“It was bad.” He said simply, face still and inscrutable through the sharp pangs of sadness. “I don’t know why, but it was worse than it should’ve been. Maybe because I’m so stubborn, maybe because she’s too dramatic. But whatever it was, breaking up hurt like a bitch for the both of us, and we stopped talking after that.”
“And so it was for a long time, until we started speaking again about a year ago. Things are better now, we e-mail each other once or twice a month and we’re friends. Still love each other, a lot, even if the romance of it is…yeah, it’s dead.” Ira didn’t sound sad, though, just wistful. He didn’t necessarily regret that they’d broken up; it was more of the way that they’d gone about it that had really sucked.
“Papa thinks that I should try again to win her heart back, marry her.” He shook his head with fond indulgence. It wasn’t going to happen, and at this point Ira wasn’t even sure that he’d want it to happen. “My sister loves Luciana, too. Lu helped me a lot with Ori while she was growing up and they’re close, like sisters almost. So she was hugely disappointed in me when we broke up. But I think she understands more than Papa does.”
His words abruptly stopped there, Ira disguising a bit of embarrassment at talking for so long with a sip of tea. He hadn’t meant to go on like that.