All That Remains

I can’t stop laughing.

It starts as a small thing - a puff of air through my nose, a twitch at the corner of my mouth - and then it breaks open. The kind of laughter that bends you forward, shoulders shaking, but nothing is actually funny. I press my hand over my mouth and bite the side of my finger to make it stop, but it just keeps coming.

A woman across from me on the train looks up from her phone. She stares for a second too long, then back down. I mumble something about a meme, though I didn’t even have my phone out. I just can’t stand being looked at like that - like I’m the weird one, when I’m just… trying to exist.

I’m on my way to him. That’s the joke, I think. The punchline.

This trip was supposed to be romantic - a visit, a reunion. Back when we still called each other something soft. When texts came with hearts and sleepy faces instead of long silences and double-tapped “okays.” I’d booked the tickets months ago. Non-refundable. Funny, right? That’s what I told myself when I decided to go anyway.

I look out the window. The fields slide by too fast, blurring into green-gray streaks. Everything moves too fast lately - trains, days, people. I can’t seem to match the rhythm. I’m always a beat too late, laughing at the wrong time, saying too much or too little, like I’ve missed some invisible cue that everyone else got handed at birth.

He hasn’t answered my last message. Or the one before that. It’s been, what, three months since we actually spoke? I tell myself he’s busy. I tell myself I don’t care. I tell myself a lot of things.

There’s a reflection of me in the window - transparent, doubled over the moving scenery. My eyes look tired. My smile looks like a wound.

I start laughing again. Quieter this time.

Because what kind of person takes a trip across the country to see someone who’s probably forgotten she exists? What kind of person keeps pretending it’s not over because admitting it means being alone again?

Apparently, me.

The train smells like metal and coffee and someone’s perfume that’s too sweet. Every sound feels too sharp - the ticket punch, the hum of the tracks, the crinkle of a candy wrapper from three seats down. It’s like the world’s volume knob broke and I can’t turn it down anymore. I press my forehead against the window and let the cold glass cool my skin. It helps. A little.

When the train stops, I feel it in my chest before I realize it’s time to get off. I move like I’m underwater - slow, heavy, deliberate. My suitcase clatters on the platform. The air smells like rain. It’s one of those smells that’s almost clean but not really - wet concrete and waiting.

I scan the crowd. My throat tightens automatically, like I’m bracing for something. For him. For nothing. For both.

He’s not here.

Of course he’s not.

I want to laugh again but it catches somewhere between my lungs and my mouth. Comes out more like a gasp. I stand there too long, until people start bumping into me, muttering apologies that sound like static. I mumble back without knowing what I’m saying. My chest feels tight, like the world’s closing in, but I keep smiling. Can’t let anyone think something’s wrong.

I drag my suitcase toward the exit. My hand aches from gripping it too hard. Every few steps I think about turning around, about leaving, about pretending this was never supposed to mean anything. But I keep walking.

The first few days pass like background noise. I meet up with a local friend - we walk around the old part of town, drink cheap soda, eat sandwiches on stone steps near the river. She talks and laughs and tries to pull me into her energy, but I keep checking my phone every few minutes, convincing myself I’m just checking the time.

He still hasn’t texted.

Every night I lie in the small rented room with its too-white sheets and the buzz of a flickering light outside the window, and I scroll through our old messages. I stop at the one where he said, “I can’t wait to see you again.” It’s dated seven months ago. I laugh quietly, because the alternative is crying, and crying makes my throat hurt.

Then one morning - halfway through the trip - my phone lights up.

A message. From him.

“Hey. You around?”

My heart jumps. I hate that it does.

We meet near the park, the one we used to talk about visiting together. He looks the same - a little thinner maybe, hair longer, smile smaller. We hug. It’s polite. Careful. There’s this pause where I want to say something funny, something that’ll break the weird tension, but the words don’t come out right.

We walk for a while. He reaches for my hand, casual, like nothing’s changed. And for a split second, I almost let him - but then something in me just… flinches. I pull away before I can stop myself. His hand lingers awkwardly in the air before falling back to his side. He laughs it off, but it sounds forced. I mumble some excuse about being distracted. The truth is uglier. I don’t feel safe there anymore. Not with him.

