Out of the blue, she was missing him tonight.
It was almost a year since their last text (12th April, to be very exact). This she affirmed with the texting app, and at that moment she scrolled to his chat, he was ‘Online’. When they say technology was a bane of romance, there wasn’t a single ounce of lies. If goodbyes were solely based on letters and a vast sigh, she wouldn’t hate herself for not typing ‘Hi’. She wished he were simply gone for good, so she wouldn’t be tempted to check on his life. Instead, he was virtually haunting her mind, living within the very best memories that belonged to another time.
Every single guy she dated since could never match up to his humour, genuine personality and unpretentious charm. Despite lying to her face the very first time they met, he never told her another lie. And despite thinking that she would always be a cold-hearted person, she dearly missed him. She missed his good-mornings and goodnights. She missed knowing he would always have her back. She missed his promise that he would always be her very best friend. She missed typing furiously at her phone and hanging on to every written word from the other side.
She couldn’t watch a funny shih-tzu video on YouTube now without tearing up a little because that used to be his pet name. She couldn’t drink another beer with a ridiculous name without recalling he’d bought her a ‘Fucking Hell’ on their very first date. On that same day, they shared a salty 4-cheese pizza and till date, that dish still takes her back to that night (‘so cheesy! How do we finish this?’). As a human GPS, their very first joke was her telling him to turn left instead of right, and perhaps she never wanted to stop being a terrible navigator, so she would always relive that inside joke in her mind.
Night cycling would never be the same for her, if he weren’t riding by her side from dusk to dawn. She would never forget lying with him on the break barriers of the sea just watching the stars and talking about life. She would always recall the salty breeze on her face as she laid so close to the ocean, with her head on his bag, and he would sneak little glances at her as though she wouldn’t realise. Her favourite food never tasted the same since they last shared it on a dirty bench in a deserted park in the middle of the night. She would always remember sitting at the backseat of his car and all he wanted to do was hold her hand. She sorely missed the right fit of his palm to hers, and the painfully shy way he first held it, and told her he was never letting go. Good times were simply endless conversations in every dark, quiet spot they found. And even now she could recall every word of their last heart-to-heart.
People, she realised, could be so vastly different, yet have so much they could build in common. For the very first time, she thought she could be falling in love. She regretted the very first letter she wrote for him – the very act of penning a letter was an important gesture, and she was sharing a significant bit of her core. It was then she discovered her biggest fear was destroying his heart. Perhaps the very thought of their perfect fit scared her too much. She always knew the pen was her most lethal tool, and with another letter she carved out their tangible, irreversible distance.
Even with impossible differences, they thought they could be friends.
She always doubted herself since, thinking that to end it all on her terms was a very selfish move. After all, perhaps this was ‘the right guy’, at the wrong time. So she gave it time.
Promises were as easily broken as they were made. This she knew. She knew a year would make a big difference, let alone 4 years – he wouldn’t possibly remember to come back for her in 4 long years. There would be too much to bridge within that time when they weren’t even bothering to speak, or catch up. No ‘Happy Birthdays’, ‘How are you?’, or simply ‘I hope you’re doing fine.’
She could say ‘Let’s catch up now,’ but some distances were simply too great. So she would resort to re-reading their texts, his letter, and the diaries she wrote when they were more than friends.
Tonight she sat at their familiar spot, moon-gazing to a gentle rocking breeze.
Was it a bit of salt she could taste in the air?
—-
P.S. There are fine lines between fiction and fact.
You decide what’s real and what’s merely written text.
xoxo,
Viktoria Jean
Viktoria Jean 
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