#jdpna

"It's inevitable." He woefully muttered. It's been a while since we ate at this diner. And it almost felt foreign when we stepped inside.

"What?" I asked.

"Getting abandoned by someone you unquestionably thought won't." As he carelessly spin his fork around his plate of pasta.

It's the first time I saw loneliness in his eyes. For three years that we've been friends, all he showed me was his jolliness, how he makes every dull moment sprout into a tree of laughter in just a matter of seconds. Always finding a way to make everyone smile.

But right now, after he said that sentence, it felt different. It's like he showed me a version of himself from an alternate universe.

"What's worse is, you don't even know why. It's like they handed you a blank piece of paper with the word ‘goodbye’ in it. But instead of a period, preceded it with a comma. Then they're gone." He continued slowly, staring at his glass of water instead of looking at his still spinning fork.

"But it doesn't really matter," he immediately added. This time I saw his eyes turned a little misty. "because who are we kidding? People will come, and some people who goes, doesn't just leave. They also leave memories, yet we treat each other like total strangers."

I sat there, staring blankly at the kids playing. Running around the grass, laughing under the tired sun.

How old is this bench? I asked myself. Older than me, I guess? And how many kids have made this park their playground, joyfully chasing each other and not caring about anything?

And then I thought about them.

“Why..” I uttered softly. Replaying every happy moments in my head.

“Sometimes dear, no one’s pushing anyone away. They leave by choice.”

I looked to my right. He folded his newspaper, grabbed his coffee from the armrest and left. I didn’t even notice the old man beside me.

And as he walked farther away from where I sat, I realized, they didn’t push me away.