"The Number You Have Dialled Is No Longer Available" - A Short Story

"We need to talk" she said to him as he continued surfing the internet, totally numb to everything going on around him.

"What is it now? all the time with this shit!!" he shouted, without even looking at her. "I'm leaving you, I've had enough, I spend all my time alone and you are always so disconnected from me and our relationship" she said coldly but firmly.

"What?! What are you talking about?! We are always together!" he said to her, finally taking his eyes away from the computer monitor to look into her eyes, shocked and with a touch of melancholy. "You always say that we are together but I am in one room while you are in another and you spend all the time that we should be spending together on the internet, this has been going on for years now and these past weeks when you're not doing this you are out at weekends with your friends whilst I am alone, uninvited...forgotten" she replied angrily and hurt, a deep hurt that has been brewing silently inside her stomach for many months.

"Let's talk then! let's just sit down and talk and work all this out!" he suggested desperately. "No" she said "I have told you about this time and time again and I am through with talking. Whenever we have talked about things all the times before you just return to the way you are one week later, nothing changes and I need more than this, I deserve much more than this!"

He looked at her, stood up to kiss her, trying to redeem himself, but she turned her back and walked away, knowing in her mind that he will never change, no matter how many times she tries to talk to him, and that she now needs to put herself first and think about her own happiness and her own life. For the first time in 12 years she feels like a separate entity from him, scared of the unknown but enthusiastic for what could be around the corner for her, but even so she feels lost and strangely single again.

Four weeks later he returned from a trip he took without her, he turned the key in the lock and entered the silent home that was once so full of life and love. He walked up the stairs, went into their bedroom to find that the wardrobe was empty on her side, her things were gone, everything, and only his remained. He looked around the once so warm room, the room where they had shared their most intimate secrets, the bed where they had made love all night long in the first throes of passion. He remembered those first weekends when they only left the bed to drink water or to go to the bathroom. If only that time could return, if only he could wake up and feel so relieved that everything had been a complete nightmare and that she was there to greet him with a big smile and a passionate kiss that he used to feel many years before... but the light has gone.

Tears filled his eyes, regret filled his soul and all the memories of a once so happy love came flooding back into his mind. "Why couldn't I have listened to her?" he said to himself, "Why was I so selfish to believe that she was only bluffing?", "Why didn't I spend more time with her and love her every single minute?", "Why did she leave?", "Didn't she feel special?"

He sat down, switched on his computer and frantically checked for e-mails from her... nothing. He dialled her mobile telephone number: "The number you have dialled is no longer available"

The night drew in, the sky became black, the silence of the house filled his head as he sat on the bed and thought about all the "should haves, could haves, would haves" but he knew it was too late. He started counting in his mind all the chances she had given him over the years and layed down and cried uncontrollably into the single remaining pillow.

Love was found, Love was beautiful, Love was precious, Love was everything.... But Love got her revenge and walked away.