I've learned that absence has a texture.
It's not just the lack of a thing—it's the negative space left behind. The way your eyes keep filling in what isn't there.
The seventh Tuesday came like every other: uninvited and on time. I arrived early this time, with the foolish hope that punctuality might summon the supernatural—but the vending machine buzzed alone and her shoe wasn't there.
Neither was she.
I walked around the corner like a desperate child looking for a lost cat.
Three times. Four. I even looked inside the machine's delivery tray, as if she might be hiding inside it.
Nothing.
I looked behind the vending machine. I don't know why. As if maybe she'd been misplaced like a receipt you swore was in your other pocket.
Still nothing.
It was the first Tuesday since our accidental arrangement that I didn't see her or her shoe. Or that slightly off-kilter smile that looked like it belonged in a photo album that no one kept anymore.
I waited. Because hope is stubborn like that.
5:00.
5:20.
5:45.
Nothing.
The sun didn't care, it set anyway and eventually, I bought a drink. Calpis soda. Her favorite.
Drinking the soda, I thought:
Was she gone? Had I remembered her enough to set her free? Or forgotten her just enough for her to fade?
I kept showing up the next few Tuesdays. Call it foolish or romantic or emotionally masochistic. It didn't matter what it was called and it didn't change the fact that she wasn't there and I wasn't angry, or sad. I was just... empty.
From then on, Tuesdays stopped being sacred. They became just days with slightly more disappointment in them.
Maybe she moved on. Or maybe… I was the one who forgot the right way.
They say ghosts disappear when they're forgotten. But what if they disappear when they're remembered wrong?
Maybe the Tuesdays had ended. Not because she disappeared but because her chapter had.
And mine was still being written.