Breaking up is aptly named.

Looking back on it, I could paint the moment in a mellowed, softer light; coat it in layers of sugar and a candied orange glaze. Tell myself that I was going to live through it, and be better for it.

However, nothing in the world could alleviate the unavoidable blow of being so completely blindsided by what you knew was coming, but blatantly refused to acknowledge. The transient seconds before a car slams into you don't make the collision any less excruciating.

Three.

"Are you sleepy?" I probed lightly, as Gill's slender fingers rubbed against his glacial eyes. Our prolonged goodbye consisted of an inordinate amount of forced formalities, of attempting to exist behind a veneer. Pretending we couldn't hear the shrill screeching that the buzzing had evolved into.

"Not sleepy. Tired," he replied monotonously, setting down his book on the mahogany coffee table beside him. We sat on opposite ends of his sofa, both of us suffocating on the coagulated air. I dragged my toughened fingers along the velour chair arm, wondering how we'd gotten like this.

"Same thing."

"No it isn't," he muttered, biting down on the waxy inner surface of his bottom lip. Pristinely carved ivory against pale pink flesh.

"How is it any different?" I defied impishly, painfully unaware of the crushing devastation that was lounging languidly on the tip of Gill's tongue.

"Sleepy is wanting to go to sleep. Tired is wanting to sleep peacefully."

"Why aren't you sleeping peacefully?" I queried in concern, lifting my gaze to see his heart visibly palpitating.

Two.

"Do you love me?"

A question like do you love me was never as innocuous as it appeared. Hiding in the spaces between the words were insecurity, distrust, a reluctance to believe whichever answer that could be given in response.

"What are you talking about?" I questioned irately, frustrated that he could still doubt the way I felt about him after three seasons together, "Of course I do."

He gnawed on the inside his rounded cheeks, drumming his fingertips on his lap, now clothed in his trademark plaid shorts – the same shorts I had mocked almost exactly a year ago. The same lap I had laid in three seasons ago, when everything had been so much simpler. I wanted to reach out and trace the clean line of his jaw, and ask him: where had we gone wrong?

Unfortunately, all I could do was let him remind me of a wild thing chewing through its foot. Attempting to break free while I remained lost in the imbibing abyss of demanding to hold on to the speedily fading. All I could do was outline his pensive face and try not to place blame.

"I used to think that was all that mattered," Gill mumbled, meeting my glistening hazel eyes, "As long as you loved me, I thought we could still make everything work." The room turned cold, holding its breath and stiffening every last inch of its edges. An anchor came to splice my heartstrings clean into two, sending my heart plummeting to the bottom of my ribcage. It landed with an unceremonious thud. "Sadly, now I think that sometimes, love isn't enough."

"What are you saying?" I asked, damning my voice for faltering; the tremble that lifted the wine velvet curtain and revealed my weakness.

Gill aimed his sniper and fired, straight through my heart.

One.

"You still love Chase," he spat the words out, disgust mingling in the foamy saliva. Jealousy dripping from the statement. Pain embedded into every hollow of the sentence.

I jammed my eyes shut, imagining that this wasn't happening. I pursed my eyes so tightly bolted that my brain started to pound, spinning in mind-crushing agony. "But I love you," I blurted out, finally relinquishing my pride and letting him see me at my most vulnerable, desperately grasping onto him, who was already slipping away.

It was too late.

He looked down at his hands, and I knew that I couldn't be angry with him. He was hurting too, but, God, why did he have to make leaving look so easy? "It's not that you still love him," he elucidated, piercing eyes having detected what I'd known all along, "It's that you love him more than me."

Gill had been packing his bags for weeks, tucking picture frames that used to house our faces neatly into his suitcases and folding his pants right down the crisp pleats. He had came into this fully braced for the impact; he had been the one driving the car with every intention to smash it to smithereens.

Meanwhile, I had been so caught up in trying to hold together what couldn't be held, that I had neglected to notice he was already sneaking out the door.

