He Was Never Shy, Just Not With Me Chapter 08
Silence stretched on the other end of the line for a long moment.
When he finally spoke, his voice had slowed down.
“Nora, I think the real issue here is that something went wrong between the two of us. Can we please just talk about our relationship and leave Hailey out of this?”
“Sure.”
He probably never expected me to agree so readily.
He caught his breath, completely stunned for a few seconds.
Only then did he slowly continue.
“Weren’t we incredibly happy together during these past five years? Why does it have to come down to this?”
“I still remember how much fun we used to have playing video games, going shopping, and grabbing dinner together.”
I couldn’t believe I was only realizing now just how terrifyingly oblivious Logan could be.
His actual capacity to perceive love was so incredibly poor it was almost pitiful.
A flood of memories began crashing back into my mind.
“Logan, do you want to know the truth? I never actually enjoyed playing any of those tactical shooter games you love. The only reason I put on an act and pretended to be interested was to make you happy, just so you would talk to me a little more. Sometimes I even forced myself to memorize the specs of those stupid guns.”
“And as for shopping being fun-that was only because the second I noticed something you liked, I would desperately brainstorm topics to keep the conversation going. But whenever we encountered
something I was interested in that you didn’t care about, you would immediately find a bench, sit down, and bury your face in your phone. Half the time, I’d turn around and couldn’t even find where
you went!”
The shattering of a relationship is never a sudden, single event.
When you are constantly pouring out emotional labor to validate someone else without ever receiving the same return, you simply burn out.
“Do you know why I love spending time with my circle of friends so much? It’s because they actually understand me. They know exactly what I like, and even if they don’t completely get it, we
still take the time to explain things to one another and share our lives What about you?
Having laid everything out in one continuous breath, the suffocating knot in my chest loosened a
bit more.
I stood up, took a sip of water to soothe my throat, and walked back over.
I casually opened a social media platform and scrolled through it for a while before realizing that he was still completely silent on the other end.
After a grueling wait, his voice finally drifted through the speaker.
“Then why did you never tell me any of this before?”
I had told him.
He was just the one who forgot.
He forgot over and over again.
Instead of listening, he raised his voice, interrogating me aggressively.
“Do you honestly think I didn’t get exhausted too? Have I really never done anything good for you?!”
I challenged him to give me a single example.
He fell into a deep silence, searching his mind for a long time.
“The apartment you were living in belongs to me, I covered the daily household expenses, and I bought you gifts for every single holiday. When you wanted that multi-thousand-dollar luxury bag, I swiped my card without asking a single question.”
“And when you were stuck working past midnight and couldn’t hail a cab, I drove out at three in the morning to pick you up, even though I had to drag myself out of bed before five to go right back to work. Is all of that seriously still not enough?!”
The more he spoke, the more self-righteous his momentum became.
By the time he reached his final sentence, he was practically roaring through the phone
“Then let me ask you something, Logan.”
“Did you know that the specific cologne you love so much was something I meticulously picked out after testing hundreds of different bottles? The clothes you wore every single day were individually ironed by me every weekend. The fresh flowers in the house were rotated by me every single week, and the household essentials were regularly restocked by me on a precise schedule. If I hadn’t done
all that, did you honestly think those things just automatically refreshed themselves?”
“As for driving me home from work-let’s not forget that every time you got completely wasted in the middle of the night, I was the one who drove out to rescue you. You threw such a violent, unruly drunk tantrum that you nearly caused us to get into a catastrophic car crash. Have you completely wiped that from your memory?”
Because of that exact incident, the moment he woke up in the hospital back then, he was consumed by an overwhelming wave of remorse.
Staring at the laceration on my forehead, his eyes had welled with frantic tears.
He had carefully wrapped his arms around me, holding me close.
He swore he would give me a lifetime of happiness and protect me forever.
Yet today, the person inflicting the deepest, most agonizing wounds upon me was him.
Because I had loved him completely, the betrayal cut the deepest.
He probably tracked back to the exact same memory.
When he finally spoke again, his voice was actually trembling.
“Is there really no chance left for us to be together?”
“Not a chance.”
Over the next few days, Logan didn’t try to call my phone a single time.
His parents completely stopped firing off aggressive text messages to lecture me.
Even Hailey’s profile was entirely deleted from the platform.
It was as if everything that had happened had been wiped clean, leaving no trace behind.
My friends and I fully immersed ourselves in a liberating, incredibly romantic journey across the grasslands.
The sound of our shared laughter didn’t stop for a single moment.
During a traditional bonfire party, we followed the steady rhythm of the hand drums, dancing to a tribal beat, letting the rhythm cleanse away the past and welcome new beginnings, and celebrate the beauty of life.
Once we finally returned to the city, I smoothly finished setting up and decorating my brand new
apartment.
On my very first day back at work, the moment I stepped out of the office building at the end of my
shift, I spotted a hauntingly familiar silhouette waiting for me down on the sidewalk.
