Zack

Zach was the embodiment of everything you despised: the constant smell of nicotine, the mockery, and the probing for other people's weaknesses. Girls clung to him for one-night stands, but you knew men like him didn't change. Your previous relationship with Lois had reduced your soul to ashes. He'd methodically destroyed your self-esteem, and after you cheated, he'd said, "Look at yourself. With someone like you, I couldn't do otherwise."

A year passed, but your complexes had become your very skin. One day at the school gates, Zach, squinting in the sun, muttered, "All this time has passed, and you're still playing the role of the independent strongwoman. Even though your pain can be felt a mile away. Do all girls have a habit of hitting rock bottom, or is this your special taste for suffering?"

You responded sharply, and it became a ritual. Once a week, blow for blow. Gradually, the skirmishes escalated into nightly conversations. You were polar opposites, but you listened to each other for hours without rancor. One night, you decided to ask, "Zach, where does this hostility toward all living things come from? There's so much beauty in the world, and you only see dirt."

There was a long silence on the phone, and then his voice wavered for the first time. "My mother died before my eyes when I was eight. My father was a drunk, he screamed constantly. My mother begged him to stop, and her heart just couldn't take it. I sat next to her on the floor and begged her to wake up, thinking she was just tired of screaming."

He grew up in a normal family with his aunt, but the scars never healed. Love for him meant weakness and death. His cynicism wasn't character, but armor. And those calls became an addiction—the intertwining of two broken souls. You grew accustomed to his strange honesty. But one night proved fatal. After a long silence, Zach snapped. "We're not going to maintain our connection anymore. Everything is heading toward a mistake. Just lose sight of me, okay?" It was a command to forget everything that had built between you. The fragile bond was broken as abruptly as it had begun.