You ever love someone so much that even in their absence, they’re everywhere?
She used to talk about me when I wasn’t even there.
In conversations with her friends, she'd casually drop lines like,
“You know my man hates when I talk during movies,”
or “My man loves hugs, but don’t touch him if you’re not me.”
They’d all laugh, not realizing those words were little love notes she’d leave behind in rooms I never walked into.
And in one of those conversations—just one random night—
her friends started saying things like,
“I’d never do this or that for a man until he marries me.”
But she… she just went quiet.
And then she whispered, “Maybe he won’t marry me.”
That night, she came home different.
I had made her favorite—warm dinner, soft music playing, lights low.
I thought it was just one of those days where a person wants silence—but not solitude.
I thought she just needed my presence, not my words.
But man...
That night was different.
She didn’t taste the food.
She didn’t meet my eyes.
She let silence answer every question I didn’t know I was asking.
You see, love had a language between us.
It was gestures. It was comfort.
But suddenly… my language wasn’t enough.
Her friends had handed her a script of what love should look like,
and somehow, my version—our version—got rewritten without me.
She started going out more.
Smiling less.
And me?
I stayed back, still talking about her to my friends.
Still saying things like, “You know she always does this cute thing when she’s thinking…”
Then one night... I saw her.
Outside the barber shop.
Making out with some guy I didn’t know.
My chest caved in.
It was like watching someone else wear my future.
She got into his car.
Drove off like it meant nothing.
Came home later, took a long shower.
Wouldn’t let me touch her.
Wouldn’t look me in the eyes.
And in the morning, she said it.
“I think we should take a break.”
Just like that.
I left.
Went back to my mother’s house.
Sat in the quiet with my broken thoughts and unopened bottle after bottle.
She didn’t know.
She didn’t know the ring was in the drawer.
Tucked beneath my clothes.
I had bought it months ago.
My mama helped pick it out.
Said, “She’s the one, boy. Make her your wife.”
But I waited.
Waited too long.
Days later, my phone rang.
Her voice...
It had that softness again.
The one she used to use when she still believed in us.
“Whose ring is this in the drawer?” she asked.
I paused.
So many things I could’ve said.
So many things I wanted to scream.
But all I could manage was,
“It was yours. I was gonna give it to you on your birthday.”
“I was going to propose... the same night you went out and kissed a stranger next to the barbershop.”
Silence.
I don’t know what she felt in that moment.
But I know what I did.
Relief.
Pain.
Closure, maybe.
“I’m glad you found it,” I told her.
“I can’t take it back though. It wasn’t meant for anyone else. Keep well, champ... see you around.”
And that’s how I lost her.
Not in a fight.
Not in betrayal.
But in the quiet tragedy of bad timing, outside voices, and a ring left waiting in a drawer.
Now?
Now I drink.
Not to forget her...
but to feel her less.
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