"Gill," I breathed, sifting through all the possibilities of what I could say. My ego forbade me from begging him to stay, and I had always promised myself that I would never plead with someone not to leave me; if they had their foot poised to take that step out, I would even hold the door.

"Molly, don't," he beseeched, gulping back everything else threatening from below his trachea, "I've been working myself up to do this for weeks. And if you say anything, I might not have the strength to do it."

"And what is, 'it,' exactly?" I tested, daring him to pull the string that would leave us utterly unraveled. I almost believed that he wouldn't be capable of doing it.

We had never been able to back down from a challenge.

Zero.

"I'm breaking up with you."

It was so typical of Gill to mandate that, even at the very end, he should come out on top with the upper hand. It wasn't let's break up or it's over. He had to be the one pulling the trigger, and I had to be the one staring down at the speeding bullet. Spearing through my quivering, pounding chest.

It's funny how one year of your life can crumble to dust, just like that. Every single fight, screaming match, lazy afternoons, dozy mornings, mute nights; all deemed meaningless with those hefty five words.

"Gill," I repeated, reaching my fingertips out to his ice-cold form. Harshness etched into his furrowed brows, suffering veiled by his fake stoic demeanour.

"Please, Molly, don't," he shook back, creased eyelids twitching in an attempt to stand his ground; to not trade his weapons for my feeble body, "It's for the best. It's not fair to me if I have to keep being your second choice." He glared at me boldly, resolve: ironclad. "I deserve to be someone's first choice."

I nodded silently as tears started flowing from my eyes. The back of my palm wiped itself against my cheeks, endeavoring to conceal the pain he so openly inflicted on me. I dug my teeth into my lip, willing myself to focus on the bleeding pain in my mouth, not the gaping wounds shredding away at my heart. "You're right," I sniffled, voice thick with unbearable emotion – sadness, pain, relief – and face stained with the haphazard pathways of saline droplets, "I hope you find someone who can give that to you."

His head tilted downwards, then upwards, ever so slightly, his way of imploring why couldn't you have been the one to give that to me? But alas, we both knew why.

We sat on our opposing ends of the couch, such a different scene from three seasons ago, when we had loafed on the same loveseat as a tangled, love-struck mesh. I brought a hand up to muffle my intensifying sobs, as we both grieved in our own separate ways. Heaviness came to settle on our entire beings like a cloak.

The loss of love: no soul could swallow it whole.

"Hey."

Upon opening his door, Toby could automatically decipher what had happened. The telltale signs were all there: dried streaks painted my cheeks, as rich ruby tinged the whites of my eyes. He had seen it coming for months, had guessed it from the dips in the intonation of my voice when speaking about Gill, the jaded smile I donned when the feigning got to be too much. Knowing Toby, in his infinite wisdom, he had probably even predicted the exact instant it would occur.

I stood before his house, mere moments after leaving the sour, heart-wrenching atmosphere of Gill's. We stood in silence for a while, eyes locked and speaking in the implicit language between best friends, before Toby immediately pulled me inside and wrapped his arms around me. The striped linen of his over shirt – sapphire, navy and aqua blue – was like a comforter against my sorrow-warm neck.

"He broke up with me," I wept into his solid chest, letting my tears soak onto his top. Toby laced his fingers through my chestnut strands, rubbing his palm against the back of my head soothingly. His milky cheek rested on my crown, as his other arm wrapped around my back firmly. No matter what, he was always capable of making everything better, without saying a single word.

"Come here," he whispered tenderly, despite me already having my arms draped around his neck, clinging on to my rock for all I was worth, "It's alright. It's going to be okay, I promise you."

I burst into even larger tears, brushing my head up and down against his shirt vigorously. Within the despair and misery was a burning, searing, scorching gratefulness for having Toby in my life. "Thanks," I managed to mumble out through muffled blubs, letting myself get lost in his calming embrace, "Thanks for always being here for me too, Tobes."

