by Jennifer Livingstone

But can you ever trust him, she asks?

No, probably not.

And she nods and I nod and it feels like a conclusion has been made, an envelope sealed, a sentence punctuated. You can’t, after all, be with someone you can’t trust, can you? You can’t possibly marry someone you can’t trust, can you? Love, after all, isn’t always enough. Right?

We don’t talk anymore. Our last conversation didn’t go very well. It went along the lines of, ‘So, I heard you have a girlfriend.’ There was an uncomfortable silence followed by excuses and then an abashed, ‘Yes.’ Yes, he had had one, for the past year and a half.

We had over the last three years been slipping in and out of each other’s lives, developing over time perfect Cosmo magazine material – I could pen in an instant the articles ‘100 Ways To Not Get Over Your Ex’ and ’50 Ways Your Inability To Get Over Your Ex is Affecting Your Happiness’ (titles and taglines still a work in progress).

“But can you ever trust him, she asks?

No, probably not.”

We lived in different cities, different continents actually. No longer friends on facebook, no longer anything. But even as we tried to pull away, we were always pulled back in somehow. I can trace patterns in our movements. From a cavern of no communication would come a text in a moment of Saturday night weakness which grew into calls, first occasional and then almost daily. The language evolved from ‘How are you?’ to ‘I miss you’ to ‘I love you’. And soon, we were together in Paris, holding hands in a park, telling ourselves that it didn’t mean anything. It was just a weekend. But deep down we knew better and then there was panic and tearful conversations and we cut all ties and never spoke again. Until we did speak again, after a text, in a moment of weakness, on a Saturday night.

But now it’s done, I think. I tell myself there is only so much I can take. There is a limit even to my tolerance, a limit to my love. Love like this shouldn’t be unconditional, should it? And if it is, what then?

I’m sure he loves you, she says. That he has all this time loved you and he probably still does. Yes, maybe so, I think.

But can you ever trust him, she asks? I think to myself that I can’t.

Yes.



Jennifer Livingstone | @jzlivingstone

Jennifer is living in Copenhagen (for the moment) and likes to write. Her other interests include history, philosophy, literature curation, books, and data.

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