Prologue
"Please Astra, it can't end like this!", pleaded the young Rhodesian Ridgeback to a petite agouti Husky; his voice somewhat strangled with anguish.
His hands trembled while searching for hers. The once warm bed in which they were, was now a cold tundra, the both of them seemed to drift away from one another as two icebergs traveling in differing sea currents.
"I can't have a long-distance relationship, Bosco, it wouldn't work. We won't last without having time together, and I mean real time - the time we love to have. We'll both be busy and airplane tickets are just too costly… Gosh, even the time zone is against us!! ". She sighed shakily, "I've been accepted to Cambridge, it's too far to keep going with us..."
She wiped away a tear and rested her head on her knees, hugging herself at her edge of the bed. Her body racked with repressed sobs.
Bosco came around the bed to sit at her side.
He wrapped her in a hug and touched her forehead with his.
" ...But I love you..." he said, trying to convey the strength of his feelings in those simple words.
"And I love you... that's precisely the reason I need to do the right thing and save us from more pain in the future...I don't want our relationship to end in a bad way due to distance… have you even thought about that? we couldn't even communicate with each other properly!...we'll start to misunderstand and mistrust each other, I fear it will be inevitable… ".
She sighed and locked her bright blue eyes with his, cupping his cheek.
"Please Bosco, let's part as friends..."
He looked at her aghast, pain was evident in his handsome face.
"What?...friends?" he couldn't believe how much it hurt to hear those words, it was like she was erasing everything that had happened between them, as if their history had no importance to her.
His chest heaved. "But we just had..." he closed his eyes trying to bring calm to his breaking heart, and breathed in deeply. "We can't part just as friends..."
Bosco racked a hand through his hair in desperation, he got even closer searching for her face. "Tell me, what kind of friend would ask this of me with such a velvety voice, with eyes full of tears?", he asked softly.
He grabbed her gently from the shoulders and closed the distance between them, touching her snout with his.
"Look at me in the eyes, Astra", he gently pleaded.
She did...oh it was so difficult not to falter before those kind, longing eyes!
"I can't even distinguish your scent from mine...how could we part?", he said sweetly, with his breath so very close to hers.
"...Oh Bosco", she sighed; longing for him, and determination to leave him battling in her chest.
"You are far more than my first love, Astra, please, what I feel for you will never change...", he added.
"I love you too, Bosco, but please..." she insisted.
He looked hurt, and that hurt her in its turn.
"So...are you decided to end our relationship?"
Determination won. "I am...it's for the best..."
He looked at her in the eyes, those beautiful eyes, impossible to forget.
"I cannot part as a friend of yours..." he said. "Yet I can't hate you either". He declared with a sad form of resignation, his shoulders slumping and his stance wavering as if life itself was leaving him.
"I love you Bosco, I truly do... I... I hope you find a new love someday", she said with sincerity, daring herself to hold his hand in hers for a last time.
He didn't take his hand away, but he limited himself to look at the wall in front of them, and to clean his tears away with the back of his hand.
"...I'll keep on loving you, deep down I know I'll love only you ..." he said, without looking her in the eyes.