What can you do.

Yeah, Nicole is leaving. Tomorrow, I think. Tonight, we all went to see The Family Stone, just so that we could all be together. We filled up an entire movie theater row, -1 seat, +2. Biggest group I've ever been to the movies with. Basically, it was to say goodbye to Nicole.

Since I heard the news, I haven't really known what I thought. I can't say I'm surprised, because Nicole's been through this before, it was bound to happen again. So I never went through the shock part, really. I confess, things have been a *little* awkward between us, understandably but regrettably, and I thought I would just say goodbye, and it'd be done with.

We saw the movie, kind of avoiding the subject throughout. Afterwards, we just congregated in the corridor outside the theater, and talked for a few minutes. I watched goodbye after tearful goodbye. Also in the works: Sam was going back to college in Virginia after a few weeks of visiting over christmas break (for her it was a good week and a half longer than ours). So more goodbyes for her, if not as dramatic solely because it was less of a change, more back to the way things were.

We eventually made our way down the hallway, many of us red in the face and a few tears still streaming down a few faces. We went outside, making various small-talk about worthless, unremarkable and wholly unremembered things. A few calls home for rides were made, a few more goodbyes from the people leaving at the time, then we went back into the vestibule. It's really cold outisde in Indiana in January.

My mom's car showed up. So, that was the end of it for me. A couple brief waves and see-yous.. I'll see them all on Monday. But there was no way I was going to leave without a proper goodbye to Nicole. I may never see her again. So, I walked over and hugged her.

Sigh. It turns out, my friends, that history never leaves. It may fade, and become fogged, a long-lost scrap of the life of someone who you used to be. But it's always there. So, as I stood there and hugged my Ex-Girlfriend of 13 months, I discovered, far too late, that just because you say the words, it's never over. Nothing is ever over. I actually do still care.

When you give someone a piece of your heart, that piece will never be the same. That's not to say that it will necessarily end up on the floor, ground to a pulp, broken and bleeding. But that person will always be there, in that piece of your heart that you commended to them.