The morning light didn't feel like morning.
It spilled into her room like an uninvited guest, brushing over the undone bedsheets, the cold pillow beside her, and the coffee mug from yesterday she hadn't touched.
She blinked slowly, the kind of slow that happens when you didn't really sleep — just shut your eyes to survive the night.
Her phone was still there.
Face down.
She didn't touch it.
Not yet.
Because what if?
What if there was something waiting?
Something from him?
What if he'd finally said something — anything?
Then suddenly—
ding.
The sound sliced through the silence like a heartbeat restarting.
She reached for the phone so fast, she knocked it off the edge of the bed.
It clattered to the floor.
Her heart pounded in her throat as she grabbed it like it was something sacred.
One notification.
Not him.
Just an app update.
Useless.
Stupid.
Empty.
But for that one second... she let herself believe.
And that was the cruelest part.
She dropped the phone on the bed and let out a bitter breath.
How many times had she done this?
How many times did she train her body to respond to a sound that would never mean him again?
Her eyes closed.
And memory slipped in quietly—like it always does.
There was a time when he texted first.
"I can't sleep."
She'd been lying on the balcony floor, stars spread above her, the city breathing softly in the background.
When she saw his name light up her screen, she smiled without thinking.
"Then don't. Talk to me instead."
And he did.
For hours.
About everything and nothing.
At 2:13 a.m., he said:
"You feel like home, you know that?"
She remembered how her breath had caught, how her fingers froze above the keyboard.
Even now, she could feel the ghost of that moment clinging to her skin.
"Don't say that unless you mean it."
And without pause, he had written:
"I wouldn't say it if I didn't."
That version of them existed once.
The one that talked until morning.
The one that didn't need to second guess.
That version was so far away now, it almost felt like she had dreamed it.
The room felt colder.
She sat up, pressing her palms to her face, trying to ground herself.
She grabbed her phone again.
Opened the chat that hadn't moved in over a year.
Still no message. Still no "typing…"
Just his name. Still there.
Still him.
But not really.
She typed slowly.
"It wasn't supposed to end like this."
Then stared.
Hovered over send.
And backspaced it all.
Instead, she whispered it into her empty room:
Maybe it was meant.....to end like this