Sometimes love does not teach you by staying. Sometimes it teaches you by disappearing, just long enough for you to realize what you were too afraid to admit.
We had agreed to meet at four on a Monday.
I was there early,I had my books,i had my notes,I had told myself this was just studying, just academics, just two people sitting in the same space with the same goal,I was composed, i was fine.
Felix did not come.
I called, His phone rang out. I tried again the silence was really bad. It was as if he had simply stepped out of the world without leaving a door behind him. I sat in that spot for longer than I should have, pretending to read words that were not entering my head, pretending I was not checking my phone every few minutes, pretending I was not worried.
I was very worried.
Days passed, Then more days, A week.
I went to class and sat in the seat where I could sometimes see him and he was not there. I walked the paths we had walked together and they felt shorter somehow, emptier. I stared at my phone and composed messages I never sent because I did not want to seem like someone who cared too much.
But I cared,God, I cared so much it frightened me.
This was exactly what I had been afraid of. Not heartbreak ,not rejection yet, Just this. This helpless, disorganised feeling of needing to know if someone was okay,Of missing a person's laugh,Of replaying a hug in your head at two in the morning when you are supposed to be studying. This was the beginning of what my parents had warned me about, and I had walked right into it with my eyes wide open.
One afternoon, exhausted and quietly heartbroken, I went to the spot where we used to study together. I sat down, opened my book, and fell asleep over my own notes.
Something tapped me.
I woke up screaming.
It was Felix.
He was standing there with that look on his face the one that was somewhere between sorry and relieved and for one long second I did not know whether to cry or to shout or to hug him or to walk away. My feelings had never been so loud and so confused at the same time.
He knelt down.
He said he was sorry. He said the decision he had made to stay away had been the hardest thing he had done, that every day he had gone to my social media page just to look at my pictures. That he had missed me more than he knew how to say out loud.
I said nothing. I just reached forward and held him.
We stayed like that for five full minutes. No words. Just the kind of silence that says everything words are too small to carry. And then, slowly, he pulled back just enough to look at me, and he pressed the softest, most careful kiss to my cheek and whispered four words into my ear.
I love you, Jasmine.
I heard those words and felt the whole world tilt.
Every warning. Every wall. Every brick I had ever carefully placed. All of it trembled.
Because the truth the real, raw, terrifying truth was that I loved him too. I had loved him somewhere in the silence of those missing days. I had loved him in the worry and the sleepless nights and the replayed memories. Love had found its way into me without asking, the way it always does.
I told him I loved him too.
He lifted me off the ground.