Names and small details have been changed out of respect for others' privacy.
He was a soft caress of the ocean, close and far both at once. He was the rope that tried to pull me out of the well. He was everything that mattered and nothing I could explain.
And he was mine.
I walked down the sidewalk, brushing shoulders with a woman carrying a chicken and a man talking entirely too loudly into his phone, his voice filling the space we shared. I walked down the sidewalk, scanning each brick building until I reached it—the coffee shop door.
It was a small dinky place in my hometown, though I'd never actually been there before. The bottom floor was quaint, adorned with dark wood and colorful furniture. A group of students were splayed on lime green couches, chatting and staring at their phones.
I pulled out my own and quickly crafted a text.
"Where are you?"
I slid my phone back into my pocket. While I waited for the telltale vibration, I walked further into the shop and looked over the menu.
My phone buzzed: "Upstairs. I have a hot chocolate for you."
A smile spread across my face as I turned and ascended the stairs. One one side, a large room with board games and couches and tables lay spread out. On the other was a small room, the perimeter lined with glass windows, tendrils of sunlight spilling through even on this wintry day. The room held just a few small black metal tables and chairs.
And smiling at the table in the far corner, he sat, lifting his mug.
"Hi!" I practically squealed, and he stood and then gave me a quick side hug, careful to only barely touch.
He gestured to the chair across from his and sat as I followed suit. "How are you here?"
His smile grew wider, but he dropped his voice to a whisper just loud enough for my broken ears to hear. "I can only stay about fifteen minutes. I slipped out of the office, but Dad has no idea I'm here."
I nodded and feigned a smile even as disappointment seeped through my chest. At least I had fifteen whole minutes. It was still fifteen more minutes than I had had in a long time.
"What's college like?" he asked before taking a sip of whatever was in his mug. He asked the question as if we hadn't been messaging every day since I left.
"It's good. And hard. And I miss you. It's weird...without you there."
He blinked hard and swallowed, his lip twitching just slightly. "I miss you too," he said, and this time I didn't hear the words, just read them on his lips. My eyes burned.
"How are things here?" I asked, clearing my throat.
He softened for a moment. "Everything's the same here. Luke joined debate team. That's been...interesting." My eyes widened, but he continued. "He's... changed, a little."
I arched a brow. "How so?"
"Enough about me and things here. Tell me more about college." He averted his eyes and my brows raised, but I did not ask, jumping into college talk.
He let me go on for a few minutes, excitedly chatting about professors and sports and new friends. He asked a few questions, and I rambled on, barely taking breaths. There was so much — too much — to tell him.
With a glance at his watch, he stopped and said, "This was nice."
My heart dropped. It was over, so soon? My few moments with him, with my gravity, were done?
He left me with a side hug, using a nickname to say goodbye.
I stayed in the glass room when he left and watched him cross the street below and head into his father's office.
I was left cold, unbalanced. My feelings, my adoration of him, hadn't changed, but so many other things had. Our relationship, which had once been held together with metal chain links, now felt like a frayed shoelace.
I went back to college a week or so later, and didn't see him again before I left. He responded to me only minimally, blaming Christmas chaos for the lack of communication.
But Christmas went away and he didn't come back to me, not the way he had before.
Days without contact slipped into weeks that rolled into months. I tried to move on, to see other people — but no one had a chance. No one could hold a candle to him. My heart was saved, withdrawn into the back of a closet, held tightly, waiting for him to come back to me.
He never did.
It's been ten years since that day in the coffee shop, since I had come home and then left with the same hollow feeling of missing him.
We didn't completely break things off until three long years later, but we never shifted back into our normal rhythm. It was the only time that he actually expressed his feelings toward me in words other than "I really care about you." I was devastated, even then - even though I had known for a long time that there was no longer an "us," that the center of my world had slipped away, bobbing in the water, travelling from island to island. Even knowing our priorities no longer matched up, that it wouldn't work even if we tried. Even if we both wanted to try.
And even as I grieved the closure of a relationship that wasn't meant to be—I had already fallen in love with someone else. Someone who was kind and gentle and soft. Someone who listened to my stories and to my jokes. Someone who embraced all of me, darkness included, and didn't push me away. Someone who saw the parts of me I was too afraid to even share with Him. Someone who had become my best friend.
Someone wasn't the center of my world. Someone wasn't a mysterious wave, or a rescue rope.
Someone was always more than that.
We fell in love slowly, careful and cautious. We fell uphill, but didn't balk at the climb.
Someone is my anchor, the calm in the middle of my tornado. My partner, my equal, my balance.
My forever.
I never needed someone to be my center. I needed someone to be my balance.
And I think I've found that.
I hope he has too.
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