The Last Evening of the Year
Months passed. The city kept moving, crowds, traffic, people talking, life happening everywhere. But inside him, nothing really changed. Every morning began the same way: Wake up. Check messages. See nothing. Pretend it didn't matter. And every night ended the same way: Open her chat. Type a few words. Erase them. Lock the phone like it never happened. That small pull in his chest, that urge to talk to her, never left. He told himself he had made peace with her answer, “I don’t feel the same, we’ll be good friends.” So he stopped texting. He didn’t want to be the reason for her sighs, the unwanted pings on her phone. But what he couldn’t stop was the thought of her. Every morning. Every night. The urge to message her became part of his existence, like the ticking of a clock in an empty room. Until one evening, the last evening of the year, the city buzzing with noise and crowds and countdowns that meant nothing to him… His phone buzzed. A single...