A smile and a nod

I see you from across the store, paying for your purchases. You haven't seen me yet. I wait to fight that urge that usually surges up when I see you. The one that usually pushes me to go up to you, to ask you how you are, to simply connect with you somehow.

It doesn't come. Surprise, surprise. That's something I will have to analyse in my quiet time.

Just as I am about to go back to deciding which shampoo to try next, you turn and spot me. You also seem to wait for something, and your face changes with surprise when you realise that you are no longer pulled to me either. I am of course irrationally annoyed and relieved in equal parts.

So this is how it now is. We could be any two people off the street. Strangers. Any surplus feelings we have have been usurped into the daily details of the lives we now have - lives that don't include each other. I'm so used to the dull ache that washes over me when I get a glimpse of you; the ache that is always swiftly welcomed by a rush of bittersweet memories. And now...? Nothing. I feel nothing.

I still remember everything, but with the feeling that it all happened to someone else. She was not me. He was not you. They were not us.

The tapestry of us - remarkable, complicated, vibrant, colourful, so entwined is a now a distant, dreamy watercolour. I feel disconnected from the entire gamut of emotions that comprised us.

And how evident it is, that you do too.

And so it is that we acknowledge each other politely with a smile and a nod. You leave with your bag of groceries and your arm around another girl's waist, and I go back to the internal debate of mousturising versus detangling.

Who knew, when we decided to try to be friends, a day would come when all we would exchange would be a smile and a nod?