Pov:Max
My phone buzzed just as I was about to sleep. Kitty was already snoring, one arm flung over her face, her phone dim beside her. I reached for mine, expecting some random college group spam or maybe a late-night meme from someone in class.
But instead…
> "Hey. I think I saw you today. It's been a while… Max."
Unknown number.
But my heart knew exactly who it was.
I sat up slowly, my fingers cold even though the night was warm. I clicked on the contact, hesitating before I let myself breathe.
It was still saved as Mike H
With a blue heart next to it.
I never changed it.
Back then, the H stood for hubby. A joke we made when we were just two high school kids texting through lectures and walking home under the same sky. And the blue heart? His favorite color. He once told me, "Blue calms me. Like you do."
We were never official. Never public. Just two souls who met between chaos and calm, who shared glances in corridors and laughs over cheap cafeteria coffee. He was my senior. He always felt a little older, a little further out of reach—but I still fell.
Hard.
And just when I thought he was falling too… he disappeared.
No fights. No closure. Just cold silence.
So seeing his name again, after all this time, felt like reopening a wound I'd bandaged too many times.
I stared at his message, rereading it, searching for something in the spaces between his words.
Did he miss me?
Or was this just a guilty check-in after years of forgetting?
I don't know what came over me, but I typed back.
> "Yeah, senior. It's been… long."
I didn't ask how he was. I didn't say I missed him. I didn't even mention I saw him too.
Because I didn't know if I wanted to start something… or end it for real.
---
I locked my phone and sank back into the pillow. My heart was loud in my chest, the way it used to be every time his name popped up.
I never changed his contact name.
Not because I was holding on…
But because letting go felt like pretending he never mattered.
And he did.
Even now.
He still does.
---