Some dreams don’t die all at once. Sometimes you have to be the one to put them down.

I stared at his name for a good five minutes.

Steven.

Just sitting there in my phone like he hadn’t been responsible for some of the most beautiful and emotionally exhausting moments of my adult life.

I clicked on his contact.

Scrolled down.

Delete Contact.

Well, damn.

You would think I was about to sign divorce papers the way my stomach started acting up.

It was a phone number. Eleven digits, including the country code. A number I barely needed saved because I knew it by heart anyway. But somehow, deleting it felt bigger than all the other times I’d said I was done.

Maybe because this time there wasn’t an argument.

No dramatic exchange. No long paragraph explaining what he did wrong. No final attempt to make him understand me.

Just me, sitting on my bed, staring at a man who had been saved in my phone longer than he’d ever been committed to me.

Ain’t that some shit?

I pressed delete.

And waited.

For what? I don’t know.

A breakdown, maybe. Some dramatic wave of grief that would send me sliding down the wall like somebody in a Tyler Perry movie.

Nothing happened.

My phone went back to the contacts screen, and the world kept moving.

I sat there for a second before opening our messages.

The last thing I’d told him was that I loved him.

Three words.

No response.

I read the message again, even though I knew exactly what it said. As if staring at it long enough would make something appear underneath.

I love you too.

I miss you.

Can we talk?

Hell, even a what made you say that? would’ve been something.

But there was nothing.

And I think that’s when it really hit me.

Not because he hadn’t answered. Steven had always been good at leaving me alone with my feelings when they became too big for whatever space he’d made for me.

It hit me because I wasn’t surprised.

I put my phone facedown on the bed and looked around my apartment.

Everything was exactly where I’d left it.

My blanket was bunched up at the foot of the bed. A half-empty water bottle sat on my nightstand. Somewhere in the apartment, the television was still playing a show I hadn’t been paying attention to.

Regular life.

And here I was trying to figure out how to mourn a relationship I technically never had.

Because that’s the part nobody really prepares you for.

How do you explain grieving somebody who was never officially yours?

What do you call the end of something that never got a proper beginning?

I spent two years loving that man.

Two years.

Do you know how much life can happen in two years?

People get engaged, married, pregnant, divorced, and married again in less time than I spent waiting for Steven to decide whether he wanted me to be his girlfriend.

And the fucked-up part?

I wasn’t even waiting every day.

Some days I was happy.

Genuinely happy.

There were moments when being around him felt so easy that I forgot there was anything missing.

We could laugh about the dumbest shit. Talk about absolutely nothing. Sit in comfortable silence without either of us feeling the need to fill it.

And I loved that about us.

I loved how normal it felt.

How being with him didn’t always require some grand gesture or elaborate plan.

Sometimes I just wanted to be near him.

That was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

Because eventually, I’d leave, or he’d leave, and I’d return to being a woman with no real place in his life.

No title.

No certainty.

Just memories and enough hope to keep me coming back.

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

I wondered if he knew.

Not that I loved him. I think he knew that.

I wondered if he knew how much of my future I’d quietly built around the possibility of him.

I’d imagined us living together.

Nothing extravagant. A nice place with enough room for my books, his things, and whatever random shit we’d inevitably argue about keeping.

I imagined him coming home from work, dropping his keys somewhere they didn’t belong, and me fussing because I’d already told him three times where to put them.

I imagined Sunday mornings.

Me in the kitchen, music playing, him walking up behind me while I cooked.

I imagined rolling my eyes when he interrupted whatever I was doing just to bother me.

I imagined being annoyed with him.

Isn’t that crazy?

I wanted the opportunity to be annoyed with that man on a regular basis.

Not because he was unavailable.

Not because I was confused.

But because he was mine, and we’d built a life together, and sometimes the person you love gets on your last damn nerve.

I wanted that.

The boring stuff.

The ordinary stuff.

The things people in relationships complain about without realizing somebody else is praying to experience them.

I wanted holidays where I didn’t have to wonder if we’d see each other.

Birthdays where I wasn’t trying to figure out what was appropriate to expect.

I wanted to know what it felt like to be considered without having to ask.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I even imagined a wedding.

Not every day. I wasn’t completely delusional.

But sometimes.

Sometimes I’d see a beautiful dress or hear a song and wonder what it would be like to walk toward him.

To see him standing there, looking at me like he’d finally figured out what I’d known all along.

That we could’ve been something.

