Excerpt from years ago.
I’ve had your number memorized by heart for years now. The last few years – I haven’t actually used it for anything. We are over. We don’t talk anymore. When someone doesn’t live in the same city as you in certain ways it is easier to get over them.
I never have to see you at the grocery store. I never have to pass by you on my way to class. I never have to see you at the bar with another girl. Friends and family won’t tell me that they talked to you or saw you. I don’t have to go through those feelings.
Something was making it hard for me to fall asleep two nights ago. The truth is that I haven’t thought about you in a while. And then out of the darkness of my room – your phone number manifests itself into my head. I get this feeling that I can’t shake. I have to call you. I really don’t want to go there. I don’t want to hear your voice. It’s been so long. Too long.
And then my fingers are flying across my phone. My phone is lighting up. My memory is dialing your number. Your phone is ringing. Of course I blocked my own number, so you couldn’t see it and muted my end of the phone call.
Creep, I know.
It went to voicemail and some random girl explained that she couldn’t get to her phone.
I hang up.
It gave me a sense of comfort that the number didn’t belong to you anymore.
I was trying to fall asleep last night when it hit me – I was wrong.
The number I dialed two nights ago was so wrong. The right number came to me. I dialed it again, blocked my number, and muted the call.
You answered.
My breath caught and my heart sped up.
You answered after five or six rings because I woke you up. It was about 1:30 in the morning and your voice was heavy with sleep. You kept saying hello and then you hung up.
I wanted to cry. When we were mad at each other – I would always call you with my number blocked, just so I could hear your voice before I went to sleep.
I was a teenager, in love, and dumb.
I never told you it was me and you never talked about the blocked phone calls you’d been receiving.
I think that you knew. I’m almost sure that you did.
I wanted to cry because that voice was still so familiar to me after all this time. It had been the soundtrack to many of my summers, but that boy was different now. He became a man. I was different now. I became a woman.
I hope that life is treating you okay.
And I wonder if you ever get a feeling that you can’t shake in the middle of the night telling you to call me – maybe I would pick up. Maybe you’d hear my voice again and it wouldn’t have changed.
–S.
The Messy Middle 🖤 