The Playlist

Trigger warning: Reflection on abortion and unresolved grief.

The direct flight was long. I watched the sky pass by as music played in my ears, a playlist that spoke a language only I understood. Each lyric carried me back to moments with him, and sometimes to the emptiness without him. He had always held a place in my heart, a presence that brought comfort, friendship, and a passion beyond the boundaries of this world.

Maybe that’s what it means to be soulmates, not someone who simply fits with you, but someone who exists within you, even in their absence.

Standing outside the airport, I spotted him in his white SUV, hazards blinking. Those lights pulsed in rhythm with my racing heart. He opened the passenger door with a simple, “Hey, you,” and a smile. Sliding into the seat, I caught him in the mirror, loading my suitcase before circling to the driver’s side.

We fell into small talk. “How was the flight?” “How was traffic?” We touched on weather, realized we were hungry, and ended up at Driftwood Cove, a quiet beachside bar. We shared drinks and easy, polite conversation. I wasn’t nervous about the night, just tired. We had booked one room, two beds, wanting time together, but not to rekindle what once was. Just two old friends catching up after twenty-five years.

As if it were our nightly routine, we took turns in the shower and settled into separate beds. We said goodnight, and as I drifted off, my mind replayed not the conversations from tonight, but the ones from long ago.

When I woke, the room was quiet. A note on the pillow: At the gym, second floor. I texted Daryl, my husband, to say good morning and that all was well. He didn’t know my “friend” was not Shelly, as I had said, but an ex, one I had never stopped caring about. He wouldn’t have understood. I told Shelly everything. She understood. She knew I needed closure on things left unsaid, and undone.

Breakfast was simple: fruit and a Danish on the balcony. When he returned, we picked up our conversation easily. Later, we walked along the beach, pausing to examine shells, compare them, then toss them back to the tide. We reminisced about old times, some painful, others filled with love and adventure. We spoke of forgiveness, of scars that had healed and some that never would.

Far down the shore, we spotted a small bar with music drifting toward the waves. We found a table, ordered drinks, and let the day stretch before us like a scene from a movie; two people suspended between past and present, trying to make sense of both.

It was easy to be next to him again. He carried a quiet warmth, a sense of safety and unconditional care. As the sun sank into the water, I wished time would slow, that the day, this feeling, could last a little longer. I knew I needed to speak, to say what I came to say, but I didn’t know how to begin.

The beer loosened my restraint but tightened the ache in my chest, not just for what we’d lost, but for what we’d never have again.

“I need to ask you something,” I said.

“Okay,” he answered softly.

Our eyes met, then locked in a way that felt impossible to break. From head to toe, that old wave of peace washed over me, the kind that only ever came from him. My heart whispered questions my mind couldn’t form: Why am I here? Why now? Why does this feel like coming home?

Before I could stop myself, the words slipped out. “I miss you. I have always missed you.”

Silence. His eyes searched mine, and in that silence, a thousand words passed between us. Then the bartender broke it with a simple, “Y’all want another?”

We both nodded, awkward, a little dazed. The next drink came and went mostly in silence. We were both lost in thought, each retreating to that thin, fragile line between what was and what still lingered.

When he finally said, “How about we head out?” I agreed.

The night was dark but warm, the glow of beach bars lighting our path. Shoes in hand, we walked along the surf. The water lapped cool against our feet, the sand gritty beneath. I felt the ache of knowing I would miss this man for the rest of my life, the man who, tomorrow, would fly home to his family, as I would to mine.

Somewhere between the bar and the hotel, we stopped beneath a sky scattered with stars. Waves crashed softly around us. He told me he missed me too. I told him how special he was, then and now. He said what we had, he had never found again.

I told him about the playlist, the songs that had been ours once. He wanted to hear it. Somehow, we both knew the night would last if we let it. After midnight, we left the beach, still untouched, still talking, my heart heavy with everything unspoken.

While he showered, I prepped for tomorrow; packed for the flight home, clothes pressed, coffee set for the morning. I scrolled through endless posts from friends; vacations, birthdays, dinner plates, the ordinary world waiting for me. I wondered if he even wanted to hear the playlist at all. I’d listened to those songs for years, each one carrying me back to a version of us that never stopped echoing.

When he stepped out, bare-chested in pajama pants, that old spark stirred, the familiar pull I had buried long ago.

“How about that playlist?” he asked.

“Now?”

“Sure,” he said, dropping onto the bed beside me.

As I opened the app, I noticed the time, almost two in the morning. Our time was running out. I started the first song, explaining when I’d added it and why. Then the next, and the next. He asked questions, shared his own memories. We held moments in our minds the other couldn’t recall.

Lying next to him, I realized that whatever we had, we still had, different now, but deeper, shaped by the years apart.

Then the song played.

The one that still hurt all these years later.

We were young and wild and decided not to have a child…

It all came rushing back, and before I could stop myself, I asked:

“Do you remember? Ever think of it? Does it bother you? Do you regret it?”

He remembered, but not the way I did. The decision, the date, they’d blurred for him. He didn’t carry the loss, didn’t feel it in the quiet corners of life the way I did.

I told him how sometimes I imagined the child. “He’d be twenty-one now,” I said. I described the figure I often saw, a tall, thin boy with brown hair and freckles. A presence I’d carried through every year, every choice, every imagined tomorrow.

Silence filled the room. Anger crept in, quiet but sharp. How could he not remember the same? Not the conversation, the decision? The loss? The pain?

He held me as I cried, and I wasn’t sure if the tears were for that loss, or for the years between us—or for the ones ahead we’d never share.

But I knew one thing for certain: for this night, we would be us again.

There was no sleeping in those early hours. We crossed back into a place we’d never truly left, not in our hearts, not in our minds. It felt like a gift from the universe: to relive, to feel again that unexplainable sense of belonging and love, breathtaking and bold, beyond measure or reason. The place of us.

His flight was early, and our goodbye heavier than expected. I stood by the window, watching him pack the car, waiting for a sign he might turn back, if only for one more day. The way he drove off felt like déjà vu, a memory replaying itself in real time.

The past forty-eight hours blurred into something dreamlike, a memory I knew I would ache for forever.

Now alone, I retraced our steps along the beach, stopping where we’d sat just hours ago. The waves whispered, endless and indifferent. So much to process, and I processed alone.

I recalled a line from a movie: “A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets.”

I understand that now, more than ever, standing at the edge of the sea, aching for moments held only between him and me.

And I wonder if I will ever sit beside him again.