"Silly," he chastised playfully, holding me even tighter, "That's what best friends are for. Everything's going to be okay. I've got you."

That was how it always was, wasn't it? When I bawled, Toby rushed to wipe my tears away with his own fingers. When he fell sick from napping outside once it got cold, I sprinted over with piping hot chicken soup and plush pillows, with every intention of staying cooped up with him in his germ-infested house until he recovered. When I had cut myself on my sickle, before the tool and I had learned to forge a steel friendship, Toby had been the one to clean the wound and bandage up the gleaming gash. And when he had any problems whatsoever, they instantaneously became my problems – because, sometimes, even the ever-knowledgeable sage just needed the sturdy shoulder and listening ear of a best friend.

When one of us got trapped in existing, the other was always there to bail him or her out with laughter and deep conversation and light conversation and life and living.

I smiled through my tears, so genuinely thankful for him.

"Your hair's all messy," I pointed out redundantly while sniveling, noticing how his silvery, powder blue locks were chaotically mussed in the back, "Were you sleeping?" Alarm at having woken him tap-danced on my notes.

"Just napping. It's fine," he assured me, bringing his palm to rest on the back of my neck.

"When aren't you?" I teased lightly, involuntary smile coming to settle on my lips.

Toby drew his head back from mine, cradling my damp face in his hands. He beamed gently, and that was when I truly knew that everything really was going to be okay. "There she is," he grinned, thumbs gliding smoothly along my curved jaw.

We stood in his living room for an eternity, the world continuing to revolve around us, as he let me cry my heart out.

"Hey, listen," Toby drew my attention to him, placing his hands on my heavy shoulders, "today you cry as much as you want. Until your eyes are sore and puffy and you can't see through them. But tomorrow, you don't cry for him anymore."

"Why?" His fingers dabbed away the falling teardrops.

"Because I know you, and you're better than crying over some guy. Or any guy in the world, for that matter."

"You're too good to me," I shook my head, smiling frailly.

"I am, aren't I?" he joked, before drawing me into his arms once again, and letting the pledging words float into my ear, "You would do the same for me."

I lifted my head up to face him, before reciting my everlasting vow, "In a heartbeat."

It is easier to cradle your wounded heart in a steel coat of hatred, rather than let it peel its own skin off and still allow it to remain soft with love.

Did you know that?

I sat alone on my bed, staring blankly at the menacing refrigerator across the room. Snapshots of you and me dotted the snow-white surface, memories of happiness that had now expired.

Expired. That was such a strange way of addressing it. As if we had spent an entire year building our relationship with bricks we had created ourselves – from scratch, from the muddled clay it had started as – tearing as the ridged edges sliced away at our shivering hands; only to find out that we had merely been using crumbly sand, and the ominous wave had finally came to wash it all away.

I hated you for racing out the door, for leaving me standing solitarily in the now decimated castle, incapable of thinking of anything else except where we had gone so wrong.

I got up to shuffle across the oak floorboards, determination blazing in my angry heart. I stopped just before the fridge, lifting my trembling fingers to rip each individual photograph of us off; I couldn't look at them for a second longer.

The sneaky picture Hamilton had captured of us before we'd gotten together; you were pinching my nose while I growled obnoxiously in return. I supposed, even then, there were a multitude of snarling problems brewing just below the surface. The inability to ever properly get along. Our frantic resistance to losing.

I shred the print right in half, leaving a jagged line in the space between us.

The time we'd spent all day in your house, thick curtains drawn, sweeping against the sleepy floors. I'd forgotten how to count the number of times your fingers had draped along my cheeks, and you smiled more that day than all the other days we had been together combined. What the photo didn't say was how we had spent that morning fighting, in tears, wondering why we couldn't love one another the way we wanted to.

I cut the picture into tiny fragments, ruefully attempting to disremember the memory.

Tearing the photographs off the fridge felt like ripping my heart open all over again. I resented you for that.

