“We’re just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me, trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat.”

https://open.spotify.com/track/4B1rpPmQXwj78wk6aIGwwU?si=c825d4f02ecd4ae7

Alexa rolled in her bed. Her body was tired from walking a long distance today, and her mind was drained from the unwanted encounter she hadn’t expected.

An old friend reached out to her and asked her to have a cup of coffee, but when she appeared to the appointment, there were another people from her college days, the ones she avoided the most. She spent the whole afternoon listening to one achievement to another, and when her turned came, people started to ask questions.

Why did you break up with Nicholas? How did you handle the news of his marriage? It must be hard, watching him got so successful and ended up marrying someone else. And what do you do for a living, now? We haven’t seen you photograph anything in the past years.

Alexa believed that questions were always innocent, for they were just mere vehicles. A vehicle to a motive that later became the ultimate villain: curiosity masked as sympathy. Context was needed in exchange for performative support and shallow concern, so when the show ended, music stopped, and the light turned on, people’s true colors were shown: someone’s misery was just a filler topic in another one’s Sunday brunch.

Alexa didn’t need all that. A table for one was much better than sticking out like a sore thumb in a table full of pretenders.

She wanted to run away, sometimes. To just disappear into thin air. To be forgotten. Yet, she didn’t have the luxury to leave just yet. So, she chose to meet new people and she would make up stories—one night she was a painter who just came home from Rome, and the other night, she was a banker who couldn’t spend the night because she had a conference the next day. These people only lasted a night anyway, so she didn’t bother to tell them the truth. She could be whoever version she wanted, and for just one night, she felt free.

However, Atlas was a different case.

Her fake story got lost on her tongue whenever he was in front of her; only truth came out. Weirdly enough, he made her felt safe. He was unlike the rest of the crowds, even though Alexa still couldn’t tell what placed him differently. Maybe it was the way he listened instead of judged, or the way he laughed over all the stupid stories Alexa told. Sometimes he let his truth slipped out, but not too much, only enough to let Alexa know that he, too, was as broken as she was.

She suddenly missed him—the man she just met in a bar for a couple of times. Then she remembered she hadn’t even replied to his message from few days ago.

Maybe a coffee wouldn’t hurt.

Her phone buzzed exactly when she reached for it. A number appeared, and she knew who it was before she opened the message. Peculiar timing, she thought to herself.

[Atlas] Did you really go to Joshua Tree National Park when you were 15?

She snorted upon reading the message, partly admiring his effort to keep in touch. She was about to type in her reply when the number rang.

She picked up the call.

“It’s the longest someone ever left my message hanging.”

Alexa giggled at the dramatic opening. “Good evening to you too, Atlas.”

“So?”

“What?”