"It’s been years," he starts,
his voice lighter than the weight
we carry between us.
"Still haven’t found her yet,"
he laughs, but it crumbles midway.
"The one I could wake up to,
every single morning,
and feel something real."

I sip my coffee, swallow the ache,
"Maybe you’re looking too hard,"
I say, smiling the way you do
when you’re afraid of breaking.
"Sometimes, she’s right there,
in the spaces you don’t notice."

"Or maybe," he muses,
eyes catching the dim light,
"I had her once."
And the words hang heavy
in the space between his breath
and my heartbeat.

I look away, pretending to notice
the world beyond the window—
the people moving past us,
each of them a story
that isn’t ours.

"You’ve had a few since then,"
I remind him, gently as I can,
but he waves it off,
a ghost of a smile.
"None of them stayed," he says,
"Not like you did."

There’s a stillness,
the kind that remembers
all our old rooms,
the nights we dreamed
we were infinite,
and how time, cruel as it is,
found a way to separate us.

"I’m marrying soon," I say,
words almost a whisper,
watching his face for the shift,
the little fracture that confirms
what I already know—
that some things never really leave.

"Should I send you an invitation?"
I add, half a joke, half a hope
to make this lighter,
to pull us back to where
we can pretend it doesn’t hurt.

He chuckles, but his eyes
tell a different story—
one that still lives in
the in-betweens,
in the could-have-beens,
in the way he says,
"Don’t."

I laugh, but it doesn’t reach my eyes.
And for a moment,
I think about all the lives
we could have lived,
all the mornings that aren’t ours
to wake up to anymore.

"Well," I say,
"you know where to find me—
if you need more advice."

He nods, swallowing his words
like he’s done a thousand times,
and we sit in the silence
of what could have been,
each of us wondering
if this is where it ends,
or if it ever really does.

© reddragonfly

#totga #theonethatgotaway #pastlove #exlovers #ex