Romance is dead, sweetheart was her mother's lullaby to her during the holidays and always with a smile. Her mother was that generation, on the edge of reason and always having to be married because it looked good and was safer than heroin.

But Juliet's never thought about marriage and real romance— sex has always made much more sense to her and on the surface works because at the end of the day it's just science. And it can be discarded, discounted, and lost.

"I can hear you thinking."

She looks up, her lashes brushing against her cheeks, as Harry spills into her doorway. He leans against it, quiet, and she shoots back to their fun last night.

Consistency. It's black and white, love and hate, and everything wrapped into one man.

She glances at the clock, "Late for you."

He shrugs lazily, "its Saturday."

She smirks and her fingers curl in her dressing gown. "Right. Who were you with?"

He raises an eyebrow and the smile stays, "I wasn't with anyone." The smile doesn't extend to his voice. "Juliet, I wasn't with anyone."

She shakes her head and snorts, almost smiling at the urgency in his eyes, ignoring her own thoughts and feelings as she plunges on, "Right," she says softly, "In a perfect world."

Juliet thinks, inevitably, her taste in men is going to fluctuate into a slow burn and then dwindle into ashes. It's not that she can't, won't, or couldn't. It's just—

—she's going to end up like her mother.

And somehow, always, at the end of each conversation, she's stuck with the fact that maybe she can't get out of falling for the wrong one.

-

He lies about it. You're pathetic. And there's no ending, as if the spark they shared for 3 months simply disappeared.

It doesn't seem right, to fall to a nameless, silent, and final end. And it confuses her, in light of everything— god, she thinks. She was right there.

She starts to ache and hates the ache, what he left her with. She doesn't understand what to do with this, what she can do.

He left her with something. It's an end.

-

She sits in her chair under the window with him, "It's over, you and Ruth…" There's a tremor in her voice and her unblinking gaze is focused on the fire.

He shakes her head, "Ruth didn't want to do it this way." She flinches away from his out-stretched hand, "I'm sorry Juliet. I really am."

She's wordless for now, keeping her stare to corners, silencing her thoughts.

There's nothing else.

-

She goes to the stairs because she hates her room and, if anything, that was their space. Their space.

She sits in a corner, drawing her legs up and tucking them to her chest. She feels smaller, heavier, and there's a headache in the future for her, a sleepless night. She doesn't know exactly where it ended. Maybe, that's what he wanted.

Maybe it just wasn't meant to be.