Already

They had the familiarity of old lovers. Like their shoulders would brush and neither would realize. Like something very normal just happened. The spark had been eroded. But the comfort remained. The warmth of their companionship filled the air when they were both together. Even years after. The wondrous age of passion. Now they touched on the borders of whole decades and counted in their fingers, years past since when they had been behind latched doors. That way. But it was hard to rebuild that magic, even in the imagination in their heads, it was closer to impossible than to possible. They had moved on to newer people, fucked, fallen in love, unfucked. Their last memory of togetherness had been so numerously overlapped that it had almost been buried. Oddly enough though, she would bend over the table to get the pepper shaker, without even being aware that her top slid too low exposing a bit of her cleavage. She knew that he wasn't seeing anything he hadn't seen already. That there was no corner of her body that he had left unexplored. And she knew that he knew that she knew. Everyone knew. Everything already. The best charm of having been lovers in the past is this sense of information symmetry. And therefore the lack of need to tell. Or to communicate with a glance, sometimes even without a glance. They could just sit beside, and not feel this compelling need to say. Almost all definitions of a relationship would have run through their minds. More than once. More than twice. So there was nothing left except for this soul quenching feeling every time they spent a few hours between a lifeless few months.

They had been lovers already. So whatever else was left, was hard to find a name for.