When we stopped speaking directly, we began meeting in the strangest places.
Not along the seafront.
Not on a bench, beside two coffees and some melted chocolate.
Not through a screen where we watched each other until our eyes grew heavy with sleep.
But in stories that disappeared after twenty-four hours.
A photograph.
A song.
A few words written over an image.
Sometimes, that was all that remained of our closeness.
Two profiles that continued to exist in each other’s lives, without knowing how to speak anymore.
I noticed when my posts were viewed quickly.
Sometimes within minutes.
Sometimes almost immediately.
And without meaning to, I began searching for meaning.
Did it mean there was still interest?
That there was still longing?
That somewhere, on the other side of the screen, someone was looking for me the same way I was looking for them?
Or was it simply a habit?
A gesture that meant nothing at all?
I had no way of knowing.
But when you miss someone, even two minutes can feel like a declaration.
Sometimes I posted songs with thoughts I didn’t dare put into a message.
Lyrics about people who try to forget and fail.
About stories that end without ever truly feeling finished.
About someone who leaves but continues to exist in every corner of your memory.
Perhaps I hoped those songs would reach places my words no longer could.
That they would say, without asking for anything:
“I still remember.”
Other times, I posted simply to appear okay.
To show a version of myself that laughed, went out, and carried on with life.
And sometimes, I really was okay.
It was just that the feeling didn’t always last.
And whenever I caught myself checking who had viewed a photograph, I understood that a part of me was still waiting.
Photographs appeared on the other side, too.
Music.
Sentences in a language I had begun to love before I could understand it.
Smiles.
Places I had never been.
I wondered whether any of it was meant for me.
Sometimes I was almost certain it was.
Other times, I reminded myself of something I already knew but found so difficult to accept:
You cannot read someone’s heart through a song.
A beautiful photograph does not prove happiness.
Just as a sad song does not prove longing.
And yet, sometimes pain has a stronger imagination than reason.
I deactivated the app for a few days.
Then for longer.
I said I needed peace.
And it was true.
I no longer wanted to search for hidden meanings in every photograph.
I no longer wanted to wonder who was watching, who was responding, who was trying to say something without speaking.
But I discovered that silence could become deafening, too.
Without my phone, there was more room for thoughts.
With my phone, there were too many things to interpret.
I didn’t know which one exhausted me more.
Sometimes I opened my gallery.
I went back to the photographs from summer.
The screenshots.
The messages in which love had seemed so easy to express.
A smile in a photograph.
A term of endearment in a conversation.
A gaze I would have recognized anywhere.
And suddenly, all the days that had passed between then and now disappeared.
I was there again.
In front of the screen.
My eyes almost closed.
Trying to steal a few more minutes before sleep.
Then I closed the gallery.
And my room became just a room again.
No call.
No voice.
No familiar face making my evenings feel a little more beautiful.
I wanted a real step.
Not a twenty-four-hour story.
Not a heart pressed beneath a photograph.
Not a song I would spend days wondering whether it had been meant for me.
A message.
A conversation.
A few clear words.
Something that would bring us back into the same place, rather than merely the same app.
But the days kept passing.
And with them, October was drawing closer.
Our month.
Or at least, the month that was supposed to be ours.
I had imagined October so many times that I almost had memories of it before it even began.
A new city.
Two suitcases left beside the door.
Footsteps along unfamiliar streets.
Laughter.
Photographs taken with an instant camera.
A dance we had promised each other.
One week without screens between us.
And above all, an embrace.
One without rushing.
Without a bus waiting.
Without a fence between us.
I had imagined that when we finally saw each other again, all those days of waiting would disappear in a matter of seconds.
That I would finally be able to touch the person I had spent so many nights watching through my phone.
That October would be warm.
Even if the weather was cold.
But October arrived differently.
It arrived with silence.
With mornings when I opened my eyes and my first thought returned to the same place.
With evenings when I promised myself I wouldn’t search for anything anymore.
And moments when a photograph or a song shattered every promise I had made to myself.
Sometimes entire hours passed without me thinking about our story.
I took care of ordinary things.
I laughed.
I talked to people.
I carried on with my responsibilities.
Then something small would appear.
A melody.
An expression.
An image resembling somewhere we had been.
And the longing returned as though it had never left.
I began listening to music differently.
Songs that had once meant nothing to me suddenly became about my life.
About us.
About everything I could no longer ask.
And that was when I understood why, in my mind, October had turned red.
It wasn’t the red of a dress.
Or the red of a sunset.
It was the red of a heart that could still feel.
Of longing.
Of everything left unsaid.
Of a love that no longer knew where it belonged.
It was supposed to be a warm October.
Instead, it had become the coldest place in my memories.
One day, I thought about going to the city where the person I loved lived.
Not necessarily to arrange a meeting.
Not to appear unexpectedly.
Perhaps just to see with my own eyes the places I had heard so much about.
To walk along streets that, until then, had existed only in our conversations.
To prove to a part of myself that the story had been real.
That I hadn’t dreamed it all.
