Gainsay

Deny (v.)

It was the most diffcult thing he'd ever have to do. He had to look her in her pretty face, in those eyes he had watched, wanted, kissed, and laughed into and tell her that he didn't love her any more.
He walked up to her room and knocked on the door. She said come in. He opened it, sat down on the floor, and hugged his knees.
"I have to tell you something," he said.
"That doesn't sound very good," she replied.
"I guess, no, I guess it doesn't," he said.
She leaned forward and put her hands on her crossed loegs.
"I--" he said.
"What?" she asked, the muscles around her eyes constricting, bracing for something.
"I don't feel the same," he said.
"About --me?" she asked.
He looked at her. Her mouth looked like it was going to fold into itself. His tongue tasted dry, like chalk.
"Yeah. It's been, I've just, over time, I don't feel--"
"Do you love me anymore?" she asked. She had been expecting this, in an abstract way.
He folded his lips and closed his eyes and started crying.
"I don't think so," he said.
Then her face got red, she looked down, resting her chin above her shoulder.
"No," she said.
"What?" he looked up.
"No, you can't," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it doesn't make sense, you can't stop loving me."
"It doesn't make sense," he tried to tell her, "it's not something I wanted, it just..."
"Stopped?"
"Yeah."
"Not possible," her face fell into a pale, unstable calm.
"But--"
"Nope," she said, "that's just not how it works."
"This isn't, I wouldn't be saying this if I didn't feel--"
"You loved me before?" she asked.
Shaking his head, confused, "Yeah."
"And now you don't."
He nodded, crying still.
"That's just not what love is," she said, "either you didn't love me before or you still do now and you're confused."
"This isn't something I can--I, just, it just feels this way."
"No," she said.
"No what?"
He looked at her, she held her head down, too, like her body understood but her mind was pure gainsay, like the two were shouting dissonantly at each other, neither hearing the other, just dischord, just a human with two screaming twins, shrieks echoing into the walls.
She put her hands to her temples and sobbed. She stood up and walked out of the room and out of the house and got in her car, shaking her head as she drove away.