They say you grow out of feelings like this. That once you've graduated, once the world becomes louder and heavier, the things you used to ache over quietly begin to fade.
But I never outgrew him.
Not when I packed up my little apartment.Not when we lost touch for a few months.Not even when I told myself that I was done feeling this way.
He was the kind of person who made forgetting impossible—warm, charismatic, beautifully complicated. And I? I was always just... there. The friend. The listener. The one who remembered things he didn't even realize he said.
Tonight, we're out again. The same group. The same laughter. He's sitting across from me, and the lights from the café flicker softly on his skin. He talks, animated and carefree, and I smile like always, pretending my heart isn't breaking the way it always does around him.
He'll never know what it feels like to love someone
from the background.He'll never know that I memorized the way his voice dips when he's tired.That I still keep the jacket he lent me three winters ago, just because it smelled like him.
Maybe he doesn't have to know. Maybe some love stories aren't meant to be told—they're meant to be carried.
And I'll carry him quietly, always.