Deep down, I knew. I knew that you had done the right thing, that we were better off separated. We were no good for one another, not one bit. It was utterly unhealthy to think about the other first thing in the morning, to worry about us before we went to bed at night. It was suffocating to love so fiercely; deadly to cling on to the perishable. But, still. I needed somewhere to channel all this hurt, so I chose at you.

Mostly, I was mad at you because I missed you. And for that, I guessed I was mad at myself as well. Every time we crossed paths and you so blatantly ignored me was like another stab to the heart. Whenever there was a festival and you looked the other way, it was the same as slapping my face over and over again.

Of course, we both knew that I didn't really hate you.

I just used that as a cover for love, because I couldn't call it that anymore.

I didn't care if what we had would never be love. If we weren't together in a past life or written in the stars, all you needed to know was that when my mind wandered off, it was always back to you.

I sighed, gazing at the mess of torn film lying scattered at my feet. I supposed it didn't matter whether it had been love or not. Not anymore.

Regardless, that didn't stop me from recalling the time I had held you as you mourned for your mother. When we had both said nothing and known it meant everything. You permitted me to see the vulnerable side of you that nobody else in the world had seen before. Damn you for gifting me with such a bittersweet memory – the moment I'd known that it had been real.

Okay, we didn't work. And all memories, to tell you the truth, weren't good.

But, sometimes, there were good times.

Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep beside me – did you know you slept crookedly? I bet that'd drive you crazy – and never dreamed afraid.

There should've been stars for great wars like ours.

"How're you doing?"

"It seems that question always comes up once I've gone through a break up," I chuckled, looking over at Toby, who sat by my side on the pier, trusty fishing rod resting in between his supple palms.

"Exactly," my best friend in the world grinned back in response, "like a monthly checkup."

I scoffed laughingly, gently nudging my knuckles into his shoulder. "So you're the heartbreak doctor, then?"

"Healed your heart once, didn't I?"

"I healed it myself, thank you very much," I pouted indignantly, placing a calloused hand on my collarbones for good effect.

"You did," Toby smiled serenely, pride emanating from his doe-like beam. Candid happiness for me, for having picked up the fragments of my heart and pieced them back together on my own. "It's a good skill to have."

"You have it too though." He glanced at me quizzically. "You bounced back just fine after the break up with Renee."

"I did," he grinned again, gracefully tugging on his fishing rod. A sardine flopped onto the concrete dock, gasping hysterically in the humid summer air. Toby grasped the wheezing fish between his long fingers, familiar sympathetic gaze skimming over his face.

I tittered below my breath. "You're going to throw it back in, aren't you?"

He laughed heartily, a sound that managed to simultaneously set my heart aflutter with shared joy while sending seas of peace through it. "You know me so well," he shook his head, before lobbing the breathless sardine back into the ocean.

"What's the life lesson from setting the fish free this time?" I ribbed him, skin clammy from the muggy weather.

Toby fell into silence, as if mulling over my question with deep gravity. A rare momentary weightiness came to glide along his brow. He eyed me meaningfully. "You have to learn to let go of the things that aren't meant for you."

A jolt shocked through me, as realization settled in my veins. He was right, God, he was right. Gill deserved better. He deserved somebody who could give him all of her heart, to let him be the first choice he so dreadfully desired to be. He deserved to be in a relationship that was healthy, that wasn't a constant game of tic-tac-toe, perpetually waiting for the next x or o. And I couldn't give him that.

I sulked playfully in Toby's direction, "Why do you always know all the right things to say?"

"Really though," Toby broke the easy atmosphere, jade eyes staring straight at me, "how are you doing?"

My hazel eyes skipped over to the sea, watching the way it glimmered when the glaring rays of sun hit the aquamarine surface. The ocean broke over and over again, every time it kissed the shore, but it wasn't foolish for doing so. It was brave.

