The Meeting

Amanda Bussman
5 min readSep 1, 2022
Photo by daan evers on Unsplash

You’re both sitting in complete silence and honestly what more could you expect? You want him to say the first word. You want him to say something, say anything. you want him to explain himself and why exactly he picked everyone else over you. You want to know why you were never good enough to be something he wanted, something he loved. Why you were so easy for him to replace and walk away from.

Your eyes drift up this his face for a moment and of course he isn’t looking at you. No, his eyes are on that stupid apple watch that sits on his wrist like this meeting is just a waste of his time. He’s got places to be and a family at home that’s going to worry if he’s too late.

For god-fucking-sake, if he’s late they might worry about him and ask where the shit he’s been. Then what’s he got left to do? Be honest. That’s a fat chance and you know it without him even expressing it. You’re a mistake from his past and he looks more nervous about them finding out anything about you then about what your wellbeing has been.

He didn’t even bother to ask about the shiner.

The purple circle that’s sitting against your left eye is just something he glanced at and moved on from like ti’s perfectly normal to see such dark bruises on teenage girls. He never once had that look of concern when his eyes laid on you. You never felt an ounce of worry from him.

This sure as shit isn’t what you expected.

But then again, what did you really expect from him? He never once bothered to find you, never bothered to give a shit. You were just something in his past he wanted to forget even when you were right in front of him. This shouldn’t be any sort of a shock to you.

It’s a disappointment, yeah, but do you really expect it to be anything else?

You shift awkwardly for a moment, your taps the faceplate of your own watch and the planets stare back at you. Out of habit, and need for something to do with your hands you spin the dial for a moment, you watch as the planets on the watch face move in accordance with where they’ve been days prior. For a moment your mind gets trapped in a better moment, the way the boy in your life sometimes grabs your wrist and plays with the dial. How he’ll pick out a random date and go right to there, how he’ll tell you what he…

Amanda Bussman

If you're looking for a writing coach and someone who is working through generational trauma, you've come to the right place. OH! I hope you like Taylor Swift!