(Story begins here.)
Mike sat there in his apartment, staring at that photograph of all the guests at the housewarming party, the very first time that he met Irene, his eyes all bloodshot from his insomnia. He took the bottle of whiskey and poured out another glass and took a large gulp from it, the alcoholic fire burning its way down his gullet before settling into a warm flame that radiated from within his empty stomach. Three days. It had been three days since Irene had walked out of his life. It was supposed to be a love story, he kept telling himself, and he stared at the photograph in his hand one last time before discarding it and picking up the next one in the sequence.
It was a picture of his graduation. They had gone out for nearly three years by then. Mike was a graduating senior, while she was a rising senior, both still in the same degree. Irene's mother died during that period from cancer, but Mike was there beside her, which helped to ameliorate the pain. There was a change in the course requirements for the degree during Irene's junior year, but they weathered through it all. She cut back on her partying when the two of them started getting all serious, while he never really left far from his shell of comfort---all he did was to invite her to join him in his shell. The year of his graduation, they started to talk about plans. Big plans. Plans regarding what was to happen during the year that he was working and she was still finishing up her degree. Plans regarding what happened after that. Serious plans, important plans. Plans that Mike thought they had agreed on.
Mike stared hard at the graduation picture, it portrayed a certain naïveté towards the future, smiles that seemed to come from the deep happiness from within, eyes that twinkle with nothing short of love and happiness. Eyes that now seem to him to be showing nothing short of deceit and duplicity. Disgusted, he tossed the photograph aside and took another large gulp from his whiskey.
(Story continues here.)
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