I’m jealous. Genuinely, deeply jealous of his ability to be invisible.
My entire life is documented. Every concert, every interview, every paparazzi shot of me getting coffee in sweatpants on a bad hair day. I exist in the public record whether I want to or not. There’s no escaping the narrative because the narrative is everywhere, constantly being written and rewritten by people who’ve never met me.
But Taio? Taio could walk away from all of this and no one would even know he was gone. He could go back to New York, delete my number, pretend the last several weeks never happened. There’d be no screenshots to analyze, no comment sections to dissect, no digital breadcrumbs for obsessive fans to follow.
The thought makes me feel sick and sad and strangely envious all at once.
I close Instagram and open my messages instead. Our text thread is sparse—mostly logistics from the early days, then a few flirty exchanges once things started shifting between us. The last message is from him, sent right before his flight took off.
Taio
Boarding soon. I’ll text when I land.
That was five hours ago. He should have landed by now. Should have texted. Should have given me some sign that he’s okay, that we’re okay, that the distance opening between us is just physical and not something deeper.
My thumb levitates over the keyboard.
Don’t be clingy. Don’t be desperate. Don’t be the girl who can’t go twelve hours without contact.
But also: don’t be the girl who’s too afraid to say what she feels. Don’t be the girl who lets something real slip away because she was too busy protecting her image.
I start typing before I can talk myself out of it.
Me
I miss you already.
I stare at those four words on my screen, finger suspended above them like a diver who’s suddenly realized how far down the water really is.
I’ve stood on stages with enough people to fill a small city staring back at me. I’ve hit high notes on primetime TV while network executives held their breath. I’ve smiled for cameras knowing tomorrow my chin, my nose, my eyes would be outlined in red circles on gossip sites with headlines like “Botched Botox.”
None of that felt as nerve-wracking as this.
Send.
The message delivers. The little checkmark appears, confirming it’s gone out into the world, winging its way to wherever Taio is right now. Probably his apartment in New York. Probably exhausted from the red-eye. Probably wondering whyhe ever got involved with a pop-star disaster who can’t even commit to being seen on a date with him in public.
I watch the screen. Waiting for the three dots that mean he’s typing. Waiting for any sign of response.
Nothing.
I keep watching anyway, phone clutched to my chest, breath held like a swimmer about to go under. The screen dims. I tap it to keep it awake. It dims again. I tap again.
The minutes tick by. One. Two. Five.
Still nothing.
Maybe he’s asleep. It’s almost three a.m. Normal people sleep at three in the morning. It’s not personal…
I hope.
I place my phone screen-down on the nightstand and try to reason with myself. He’s asleep. He’s handling the family crisis. He has better things to do than stare at message notifications like I do. I’ll look again tomorrow.
But I don’t sleep.
I lie there in the dark, listening to my own heartbeat, wondering if I’ve already lost something I barely had a chance to hold.Fuck.
Sleep won’t come, so I gather my bedding and shuffle to the living room, to the blanket fort where Taio and I spent last night. A corner has collapsed; I tuck the sheet back under the couch cushion to fix it. Inside, I find Black Cat curled in the same spot where Taio had lain. The air in here still holds traces of his cologne. I settle beside the cat, pulling my comforter tight around me, making myself smaller and smaller until the world outside this fragile shelter ceases to exist. It’s just me, this sleeping cat, and the ghost of yesterday’s happiness now.
