The fifth day arrived like all the others, with the sun painting unfamiliar shadows on my wall and my phone warm in my hand before I was fully awake. We had fallen into a rhythm now, her voice the first thing I wanted to hear, my texts the last thing she replied to before sleep. I was foolish enough to think this could continue forever.
Her message came mid-afternoon, cutting through the lazy heat like a blade.
I have something to say to you.
I stared at the words, my thumb hovering. Something in the phrasing made my chest tighten, but I pushed the feeling down. People said things like that all the time. It was probably nothing.
What?
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. I watched them pulse like a heartbeat, and with each passing second, the room seemed to grow quieter, the air thicker.
I am already married. Sorry I have hidden this from you.
The world did not stop. The ceiling fan continued its lazy rotation. Somewhere outside, a dog barked. But inside my chest, something cracked clean in two.
And then, impossibly, I began to type. My fingers moved on their own, carrying a truth I had buried so deep I had almost convinced myself it never happened.
I knew that already. You may not know but I was present on your wedding day. Although I could not stand till the last moment to see you becoming someone else's.
By the time I finished typing, my vision had blurred. I blinked, and the screen swam. I blinked again, and felt the first hot tear slide down my cheek, then another, then too many to count. I hadn't cried in years. I had forgotten what it felt like, the way it burned, the way it emptied you.
Her reply came quickly, but I could barely read it through the water.
I should have told you before we even started to converse but I was just happy that you contacted me. But I was also angry because you left me.
Left her. She thought I had left her. The irony was so cruel I almost laughed.
There were some unavoidable circumstances which caused me to distance from you, I wrote, each word a small death. Now I am far away from your life. I want to be with you still although it is impossible now.
Are you really happy? she asked.
How could I answer that? How could I explain that happiness had become a foreign concept, a country I no longer had a passport to? Instead, I told her the only truth that mattered.
How could I be sad for you. If you are happy then I am happy. Just forget about our past. You should forget about it and I will keep it to myself all my life till the grave.
Then you should not have left me, she wrote. You knew I would be happy with you.
The words hit like a physical blow. I doubled over, phone clutched in both hands, tears falling freely now, dotting the screen with small dark circles. What could I say? What could I possibly say that would undo any of this?
I know but what can I have done. I just couldn't.
The tears dropped from my chin onto my chest, onto the sheets, onto the phone where her name glowed back at me. I didn't wipe them away. I didn't have the strength.
Then would you accept me again if I came.
The question hung there, impossible and devastating. A door opening onto a future that could never exist. I didn't hesitate.
I would accept you even in my death bed. I thought the movies were exaggerating but now I know its real after I have become the character of it.
A long pause. I watched the dots appear and vanish, appear and vanish, as if she was typing and deleting, typing and deleting, searching for words that didn't exist.
Then:
You know that now you cant be mine and I cant be yours.
Yes.
Then stay away from my life like you did till now. Please don't contact me now.
I read the words three times. Then a fourth. Then a fifth, as if repetition might change their meaning. But they remained what they were: a door closing. A goodbye.
I started to type a response—what, I don't know, something desperate, something pleading—but before I could send, I tried to refresh the chat. An error. I tried again. Another error.
I checked her profile. It was gone.
I checked our message thread. It was gone.
I searched for her name. Nothing.
Blocked. From everywhere. In the space of ten minutes, I had been excised from her world as cleanly as a surgeon's knife.
I sat there for a long time, phone in my lap, tears drying on my cheeks in stiff, salty lines. The room had grown darker; evening was creeping in, indifferent to my small tragedy. Somewhere, in another city, in another life, she was sitting with her phone too, maybe crying, maybe not. I would never know.
I thought about what she had said. Then stay away from my life like you did till now. She was right. She was absolutely right. I had left once, for reasons I could never explain, reasons that had seemed so important at the time and now felt like dust. I had watched her marry someone else from the back of a crowded hall, had slipped out before the vows were complete because I couldn't bear to hear her say "I do" to anyone but me.
And now this. This brief, cruel resurrection of something that should have stayed buried.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I set the phone down on the nightstand. I looked at the ceiling fan, still spinning, still indifferent.
And just like that, I moved on.
Not because I wanted to. Not because it was easy. But because there was no other choice. The door was closed, locked, and the key had been thrown away. I could stand outside it forever, pressing my palm against the wood, or I could turn around and walk into whatever life waited for me in the opposite direction.