A character from One Tree Hill once said that people stop falling in love when they stop doing the small things. She isn’t going to debate with anyone about how wise it is to get relationship advice from a TV series (much less one with failing ratings), but for her part, she believes it.

She doesn’t remember when he stopped sending her those ‘thanks for the time :)’ messages after he took her home every time they went out. Or why she stopped giving him those little compliments (“I like your shirt.”) every time they met up. She doesn’t know what happened (who happened?) or what changed (who changed?), but it barely matters. It – they just stopped.

It hadn’t always been that way. There was a time when he’d text or IM her every time he did something as ordinary as eat breakfast. For her part, it used to be so easy for her to be supportive of him, to focus on the good things and turn a blind eye at everything else. But somewhere along the way he stopped being her best friend and somewhere along the way she started to be his number one critic. Now he rarely talks to her except when they’re beside each other and she replies only to remind him of his imperfections. Sometimes she even wonders why he still asks her out and why she still says yes, because right now they can barely call each other ‘friends’.

She could tell you about how it amuses her that they grew apart in heart during the time when they grew closer in distance, but she would just be protecting herself from the all too familiar feeling of denial. The truth is that she’s grateful to have him beside her, but she misses all those small things.

She misses falling in love with him.

And she wishes that things were different, but there’s nothing she can do because it’s too late to change anything now. The eleventh hour had passed a long, long time ago and she spent it with all the indifference in the world, lying in her bedroom with her phone and laptop turned off.

And it makes her feel so bad that she stops twirling the pasta on her plate and just puts her fork down exasperatedly. He pauses from eating his salad to look at her, and for once, just this once, she wills herself to look right back at him like she used to.

“Galit ka ba?” he asks quietly, softly, and she could tell that the concern in his voice is sincere.

He had asked her this before, one starless night. She had a stand-off with a friend and when she arrived at their meeting place he immediately noticed her infuriation and rhetorically asked “Galit ka ba?” Still too riled up to talk, she just shook her head but he still followed with puppy eyes and a boyish “Galit ka ba sakin?” His childishness made her laugh and she ended up replying “Not at you. Never at you.”

But that was before, when they still did the small things. Now… now it’s just different.

“Galit ka ba?” he asks.

This time there is no laughter. This time there is no smile. This time there’s just a straight face and a painfully beating chest.

“Pagod lang ako. ”