Hi.
I stared at the single word until the letters blurred, my thumb hovering uselessly over the screen. Two letters, simple and unassuming, yet they carried the weight of everything I hadn’t been able to say aloud. My pulse thudded in my throat, uneven and insistent, and before I could stop myself, I pressedsend.
The message floated upward on the screen, a small, glowing act of recklessness. Regret hit almost the second I sent it. Theroom felt too still, every sound swallowed by the quiet. My phone sat heavy in my hand, the glow of the screen burning against my palm. I tried to breathe, but each second seemed to stretch longer than the last. One minute passed, then another. Nothing. Just silence, thick and uneasy, filling every corner of the room. I was about to toss the phone aside, pretend I hadn’t cared at all, when it buzzed in my hand and made my heart stumble.
Hayden:
Hi. Is everything okay?
Relief hit before I could stop it, but it didn’t help, it only made everything worse. My chest tightened, the rush of emotion twisting into something smaller, meaner. I stared at the screen, the words burning. “That’s all?” I whispered, the sound breaking in the quiet. “After ignoring me for days… is everything okay? That’s what you say?”
The anger slipped in before I could fight it, tangled with the ache that never really left. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, trembling as I forced myself to breathe, to stay composed, to type something that wouldn’t give away how badly he still had me.
Edwina:
I should be asking you that. You’ve been… distant.
The typing bubbles appeared, then vanished. Reappeared, then faded again. I could almost see him, sitting somewhere in that dimly lit apartment, glasses set aside, fingers pausing over the screen as he wrestled with himself. The thought made my chest ache. Finally, the reply arrived.
Hayden:
I’m fine. Just busy.
Busy. The word struck deeper than I expected, carrying a chill that settled in my chest. It felt distant, stripped of warmth—an easy barrier dressed up as reason. I began to type again, my hands trembling with the effort to keep my thoughts from spilling too raw onto the screen.
Edwina:
Did I do something wrong?
This time the pause was longer, long enough for doubt to claw its way up my throat. My reflection wavered in the dark screen, eyes wide, waiting for a response that might either break me or bring me peace. The bubbles blinked again, and then his message appeared.
Hayden:
You didn’t.
Two words. That was all he gave me, and they should have been enough to quiet the ache. Instead, they hollowed me out. There was nothing alive in them, no warmth, no flicker of the man who once spoke my name as if it belonged to him. The silence that followed settled deep beneath my skin, heavier than anger, sharper than heartbreak. It wasn’t rejection. It was indifference, and somehow, that hurt more than anything else he could have said.
I set the phone down beside me, staring at it as though it might change its mind. My heart beat too fast, my breath too shallow. I wanted to believe he was protecting us, protecting me, but a colder truth settled beneath my ribs: maybe he was already letting me go.
Sleep never came that night. I turned beneath the sheets, the pale glow of dawn creeping through the curtains as my thoughts circled endlessly around those two words. You didn’t. The more I repeated them, the more they sounded like you did.
By morning, the world outside had changed. The storm had passed, leaving the sky washed clean and fragile. The city smelled of wet earth and thawing air; puddles glimmered on the cobblestones, catching the faint gold of a sun still shy. Spring was coming, gentle and unstoppable. Students filled the quad again, their coats unbuttoned, laughter spilling easily between them. Life was moving forward.
I wasn’t.
I moved through it all in a daze, my thoughts weighted down by a name I didn’t dare say aloud. Each step carried the ghost of his absence, every passing hour another reminder that the space between us was growing wider, colder, more real.
I hadn’t planned to see him. That was the lie I told myself as I found my way down the quieter corridor, the one that led to his office. My steps softened against the floor, my heart beating a rhythm that had nothing to do with reason. The door stood half-open, voices spilling softly through the crack.
I froze.
Professor David’s tone was unmistakable, easy, teasing, the kind of warmth that always seemed to fill the spaces Hayden refused to.
“Six months here, a year there, it’s no way to live, Hayden. You can’t keep running on temporary contracts forever. This offer is different. It’s one of the top universities in the country. You’d be insane not to take it.”
Silence followed, heavy enough to still the air around me. Then Hayden’s voice, low and controlled, though I could hear the tension threaded through it.
“I know. It’s everything I wanted. But…”
