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I woke up earlier than normal. 7:41 AM.

I squinted at my phone, where a leftover text notification awaited me from the night before.

Brett: Busy? (10:56 PM)

I hadn’t answered. Not because I hadn’t seen it. I had. I’d been sitting on a couch that wasn’t mine next to a guy who wasn’t Brett, watching the message light up my screen.

And I was allowed to be. Brett is not my boyfriend.

But I still hadn’t answered, knowing that if I responded too late at night, Brett would make assumptions. He always did.

Now, staring at the message, I remembered that lately Brett had been going to bed much earlier. I typed out a text, worried that something could be wrong.

Lyla: Hey, is everything ok? (7:44 AM)

Sending…

Sending…

Sending…

Sent as Text Message.

That was weird. My anxiety went up just a bit. Worry that Brett had done something stupid. Worry that always stayed in the back of my mind, even when he was doing better.

Thinking that maybe my service was just bad, I opened Facebook Messenger to see if it would tell me when he’d last been active. When I opened our message thread, it was blank.

This person is unavailable on Messenger.

I opened Instagram.

User not found.

I opened Snapchat and clicked on his profile.

Add Friend?

What the fuck? Was he deleting all his profiles? A lump rose in my throat. I sat up in bed, swiping back and forth through my social media apps and thinking. He’d been doing better lately, hadn’t he? How long since he last relapsed?

I opened WhatsApp.

Lyla: brett? (7:52 AM)

I sat and stared at the screen, barely breathing. His profile said, Last Seen, 3/23/2023. Almost a month ago.

Then, all of a sudden it changed. Last Seen disappeared and was replaced by Online. I held my breath. He didn’t type anything. At least he was alive, the asshole.

Then, his status disappeared altogether. Realization dawned on me.

Lyla: ? (7:54 AM)

The message didn’t go through. This time, I knew it wasn’t the signal.

I’d been blocked.

I stared at the ceiling, phone still clutched in my hand. Not even mad. Just tired.

I can always tell when he’s using again.

It’s what Brett does, this whole vanishing and resurfacing thing. I used to think it was some twisted form of control, but I know better now. He’s not in control. Neither of us are.

It’s something about the way he texts that lets me know he’s back on drugs. It’s the way his words lose their coherence, the way he looks for betrayal in everything I do.

Like last fall.

I had texted, Hey, I’ll call you in a bit! and set my phone down. Fifteen minutes later, ten missed calls and a string of texts:

It’s fine, I see how it is. You’re with someone else.

You never gave a shit, huh?

Glad to know you’re back on Hinge.

An hour later, an apology. He said he’d been up for two days straight.

Now, staring at the blank space where his Instagram profile used to be, I know this is the same thing.

I don’t like it when people are cruel. No one does. But when it’s someone you really care about, it hits different. I’m careful about who I let into my life for this very reason.

Careful enough? I guess not.

Blocking me without a word wasn’t the craziest thing Brett could have done. At least it meant he was mad at me, not dead. That’s the first place my mind always goes. The overdose scares.

And Brett and I… we’ve always been a mess.

We met in the Army. Young, restless, running from things we never talked about. He was 28. I was 23. I didn’t know he was married. Nine years, two kids, a separation he never quite explained. By the time I found out, I was already in too deep.

I told myself I didn’t care. I wanted something easy, something that didn’t ask too much of me. He said the same.

That was four and a half years ago.

Four and a half years, and I still feel him in my bones.

No matter how many times we’ve torn away from each other, we never really come apart. It’s like trying to pull the tide from the shore. I think I’ve escaped, but then the pull comes, slow and steady, and suddenly, I’m back where I started.

When we met, he was clean. The Army kept him that way, gave him structure, rules he had no choice but to follow. For a while, I only knew the version of Brett who had his demons on a leash. Who drank, sure, but never let it go too far. Who could make anyone laugh, who heard me, really heard me, when I talked.

It wasn’t until after he got out and lost that structure that the other Brett showed up. The one who disappeared for days. The one who called me at 3 AM in spirals.

I remember, too, the first time I saw him sober. Really sober.

It was after one of his trips to rehab. He’d been out for a few days, and we met up at this shitty little diner off the highway. This was when we still lived nearby one another. He looked different. His eyes were clearer than I’d ever seen them, but there was something else there too. Like he wasn’t sure how to be in the world without the thing that had been carrying him through it. The same thing that had been destroying him.

