A year is a long time.
Long enough for memories to blur at the edges, but not long enough for them to disappear. I told myself I had moved on. I told myself it was just a wedding crush — brief, harmless, forgettable.
I was lying.
Some nights, without meaning to, I would replay moments: the way he laughed, the way the baby settled in my arms, the way he said *bye* like it mattered. I hated myself for it. I hated how easily my heart remembered something my mind insisted wasn't important.
Then one evening, scrolling aimlessly, I saw a familiar surname.
A relative from the wedding.
Curiosity — my oldest weakness — won.
I clicked.
And there he was.
Ash.
My breath caught, sharp and sudden, like I'd been punched gently in the chest.
He looked… the same. Different. Older, maybe. More settled. Still quiet, even in pictures. I stared longer than I should have, my thumb hovering uselessly over the screen.
Don't be stupid, Jenna.
You don't reopen doors you worked so hard to close.
I followed him.
The notification sat there like a ticking clock. I waited. Minutes. Hours. A whole day.
Then —
*Ash followed you back.*
My heart reacted before I could stop it.
We didn't talk immediately. Of course we didn't. We circled each other through stories — small glimpses of life. A song. A sunset. A shared meme. Safe distances.
Then one night, he replied to a story.
Something simple.
I replied back.
And just like that, the dam cracked.
We talked about the wedding first. Laughed about the pillow fight. About the baby. About how chaotic everything was. It felt easy — too easy — like no time had passed at all.
Some conversations stretched late into the night.
Some ended abruptly, leaving me staring at my screen, wondering if I had said too much or too little.
Then one day, casually — dangerously — he said it.
"I liked you. I think I still do."
My chest tightened.
This was the moment every past version of me had secretly waited for. And yet fear arrived first, loud and cruel.
My life wasn't stable. I was carrying things I didn't know how to explain. I was scared of attachment, scared of expectation, scared of ruining something before it even began.
He deserved someone brave.
I wasn't.
So I did what I had always done best.
I ran.
I blocked him.
No explanation. No warning. Just silence.
The quiet that followed was heavy — suffocating. At first, I told myself it was necessary. That I had protected both of us.
Then guilt crept in.
Weeks later, I found myself thinking about how sudden it must have felt from his side. How trusting. How unnecessary the cruelty had been.
I unblocked him months later, only to apologize. Only to say I was sorry for disappearing like that.
I was too late.
He blocked me just after reading my messages.