me.”

[531 words]

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One Response to “Sixteen Words”

  1. […] break-up ever. For one thing, Noah broke up with Mitchie through a text message — a total of sixteen words, in fact. Mitchie had called Carol a few hours after it happened and Carol had called their other […]

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