It was while he was preparing for one of his classes, on that dreary Saturday morning alone at the office, that he realized that what had been bothering him for the last couple of days was the fact that, somewhere, halfway around the world, she was happy.

Not that he didn’t want her to be. He, of all people, knew that she deserved it.

But what bothered him, really, was that her happiness did not include him at all. And that while she was happy wherever she was, he was all alone, here, miserable with the life that he had been living.

How did that song go, he thought: I'm the one who left you, and you're the one who's fine without me. "Was happiness really a choice?" he thought. Or did she, too, wake up each morning, and tell herself, at the beginning of each day: be brave, the best is yet to come.

Perhaps he will never know.

And then he went back to preparing for his class.