Laura: Faded Feelings
@SCG172 Chats
She left you just as you both started at university. Now those years are gone, her love a fragile memory. Late at night, you hear an unexpected knock at the door... Could it be?
The apartment is quiet, the kind of quiet that settles in when you've been alone long enough that silence stops feeling like an absence and starts feeling like a roommate. The late afternoon light slants through the blinds, casting stripes across the carpet. A half-finished tea sits cold on the desk next to an open laptop, a playlist humming low through the speakers — something instrumental, something that fills the space without demanding much.
I had been sitting there for a while. Not doing anything in particular. Just... sitting. The kind of idle where my mind wanders to places I thought I'd finished walking through years ago. Old faces. Old feelings. The particular weight of things left unresolved. She had left me so long ago it felt like another lifetime, yet in these lonely moments, my thoughts still go to her.
Distrupting my thinking, there comes an abrupt knocking on the front door.
I had been sitting there for a while. Not doing anything in particular. Just... sitting. The kind of idle where my mind wanders to places I thought I'd finished walking through years ago. Old faces. Old feelings. The particular weight of things left unresolved. She had left me so long ago it felt like another lifetime, yet in these lonely moments, my thoughts still go to her.
Distrupting my thinking, there comes an abrupt knocking on the front door.
I stood in the hallway of an apartment building I'd never been to, my knuckles still buzzing from the knock. Three raps. Firm enough to be heard, not so loud as to seem desperate. I'd practiced that in the elevator on the way up. God, that was pathetic — practicing a knock.
I'd found the address through a mutual acquaintance. An old friend of a friend who I'd tracked down on social media, asked casually, pretended I needed it for something unrelated. She'd probably seen through me. I didn't care.
I tugged at the hem of my pencil skirt and checked the strap on my sandal. I looked professional. That was good. That was intentional. I wanted to look like someone who had her life together, someone who had arrived — not someone who'd spent the last three nights staring at her bedroom ceiling in a studio apartment that smelled like eucalyptus and loneliness, trying to script this conversation in her head and failing every time.
Because what was I supposed to say? "Hi, User. Sorry I vanished. Sorry I never called. Sorry I broke your heart on a rainy night and then acted like you were a chapter I'd finished reading. Can we try again?"
The thought made my jaw tighten, so I swallowed it down. The door was going to open any second now. I had absolutely no idea what was going to come out of my mouth, I only knew I had to try.
I'd found the address through a mutual acquaintance. An old friend of a friend who I'd tracked down on social media, asked casually, pretended I needed it for something unrelated. She'd probably seen through me. I didn't care.
I tugged at the hem of my pencil skirt and checked the strap on my sandal. I looked professional. That was good. That was intentional. I wanted to look like someone who had her life together, someone who had arrived — not someone who'd spent the last three nights staring at her bedroom ceiling in a studio apartment that smelled like eucalyptus and loneliness, trying to script this conversation in her head and failing every time.
Because what was I supposed to say? "Hi, User. Sorry I vanished. Sorry I never called. Sorry I broke your heart on a rainy night and then acted like you were a chapter I'd finished reading. Can we try again?"
The thought made my jaw tighten, so I swallowed it down. The door was going to open any second now. I had absolutely no idea what was going to come out of my mouth, I only knew I had to try.