#ncttexts

Loneliness. Loneliness was the only thing I could feel.

Heavy in my chest while the TV flickered in front of me. I wasn’t really watching it, I didn’t even know what was on. I was just waiting, phone in hand.

“I’ll pick you up soon. Be ready.”

Four hours later, I was still ready. I was in the dress he got me because he said it brought out my eyes, my hair left naturally curly because he liked it like that.

When he finally called, I answered right away.

“Sorry babe, I was busy.”

Of course he was. They seemed like the only words he knew to speak these days.

“Are you on your way?” hem of my dress between my fingers as I fidgeted with it.

“Yeah, I’m just getting ice cream with the guys”

Ice cream. That’s why I’m waiting? I looked at the window. The sunset I had watched while sitting there in my outfit, makeup done, had already faded into night.

“But it’s 8”

“Yeah, I’ll stop by quick.”

Quick, like I was a last minute squeeze in into his day, like it was a favor that he would even come and see me.

“Okay.”

I washed my face and changed into pajamas. Threw the clothes I had been excited to wear into my hamper. By 9:30, I was already in bed. Cold, but not needing a blanket cold.

“I just dropped off the guys. I’m on my way.”

After everything else. That’s all I was.

When he walked in, he smiled.

“Hi baby.”

A soft kiss. Like routine. He laid down and pulled out his phone. Eyes on it more than he laid on me in the past 2 minutes.

He was there. Right next to me.

But not really.

His body was close, his scent filled my nose. And even then, it was as if his mind was somehwere else. Still with the guys, still with work, still with everything. Everything but me.

I sat beside him quietly. My energy wasn’t the same. It hadn’t been since the second hour of waiting. I wasn’t as bright. Not as talkative. Not excited anymore. I felt tired.

He didn’t notice…. He never did.

He didn’t ask why I was quieter than usual.

Didn’t ask why my makeup was gone.

Didn’t ask if I had been waiting long.

He just assumed everything was normal. That it was all “chill”.

And maybe that’s what hurt the most.

How he can be inches away from me and not feel the shift at all.

I felt myself wither next to him, becoming softer, quieter, easier to overlook.

He reached over absentmindedly, resting his hand on me while scrolling.

And I realized something.

You can be held

and still feel untouched.

You can be looked at

and still feel unseen.

He was there.

But I wasn’t felt.

And I didn’t know how to explain that without sounding like I was asking for too much.

So I stayed quiet. Again.

And let the loneliness sit between us,

closer than we were.

And there again it was. The cold.

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