Something good.

Something worth choosing.

I turned onto my side and pulled the blanket closer.

The worst part about losing Steven wasn’t that I didn’t think he loved me.

It was that sometimes I thought he did.

And I know how ridiculous that sounds.

Trust me.

I have had enough conversations with myself to know that loving somebody and choosing them are two entirely different things.

But there were moments.

Little moments.

The way he’d look at me. The softness in his voice. The things he’d remember. The way being close to him could make everything outside of us feel so far away.

Those moments made it difficult to believe I was the only one feeling something.

And maybe I wasn’t.

Maybe he loved me in whatever way he knew how.

Maybe he cared deeply but couldn’t give me what I wanted.

Maybe he really did need more time.

I don’t know.

And I was tired of trying to figure it out.

Because at some point, I had to stop making his uncertainty my responsibility.

I picked my phone back up.

Still nothing.

I almost laughed.

Girl, what are you checking for?

You deleted the number. You said goodbye. You told yourself you were moving forward.

And yet, some small, embarrassing part of me still wanted him to interrupt the whole thing.

To call.

To tell me I was making a mistake.

To say he’d been thinking about everything and realized he didn’t want to lose me.

I wanted the movie ending.

The man running through the airport.

The confession in the rain.

The I was scared, but I know what I want now, and it’s you.

Corny as hell.

And I would’ve eaten that shit up.

Because no matter how independent I was, no matter how much I’d accomplished or how well I knew myself, there was still a part of me that wanted to be somebody’s undeniable choice.

I wanted Steven to choose me.

Not because I convinced him.

Not because I threatened to leave.

Not because he suddenly realized somebody else might have me.

I wanted him to wake up one day, think about his life, and decide he wanted me in it.

Permanently.

And I think that’s the dream I was having the hardest time letting go of.

Not the man himself.

Well, that’s a lie.

Definitely the man himself.

I missed him.

I missed his face. His voice. His presence.

I missed the version of myself that existed when things between us were good.

I missed having somebody I wanted to tell things to.

And I hated knowing that one day another woman might get to experience everything I’d wanted.

She might get the commitment.

The introduction.

The holidays.

She might get to wake up next to him and never once wonder whether she belonged there.

I closed my eyes.

That thought hurt more than I wanted to admit.

Because what if he was capable of all those things?

What if he just wasn’t capable of them with me?

I swallowed hard.

I didn’t want to hate him for that.

But damn.

I wanted it to be me.

I really, really wanted it to be me.

For a while, I let myself sit with that.

No trying to turn it into something positive. No reminding myself that everything happens for a reason.

Just the ugly, uncomfortable truth.

I wanted a man who didn’t want the same future with me.

And loving him harder wasn’t going to change that.

I thought about all the times I’d told myself I was single.

Technically, I was.

I could date. I could meet people. I could entertain whoever I wanted.

But emotionally?

Baby, I was somebody’s wife without the ring, the commitment, or the benefits.

Okay, maybe not wife.

But you get my point.

I had been making decisions like a woman in a relationship while Steven had the freedom to move through his life without having to consider me in the same way.

And I let that happen.

Not because I was stupid.

Not because I didn’t know what I deserved.

But because I believed in what we could become.

There’s something dangerous about falling in love with potential.

Especially when the potential occasionally looks you in the eyes and gives you just enough to believe it’s real.

And Steven was real to me.

Every laugh.

Every kiss.

Every conversation that went longer than either of us intended.

Every time I thought, This is why I can’t leave him alone.

It was all real.

That’s what made walking away so damn difficult.

I wasn’t trying to escape somebody I hated.

I was trying to leave somebody I could’ve kept loving.

Somebody I probably would’ve continued making excuses for if I hadn’t finally gotten tired of disappointing myself.

My phone lit up.

For half a second, my heart jumped.

A notification.

Not him.

Of course it wasn’t.

I shook my head and laughed quietly.

“Girl, stand up.”

I said it out loud this time.

Because sometimes you really do have to talk to yourself like you’re your own homegirl.

I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom.

The woman in the mirror looked exactly like me.

Same face. Same eyes. Same everything.

But something felt different.

Not better.

Not worse.

Just different.

I leaned against the sink and studied myself.

I’d spent so much time wondering when Steven would be ready that I hadn’t really considered what would happen if I stopped waiting.

What would my life look like without the possibility of him sitting somewhere in the background?

