Sing it for me

"Life sucks," thought Ebenezer as he hung up the video call.

The blond twenty-four-year-old was lamenting the fact that Milena, a Czech girl he had met several years ago through an internet music-lovers forum, was in Ostrava, a city more than 350 km away from Kalisz in Poland, the city where he lived.

"That's not to mention that it's a different country..." he lamented, remembering that Ostrava was a city in the Czech Republic.

She was always the highlight of the day. It was rare if they didn't text or make a video call when Ebenezer returned from the office where he worked. Seeing her appear on his laptop screen, greeting him with a smile even though she'd had the worst day at work in the world, made it practically like a drug that Ebenezer couldn't get off. 

Milena was twenty-three years old, only one year younger than Ebenezer. She was a young blonde with green eyes, a little short, very cheerful and considerate. Unfortunately for the young man, she had her whole life, her family, her friends and her job in Ostrava, and asking her to give it all up for him seemed too selfish. That is, if she felt the same way about him. Would she feel breathless when she thought of him, too?

They had confessed to each other that they felt something more than friendship after so much contact and, except for words and gestures, it hadn't gone so far as to decide to make a radical change in their lives.

However, the day Milena told him she loved him, Ebenezer's heart was turned upside down and he had not recovered since. He had noticed on several occasions that he was thinking about her, that he had looked for an association with her in anything, or that he had run to his mobile phone when it rang in case it was her, to the point of becoming almost an obsession.

And Ebenezer knew it. And his friends also knew it.

-That relationship or whatever it is you have with that girl... - Adam, his best friend, had told him when he came to Kalisz for a visit.

-Milena. - Ebenezer pointed out.

-Well, it's killing you, mate. You can still be friends, but you should think about the fact that there are other people in this world. She'll understand, and surely she should feel the same way.

-I can't, Adam... I swear I'm trying to be coherent but... - Ebenezer had replied, which had made his friend think. 

In the end, Adam had smiled and patted him on the back.

-You've always been there for me, so I'll be sure to help you in any way I can. - Adam had said.

"Help me forget her? What would his friend know about love?", Ebenezer wondered.

Of course, he must have known something, since Adam's wedding was to be that very weekend in the city of Katowice. He had made the decision to leave everything behind for Joanna, or Asia, as she was known to everybody. He had decided to go in search of the person of his dreams while Ebenezer lamented that the cities were "far away". 

The young man picked up his mobile phone to browse one of the social networks through which he had been talking to Milena. She had told him that she had a job at the toy shop where she worked as a shop assistant, so she wouldn't be answering for a while.

Ebenezer browsed through old messages, something he liked to do from time to time, to refresh his memory of the best moments of their relationship: how they met, what they did in their lives, what tastes they shared...

Music. They both liked songs that were romantic or had a message. Sometimes they would send each other songs when they found one with a special meaning. Milena's hobby was to cover famous songs. Apparently, she sang with some friends in an amateur band in Ostrava every other weekend and had sent him the occasional performance in bars or small venues with an audience of fifteen or twenty people.