i’m not asking you to wait

but some nights, i still wonder what we could’ve been if we lived closer

there’s a version of this story i tell myself at night,
usually when i can’t sleep and my phone is one buzz away from humiliating me.

in that version, he lives down the street.
he knows the bodega guy by name.
we meet for coffee on tuesdays and don’t talk about what almost happened—because it’s actually happening.
but that’s not how it played out.

we met at camp, like the beginning of a bad indie film.
he was from the netherlands.
i was pretending not to fall in love with someone who looked like sunlight and spoke like a secret.

i don’t know how to explain it—he just glowed.
not in a way that made people look.
in a way that made them stay.

he told me, months later, that he’d been madly in love with me.
like it was casual.
like it didn’t unspool something inside me.

i told him i felt the same.
because i did.
because i still do, in that inconvenient, can’t-really-talk-about-it way.

i think about him more than i admit.
not in a pining, delusional way (except… maybe, a little).
just in the way you replay a voicemail you don’t want to delete.
the “what if we were older, braver, geographically convenient” kind of thinking.

he lives oceans away.
i live in drafts i’ll never send.

i told him once:
“if i liked the toned-down version of you, don’t you think i’d love the real thing?”
and he didn’t argue.

sometimes he texts me things that break my heart in lowercase.
he told me he came out.
i told him i was proud.
he told me i was hot.
i pretended not to reread it six times.

he said:
“doesn’t the heart grow fonder in absence of its desire?”
and i said nothing.
because maybe it does.
maybe the ache gets poetic with time.

i’m not asking him to wait.
i’m just saying it sucks that he had to leave before i could finish the sentence.

some people are like that.
they don’t ruin you.
they just stay too long in your head,
quietly rearranging the furniture.

and if he ever reads this—
i hope he remembers we were kids.
just kids.
stumbling into something too big for us to name,
too fragile to carry,
too far away to keep.

i didn’t know what i was doing.
i don’t think he did either.
but for a moment, it felt like we were the only two people who did.

i’m not asking him to wait.
i wouldn’t do that.
we’re still growing, still changing, still trying to become real people.
not outlines.
not possibilities.

but some nights—
when it’s late, and quiet, and my phone hasn’t lit up in hours—
i let myself wonder
what it might’ve felt like
to love him for real.
up close.
with time on our side.

and maybe—just maybe—
we’ll still get the chance.