"I'm learning how to be a grown-up," I voiced courageously, spilling my heart open to him, "who pays bills, cooks her own meals and doesn't cry at words like, 'I'm breaking up with you.' I'm still mad at Gill for being the one who did the leaving, but on a secret level, I'm indebted to him too. I feel like I'm becoming a better person after the break up. Like I can be on my own and be perfectly happy."

"That makes me happy," Toby smiled in return, tilting his head as he listened to me speak.

"You're such a softie," I elbowed him gingerly, chortling at his candid, tranquil nature.

I inhaled deeply, letting the exultant oxygen fill my lungs. Saturating the deprived walls. I exhaled, feeling so indisputably free.

I could finally breathe again.

Dear Gill (Pompous Arrogant Snob),

Here are the things I want for you.

I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence. I want her to experience the joy of breaking through your icy shell and finding the sun underneath.

I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. So, thank you. You did what I didn't have the guts to do. You set us both free.

I want you to know that I loved you, and more importantly, I want you to believe it. I know that a part of you doesn't, but I did. I promise you, I did.

I want you to find what you're looking for. I want, with all my heart, for you to find that someone who will be able to give to you what I couldn't. I'm sorry I couldn't be what you needed. And I'm sorry you couldn't be what I needed either. We didn't work, but I loved you anyway.

I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred everything you had entrusted in me, and I always will.

Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I only meant to bring you closer. And if you ever felt safe with me, it was because you were.

You were safe with me.

I want you to know that most of all.

Molly (Dirty Farmer Girl)

I gnawed on my lip as I scrutinized the letter in my hands with immense apprehension. I could feel my heart galloping in my chest, thrashing fists against my ribcage. Letting out a heavy breath, I slipped the note into Gill's mailbox, before turning and walking away.

I liked to call this: growing.

I stared out at the horizon, tracing the blur where the ocean kissed the setting sun. Behind me bustled with jolly cheer, the residents of Castanet celebrating the Summer Festival. Exactly a year had passed since Gill had asked me to be his girlfriend; how strange to think that things had turned out this way.

I hummed softly. I wasn't bitter anymore. I was glad. Glad that I'd gotten the chance to be with him, even if we weren't meant to end up together. Glad that the messy end had turned me into a better person, who now knew loving yourself should always come first.

The voice coiled over my neck. "Hey, stranger."

I turned around to be greeted by the now-unfamiliar frosty voice of the ice blonde. It had been a season since we had last spoken, and my ears had forgotten the way his notes sounded; glacial disinterest stapling itself to his words, while genuine warmth glowed from below.

"Hi."

Awkward silence wrapped its limbs around us, kicking shoes into sand and fingers nervously playing with themselves. Gill cleared his throat. "I got your letter."

"What did you think?" I mused at how odd it was; that one season could change so much. That we had once been able to spew insults at the other for hours on end, and now we only knew how to fill the gaping silences with withdrawn formalities.

"Cheesy."

"You're such a jerk," I scolded by instinct, teetering dangerously close to the intimate comfort we had fallen into in the past.

Something had changed. Before, we hadn't known what lay ahead. Now that we knew, we were smarter than to go back.

We made each other our everything, and that was a very dangerous way to love.

We were both wiser now.

He fell silent. "I believe you." I want you to know that I loved you, and more importantly, I want you to believe it. "And I did too."

I smiled, feeling the remaining rocks inside of me – the carcass of our failed relationship – sprout wings and fly away. Finally being put to rest.

The truth was this: our love was an organic thing.

It rotted and softened.

"Enemies?" I came full circle to repeat, citing the exact words we had uttered in our very first truce.

He shook his head, resignation and defeat – I surrender myself to the inevitable demise of love – reigning on his face.

We gave up our weapons, once and for all, and stepped off the broken battleground of love. The war was over.

"Friends."

Disclaimer: I do not own 'This is How You Lose Her' by Junot Diaz, Beau Taplin's work, Clementine von Radics' work or Lang Leav's work.