He tries again later - a brush against my shoulder, a kiss that feels more like muscle memory than affection. And I realize with a kind of cold clarity that I don’t want it. I don’t want him, at least not this version of him who forgot how to look at me like I mattered.

Because I tried. God, I tried. I told him what I needed. I told him I felt alone, unheard, like he’d stopped showing up long before I stopped asking. And he just... didn’t care enough to change. Always some excuse. Always something more important. Work. Friends. His own mood. Too busy. Too occupied. God I would believe that. I would. If not for the proof that he still lives. He still finds time for others. For others. But not for me. He is too busy. Too busy to text hi.

And now here he is, acting like this is fine - like we’re fine - while I’m standing here choking on all the words I never should’ve had to repeat.

I look at him and think about how long I waited for him to see me. Not just the surface version - the one who smiles too wide and jokes too much - but the real one underneath. The one who just wanted to be understood without having to beg for it.

He talks about his job, about some new project, his eyes bright and distant. He doesn’t ask about my trip. Doesn’t ask how I’ve been. I realize he doesn’t actually want to know. Not really.

I’m mad. Not the loud, dramatic kind of mad - the quiet kind that burns slow, that sits behind the ribs and makes it hard to breathe. I’m mad that I let him make me feel like too much for asking for so little. I’m mad that I kept defending him to myself. I’m mad that I came here at all.

When he wraps his arm around me later, I freeze. The warmth that used to feel like safety now feels like a trap. I don’t lean in. I don’t even pretend.

He notices. I can see it in the way his hand drops, his jaw tightens. But he doesn’t say anything. He never does.

The next day I wake up hollow. I walk the city alone, listening to the sound of my boots on cobblestones. It’s strange - I’m surrounded by people but feel like a ghost. Every shop window reflects me, blurred and fading behind glass.

By evening, something inside me snaps.

Not in a dramatic way - no tears, no shaking - just this slow, calm decision forming like frost.

I can’t do this anymore.

It hurts more to “be” with him than without him.

And I don’t want to be without him, but I can’t live in this in-between either - this silent, uncertain, half-alive place where I’m constantly waiting for proof that I matter.

And that’s when I know - truly know - that I’m done.

Not because I stopped caring, but because I finally started caring about myself more.

So I go to his place. Unannounced.

He opens the door with surprise, then mild irritation. “Oh… hey.”

I see it flicker across his face - the confusion, the hesitation, the unspoken “why are you here?”

We talk. Or try to. The words come out quiet, steady. I tell him how I feel - that I can’t keep doing this, that I still care, that maybe one day we could be something again, but not like this. Not unless he learns to meet me halfway.

He looks at me, then away. His mouth moves, but I don’t catch half of what he says. The blood in my ears is too loud.

When I finish, there’s just silence. And it’s not cruel. It’s not even dramatic. It’s just… empty. I nod, thank him for listening - because that’s what polite people do - and I leave.

That night, I go to the concert I’d been excited about for months.

Metal. Loud, chaotic, alive.

I almost don’t go - I’m tired, emotionally scraped raw - but something pulls me there anyway.

It’s packed, hot, too loud in a way that feels cleansing. The guitars scream, the crowd moves like one living creature. I let myself get swallowed by it. For once, the noise outside is louder than the one in my head.

I meet people. Strangers who smile without asking anything of me. We shout lyrics together, our voices shredded and joyful. For a moment, I forget the ache in my chest. I just exist.

When it ends, the lights come up too bright. Everyone’s faces are glowing, sweaty, alive. I feel heavy. Not empty - just heavy. Like I’ve been carrying something too long and finally set it down.

The next morning, I’m back at the train station. The platform smells like rain again. My laughter’s gone. Not stolen, not lost - just… finished.

I look out at the tracks stretching into the distance and think about him, about me, about how endings never sound like you expect them to. Sometimes they’re not explosions. Sometimes they’re just the quiet moment after you’ve said everything you needed to say.

The train arrives. I get on.

No tears. No laughter.

Just silence.