The call

Yesterday, whilst he was just finishing his workout, his phone rang. It was SHE. After overcoming connection problems, they spoke.

It was the most unproblematic and relaxed conversation they’ve ever had. Verbal bliss, so to speak. He realized how much everything had changed - and how he still loved SHE; loved her beyond words.

SHE told him that SHE missed him and (he had stopped writing his previously almost daily email news letters to her a few weeks as he felt ridiculous and making an utter fool of himself; for various reasons.) missed his correspondences.
And that SHE loved him.

It was like people must feel when they’re being told that they have only a week left to live: he put the phone down, gobsmacked, yet utterly unaware of what was actually said. As if a faint acquaintance had just told him that the weather in New York at the moment was like it had always been at that time of the year or that chocolate tasted sweet.

Bit by bit, during the rest of his day off and during a tediously long day at work, it came to him what he had witnessed. It was as if all the pain and suffering in the whole universe just by-passed him in a strange and indifferent way.

He truly was at peace.