It was her usual day at work.
Work. Meetings. Calls. Coffee. Read. Understand. Comprehend. Yawn. Fake smile.
But something was missing. Not in the day, but in the life.
It felt as if she’s bereft of something. An emptiness lingered in the spaces between her breaths.
She leaned back in her chair, scrolling through the endless scroll of social media, half-listening to a song that felt as empty as her thoughts. Then, like a flash of light breaking through a cloudy sky, his name appeared—a tweet he’d posted.
Her pulse quickened. It had been so long. Far too long. Even seeing his name made her heart flutter, and for a moment, it was as if the dull office around her melted away.
She responded him with a message.
And the conversation began!
“Saw your tweet! I hope it was just a tweet and not your reality of being so lazy!”
“Hahaha! Of course not! It’s just an engagement activity for my account. And hey, dont judge the tweets!”
“Haha, of course not! What else? How have you been? It’s been long!”
I have missed you, where were you? Why are you far from me? He wished he could say this, but… Of course he had to play it cool.
“Oh I am good, you say!”
You haven’t missed me? She wanted to ask.
“Oh, I am good too!”
Silence. No messages.
What should I say, he thought. Shall I tell you that I still love you and wish you were here with me? Or shall I tell you that there’s not a day when I havent thought about you? Or the fact that I miss your voice, your smile, your eyes, your face, your touch, your everything… Just your mere existence is what I crave.
“What else?” She asked, finally.
Oh how I wish I could tell you what else. “The same. Burried in work. That’s the best way to live, you know!”
She had expected that answer.
Why do you do this to yourself? Why can’t you express yourself once before me? I’m such a terrible person. This man, who deserves all the love in world and more, I caused him so much hurt. How do I explain him the situation. He avoids expressing his feelings for me, and I still want to hear them. I know how you feel for me, I know your love for me, but I still want to hear it once. I don’t know what pleasure or satisfaction it will give me, but I just need…..
“Hey, meeting starts in 5. See you in the conference room!” Her thoughts were interrupted. She realized she was not alone, and that she had big lump in her throat. She sipped water, and stood up to leave for her meeting.
All this while, she kept pressing the recording audio button in the chat.
He was eagerly waiting.
She looked in her mobile screen and deleted the audio.
“I thought I was getting some audio message! So wrong of your to not send the voice note!” Her screen lit up with his message.
“It was by mistake.”
“Nah, you are lying!”
“I swear, it was by mistake!”
“Pretty girls lie with their eyes, they say.”
“Ahhh… But the eyes never lie, Chico.”
Your eyes, they are the culprit who made me fall in love with you. This was his instant response, but he hit backspaces, and came another response.
“You left me speechless!”
“Tell me, what you see in my eyes” I am giving you one chance to say something.
No, I can’t tell you, if I tell you, things will spin off.
“I see that you are about to hit me!” Humor is my self defense mechanism, he was proud of his reply.
Her disappointment was sharp, like the sudden chill of a winter breeze.
Leave it, I know you won’t say anything. And no, I am not laughing at this joke! He behaves as if everything is a joke to him, but I know it’s not. It’s best not to continue this conversation.
“I’am heading for the meeting. Catch you later!” She kept her phone aside and went ahead.
He sat there, staring at the last message she sent, feeling the cold emptiness settle back into his chest. He typed a dozen different responses, but deleted them all. What was the point? She was gone, again. And the words he’d never said sat heavy on his tongue, suffocating him.
The meeting dragged on for what felt like forever. She then returned to her desk. Looked at her phone. No messages.
Why can he never reciprocate my feelings? I know he loves me, a lot. But why can’t he validate our feelings? Is it too much to ask?
Then she realized, that yes, it might be too much to ask. I don’t have any right over him, not on his heart, not on how he should express himself. I have to move on.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and resumed her work. She couldn’t focus. Her hands reached the social media. Her finger paused when she saw it—another tweet from him. This time, the words reached deep inside her, wrapping around the part of her heart that had been holding on for too long:
“Unsent voice notes and backspaces are nothing but moments held back and gaps for second thoughts. Quiet pauses in our rush to connect, reminding us that sometimes, silence is the choice we make.”
She sat back, staring at her phone, wondering if she’d ever get another chance to say the things she held back. A hundred memories rushed through her—the late-night calls that lasted till dawn, the laughter they’d shared, the way he used to look at her as if she were the only person in the world. And now, they were reduced to tweets and unspoken truths, to careful jokes and the bitter taste of regret.
She read the words over and over, her heart a chaotic dance of hope and despair. He understood. He knew.
A wry smile on her face, she responded to the tweet in a different way. She posted a tweet on timeline that she hoped he would see.
Unfortunately, he didn’t. He had already moved on. Her tweet got buried under a dozen new notifications, lost in the endless noise of the digital world.
She closed her eyes, feeling the weight of everything she’d lost pressing down on her. Love, once so vibrant and full of hope, now lay in the empty spaces between their messages, in the pauses that spoke more than words ever could. They had become a story of missed chances and unfinished sentences—of emotions too raw to be spoken and feelings too deep to be faced.
A story that would never have an ending, only a beginning they were too afraid to pursue. And she knew, even as she set her phone aside, that she would carry this unfinished love in her heart forever.