Who would I become if I wasn’t quietly hoping that every new chapter would somehow lead me back to the same man?

I didn’t have an answer.

And for once, I wasn’t going to force one.

Maybe I’d date.

Maybe I’d fall in love with somebody who made everything feel easy.

Maybe I’d meet another man who wasn’t ready and finally have enough sense not to make his readiness my personal project.

Or maybe I’d spend some time alone.

Actually alone.

Not single on paper while emotionally committed to a man who couldn’t decide what to do with me.

Just me.

Living.

Figuring out what I liked without wondering whether it fit into somebody else’s future.

I went back to my bedroom and sat on the edge of the mattress.

I opened our messages one more time.

I didn’t scroll through everything.

I couldn’t.

There were too many memories buried in that thread. Too many conversations I could’ve picked apart, looking for proof that he had loved me.

And I didn’t want to do that anymore.

I already knew I loved him.

I knew we’d shared something meaningful.

I knew there had been tenderness between us.

I didn’t need to keep revisiting the evidence.

I looked at my last message.

I love you.

I wondered whether he’d read it and smiled.

Whether he’d felt sad.

Whether he’d wanted to respond but didn’t know what to say.

Whether he’d simply put his phone down and continued with his day.

I hated that I’d never know.

And maybe that was the final thing I had to accept about Steven.

There would always be questions he couldn’t answer for me.

Not because the answers didn’t exist.

But because I couldn’t keep asking.

I put my phone down.

This time, I didn’t check it again.

I wish I could say that was the moment I felt free.

That the sadness lifted, that the ache disappeared, that I suddenly understood why everything had happened the way it did.

But it wasn’t.

I still loved him.

I still wished things had turned out differently.

And if he had called me right then, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have answered.

That’s the truth.

The messy, inconvenient, slightly embarrassing truth.

I wasn’t suddenly immune to a man I’d spent two years loving just because I’d finally found the courage to delete his number.

But I was trying.

And maybe, for tonight, that had to be enough.

I lay back against my pillows and thought about the life we’d never lived.

The home.

The laughter.

The arguments about absolutely nothing.

The Sunday mornings.

The wedding I sometimes imagined but never admitted out loud.

The ordinary days I would’ve given anything to experience with him.

I let myself picture it one last time.

Not because I believed it was coming.

But because for so long, that dream had made me happy.

And I didn’t want to pretend it hadn’t.

Then, quietly, I said the words I’d been avoiding.

“Goodbye, Steven.”

My voice cracked a little.

I stared at the ceiling, blinking harder than necessary.

“Fuck.”

And there it was.

The tears I’d been waiting for.

Not dramatic. Not pretty.

Just a few at first, slipping down the sides of my face and disappearing into my hair.

Then more.

I cried for the woman who’d waited.

For the woman who’d believed.

For the woman who’d made herself comfortable in a situation that never quite gave her a place to rest.

And I cried because somewhere out there was a man I still loved, living a life I would no longer be trying to fit myself into.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry.

Sorry we couldn’t figure it out.

Sorry love hadn’t been enough.

Sorry that after everything, this was where our story ended.

But mostly, I wanted to tell him thank you.

For the moments that were good.

For the laughter.

For reminding me that I could feel something so deeply, even if it didn’t become what I wanted.

And maybe one day I’d be able to think about him without wondering what could’ve happened if we’d met at a different time.

If I’d been more patient.

If he’d been more ready.

If we’d both done something differently.

Maybe one day his name would just be a name.

A memory.

A man I used to love.

But tonight?

Tonight, he was still Steven.

The man I wanted.

The man I couldn’t have the way I wanted.

And the man I was finally trying to let go of.

I pulled the blanket over my shoulders and closed my eyes.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t waiting for him to tell me what happened next.

I had no idea what came after this.

And I was scared.

Because as much as I’d wanted a future with Steven, I was beginning to realize that I’d spent so much time imagining our life together that I’d forgotten to imagine one where he wasn’t there.

Now I had to.

I turned off the lamp.

The room went dark.

And somewhere between wiping my face and trying to fall asleep, I caught myself wondering whether he’d ever call again.

I hated that I still wondered.

But I did.

Maybe tomorrow I’d be stronger.

Maybe tomorrow I’d miss him less.

Or maybe I’d wake up and have to choose to let him go all over again.

I guess I’d find out.

For now, I rolled onto my side, pulled the blanket closer, and let myself cry for the life we never lived.