That somewhere on a map, there was a place where that life continued, even if I was no longer part of it in the same way.
Then I wondered whether I was trying to find in a city an answer that only a person could give me.
And I left the question unanswered.
A birthday was approaching, too.
I thought about a simple message.
“Happy birthday. I hope life brings you the happiness you deserve.”
Nothing more.
No accusations.
No hidden questions.
No attempt to turn a birthday wish into a forced conversation.
I simply wanted it to be known that I held no hatred.
That beyond the pain, I still wished happiness for someone who had meant so much to me.
I didn’t know whether I would send the message.
And for the first time, I was trying to accept that I didn’t have to decide everything right then.
I also wondered whether I could welcome that love back into my life.
If one day a real message appeared.
Not a photograph.
Not a song.
But words clearly expressing a desire to talk.
To explain.
To try again.
A part of me would have wanted to run forward without asking another question.
To forget all the restless nights.
To believe in October again.
But another part of me had begun to understand that love, however great, cannot survive on promises alone.
I needed presence.
Honesty.
Actions that matched the words.
The reassurance that when things became difficult, I wouldn’t be left alone in the middle of another unfinished conversation.
I didn’t know what I would do.
I only knew that if our story ever had another beginning, it would have to be built differently.
One evening, I opened the photographs again.
Not to search for evidence.
Not to prove to myself that I had been loved.
But simply because I missed someone.
I remembered the napkins being collected from the table.
The first glances.
The mistranslated words.
The two coffees.
The melted chocolate.
The gummy candies we had eaten on a bench.
The outstretched hand as we crossed the street.
The bus.
The rocks.
The sunset.
My head resting on a shoulder.
And the fence.
I always came back to the fence.
To that final look.
To the kisses I had blown from a distance.
To the way I had walked away, convinced we would see each other again in October.
I didn’t want to turn those memories into arguments against anyone.
I didn’t want to use them to prove that someone owed me a future.
They were memories.
Not promises that could be enforced.
Not evidence in a trial.
They were moments that had been real to me.
And I had the right to keep them beautiful, even if the story hadn’t continued the way I had hoped.
I realized that sometimes, absence isn’t what hurts the most.
It’s the question left behind.
Why?
Why had everything changed so quickly?
What had happened that evening?
What had I failed to understand?
Why hadn’t we managed to talk before the silence became bigger than both of us?
I would have preferred a painful truth.
An answer that might have made me cry for a night, two nights, perhaps an entire week.
Rather than a silence in which my mind invented hundreds of explanations.
But the truth wasn’t something I could obtain simply because I needed it.
And perhaps that was the final lesson I had to learn from our story.
One night, I dreamed about our goodbye again.
I was in the same place.
The fence was there.
On the other side stood the face I knew so well.
Everything happened exactly as it had on the day I left.
The glances.
The distance.
The kisses blown through the air.
Except this time, the dream didn’t end the same way.
I stopped.
I turned around.
I ran back.
And I embraced the person I had said goodbye to too quickly.
Without words.
Without translations.
Without questions about October.
I stayed there, holding on, until the world finally stopped rushing.
Until there was no bus to catch.
No departure.
No fence.
Just us.
I woke up with tears in my eyes.
The room was quiet.
My phone wasn’t ringing.
There was no new message.
No explanation for the past.
No promise for the future.
But for the first time, that dream had left me with something other than pain.
An understanding.
In my dream, I had gone back for one last embrace.
In real life, however, I couldn’t return to a relationship on my own.
That would take two people.
Two steps.
Two hearts willing to find their way back to each other.
And however much I wanted to, I couldn’t take the other person’s step.
Perhaps one day we will talk.
Perhaps I will finally learn what happened.
Perhaps we will be able to look back without fear, without anger, and without needing to defend the pain we both carried.
Perhaps we will meet again.
Perhaps we won’t.
Perhaps there is still a chapter waiting for us somewhere.
Or perhaps the rest of the story belongs to two separate lives.
I don’t know.
And for once, I am allowing myself not to know.
Because I am beginning to understand that an unfinished love story does not have to become an unfinished life.
That I can miss someone and still move forward.
That I can hold on to beautiful memories without spending every day waiting for them to return.
That I can love what happened without allowing what didn’t happen to take away everything I still have.
I don’t know whether October will ever become the month we imagined.
But I know that summer was real.
The laughter was real.
The glances were real.
The hand that reached for mine was real.
And what I felt was real, too.
Once, during a summer in a foreign country, someone reached for my hand as we crossed a street.
It was such a small gesture.
The kind that might go unnoticed by the rest of the world.
But in that moment, I felt butterflies and peace at the same time.
And for a while, those two feelings were my entire world.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
Maybe another message.
Maybe another silence.
Maybe a new beginning I cannot imagine yet.
But I know this:
I was supposed to find someone in October.
Instead, somewhere between the longing and the silence, I began finding my way back to myself.
And perhaps that is not the ending I had dreamed of.
But it is a beginning.
The End.
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