We sat across from each other, neither of us touching our food.

Finally, he exhaled and said, “I feel like a ghost.”

I knew what he meant. He’d spent years floating, blurring the edges of his reality, numbing himself. And now, here he was: forced to exist in his own mind, his own skin.

I reached across the table and took his hand. His fingers twitched like he wasn’t used to being touched, but he didn’t pull away. His hand was rough, but it felt real.

“You’re not a ghost,” I told him.

His brown eyes locked mine and pulled me into their deep, dark warmth. Like we were standing in the middle of a storm while the wind howled around us, but for a second, we were still.

That moment is what always brings me back.

Because when he’s clean, when it’s just him, he sees me in a way no one else ever has. Like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s constantly slipping through his fingers. And he’s mine. I see with vision like it’s 4k HD, and the rest of the world is a black and white TV.

And maybe that’s why I stay. Because if I go, I take that away from him.

Because if I go, I take that away from me.

I wish I was more upset about the blocking. Honestly, I do, because if I’m not upset, I’m liable to just let him come back, and we’ll take the merry-go-round for another spin.

I wonder how long it will be before he messages me. It could be as soon as tonight. It could be weeks.

The thought that he might never message me again creeps into my mind, but we’ve been running this track longer than I care to admit. It’s a loop. And we always end up back in the same place.

He gets upset when he thinks I was with a guy. He thinks he’s earned a commitment from me when he hasn’t himself delivered.

But this reaction is more extreme than usual. The drugs twist things in his head, turn his paranoia into something sharp and violent. The idea of me with someone else… I know he couldn’t take it, even though he’s the one who told me that we can’t be together.

Well, I never asked for a relationship. I never asked for this.

And yet, here I am. Again. Waiting.

He texted me the same night. Asked me to call.  

I go back and forth between trying to decide if this man is the one, or the worst thing that ever happened to me. The fact that I even have to have that debate with myself is probably not a good sign.

Speaking of signs.

“You think because I was asleep, that’s a sign?” I couldn’t control my anger. “You’re fucking crazy.”

Even as I said it, I knew that he believed it was a sign. I knew that was looking for something to tell him one way or the other if I should be in his life, and it seemed to me that if he was looking for a sign to get rid of me, then he would find one. If not this one, another one. If not today, then tomorrow or next week.

You can’t argue with that. If someone wants to get rid of you, you can’t make them want you to stay.

“Don’t you want to know why I needed you?” he asked. Just like that, my anger cracked. Shame spilled in.

“Okay.” The word came out quietly. 

He let the pause stretch, making me wait, before finally dropping it.  

“My dad had a heart attack.”

I could only stammer out a reply, and he hung up before I could figure out how to fix it.

I sat on the couch with my stomach in a heavy knot, couldn’t shake the feeling in my chest and heart and stomach that this was wrong, immeasurably wrong, going against the universal flow, what the stars had aligned for us. Our connection should be stronger, right? It should be enough.

Four years ago, when we hadn’t known each other that long, you texted me at three in the morning. I was awake, because at the time I worked night shifts, and I saw your surprise when my avatar popped up in the Snapchat window, when you stopped typing for a second and we both waited.

I had a nightmare, you told me, I was back in Afghanistan. I had one of those shitty prepaid phones where you have to buy the SIM card. I was running all over trying to get a SIM card so I could talk to you.

Oh no, I said, how terrible.

Yeah. Your typing bubble blinked at me.

Blink, blink, blink.

I’m glad this sim card is working.

I’m sure in another timeline, I answered your text. I’m sure in another timeline, I said the right things, and you stayed with me, and cared for me, and kept me close. In another timeline, you’re clean, and we have a baby named Rosie, and she smells like baby shampoo and strawberries, and there is so much happiness that it spills out of our chests and onto everyone around us, and we’re happy, really happy.

In this timeline, I am broken open, and all that spills out are tears.

Years later, I would find out you had lied to me, that your dad was fine, that you had said it just to hurt me.

I set the phone down and stare at it.

I could wait. Maybe in an hour, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. His name will light up my screen again.

He’ll act like none of this happened. I’ll be so relieved that I won’t even call him out on it. I’ll just be grateful he’s still here, that I’m still the person he reaches for, even when the drugs make him see ghosts where there are none.

I could let it happen again.

Or I could turn the phone over. Not check. Not wait.

I run my thumb over the screen, hesitating.

Maybe next time.