It’s been years since she last saw his face. In real life or through those photos. The two of them smiling at some random joke or some random awkwardness . It’s been a while, quite a while. But it did not seem the case.

There was something about those images, the different places, but the same smile flashing through. She used to like it back then. Not anymore. It was just a reflex action to think back every time she saw those hugs, and think of all the good things that were to happen and then the bad things that were to follow.

Tired she is, was, and is, and will be. Time does not change much. Neither did she.

She had realised of late that she was good at being fixated. Fixated on randomness and emptiness, jack asses and jerks of all calibre. Some help her psycho analysis did. Freud and fixation, that was her theory, she believed in it. Not at all times, occasionally, just at times.

Flash backs of nights of pretext, nights of long chats of talks of loneliness and phobic moments. Dogs, seas and cats he was scared of. Heights, mountains and hypocrisy he seemed to like. She loved the dogs, the seas and the mountains. She loved them all the same. Without much discrimination.

Smiles, smirks and sunshine. She was used to. She has not seen much of the first or the latter in a while. At least not on his face, nor when he was around. He sucked both of those in, her smiles and the moments of sunshine. Glares and gloom that followed. They were not much fun. So she thought.

Emptiness and lousiness. Hopelessness and hatred, omnipresent.
A click, and smiles gone forever. Off the screen. Off the face, a long while back. His and hers. He seemed to have found his elsewhere. Hers she was in the process of finding. May be for her own good. Learning to trust and smiling out of trust, not the easiest of late. But she learns. Slowly, she does learn, or at least tries to learn.

She’s had her doubts before. But for once, she was glad.

She was glad she had made her decision. She was glad she was in bed and not at the wedding. She was glad she never took photographs. At least since HE happened.