year had passed.
The calendar on the wall had changed, the seasons had come and gone, but the emptiness inside Jay's chest had not.
She hadn't married anyone. She hadn't tried. No one could take his place. No one even came close.
Every night, she returned to the same ritual. She would sit by the window, the city lights blurry in the distance, the darkness of her room wrapping her like a blanket.
Her hands would clutch the letter she had kept folded carefully, the paper now soft and worn from being held so many times.
And every night… she cried.
Cried for the fights she had started.
Cried for the words she had thrown at him.
Cried for the silence that had grown between them until it became forever.
Sometimes she whispered his name into the darkness, hoping for an echo that never came.
"I'm sorry, Keifer…" she would murmur.
"I was nothing without you. I am nothing without you."
Even the nights she tried to sleep, she couldn't. Her dreams were filled with fragments of him — his smile, his laughter, the soft patience in his eyes. And then the fights would replay, over and over, like cruel reminders.
People told her to move on.
Family asked if she was ready to date again.
Friends tried to distract her.
But none of it reached the hollow place in her chest.
A year later, Jay was still married in her heart — not to anyone else, not to a memory that faded — but to Keifer.
She had loved him endlessly.
And she would cry endlessly for him.
Because she had realized, too late, that he was her everything.
And now, without him, she was nothing.