As I lay in my bed that night, my face was turned slightly away from my bedside table lamp, and my eyes watched as it cast light upon two undeniable truths: one, that silk sheets feel undeniably better against freshly shaved legs than polyester ones, and two, that it seemed that the boy who I had told myself I didn't love anymore, who was supposed to be completely in love with someone else, had for some reason deemed it a good idea to call me after a year of not speaking.
"Hello?" He said. Simple words, but yet the shadow of my hand that appeared on my covers trembled.
I was struck by the oddness of the situation. Hello, he had said. It didn't seem proper...but then again, I guess there's a reason there's no How to Talk to the Girl You Used to Love Who is Now a Stranger Because You Left Her, for Dummies. There aren't guidelines for things like that.
His next words took me by surprise.
"I miss you."
The shadow of my hand shook faster. The dam broke, memories of the past flooded my mind.
I remembered when he had left a year earlier. I remembered the past months without him...I had realized a thing or two about heartbreak. Turns out it's not as pretty as people make it seem, wearing old sweatpants and rocking a messy bun while you sit on the coach with your best friend, salting a container of quickly melting Ben and Jerry's with your abundant tears while Taylor Swift croons in the background. No, that's hell, a hot and fiery type of pain, like shattering a bone...heartbreak, heartbreak was cold. It was numbness, like lying in an ice bath for too long, but oh god I couldn't even recognize that fact because I remembered how he always loved to take cold showers andI'd giggle at him and ask teasingly if Icould join but no no no don't think of that don't remember you can't you can't-
I miss you too, I miss you too, I miss-
I laughed his confession off, the laugh feeling like a lump of stuck bread in my throat. He didn't say them again.
It's been a few months. I can't stop wondering what if? What if I had told him how I really felt? I ask myself about how things would be different if I told him I missed him too, remembering the days with him when being a sinner was a euphemism for loving someone so much the consequences didn't matter, when hell wasn't a dead end sign but a gleaming trophy proving that you didn't care about all the odds stacked up against you, because eternal damnation was a small price to pay for true love. Perhaps things would be different, or perhaps I would have just caused history to repeat itself. I'll never know for sure, but that's the thing about a what if- there's no way to know.
