Chapter 2 The after taste of goodbye

I eat to fill the silence. Not just the silence of the room, but the silence he left in me. A silence that hums just beneath the surface, loudest in the quietest hours.

It started with toast. Dry, barely buttered. Something to give my hands a job. Something to make me feel like I still had a routine. Then came the snacks-crackers, cereal, anything I didn't have to think too hard about. I told myself I wasn't hungry, but I kept eating. Because chewing gave me something to do. Because swallowing meant I hadn't collapsed yet.

They say heartbreak can make you lose your appetite. But mine did the opposite. I wasn't hungry for food-I was hungry for comfort. And food never walked away. It didn't say goodbye. It didn't whisper I love you one day and take it back the next.

I'd sit on the kitchen floor at midnight with leftover pizza and memories I didn't want. His laugh echoing in my head, the way he used to tease me about how I dipped my fries in milkshake. The first time we ordered food over a video call just to pretend we were at the same table.

"Bite it at the same time," he said. "That way it's like we're sharing."

We'd hold our burgers up to the camera, count to three, and take a bite. He'd smile with his mouth full. I'd pretend not to cry.

Food became memory. Memory became ritual. And ritual became survival.

But the truth is, no amount of chocolate could melt the ache. No hot meal could reheat a cold bed. And even though I was full, I felt empty.

Everyone around me said the same thing: "You'll move on." "You'll meet someone else." "Time heals."

But no one warned me about the in-between. The days when healing feels like pretending. The nights when your chest feels too tight but you smile anyway. The weight of knowing someone still breathes in a world you're no longer allowed to touch.

I still check our old chats. Every single one. Like a ghost haunting my own memories. Scrolling through the messages he sent at 2 a.m., the ones where he called me his peace, his person, his future. I reread the silly voice notes, the way he'd hum songs just to make me laugh. I memorize the timestamps, the emojis, the "good morning, beautiful" texts that once made my entire day.

And then there's the last message. The one that doesn't say goodbye, but feels like it. Just silence after it. A kind of quiet that feels final, even if no one said the words.

I know I should stop. I know I should delete them. But somehow, letting go of those messages feels like erasing a version of myself that still believed in us.

There's a kind of madness in repetition. I keep replaying the same old video-the one where he tells me, "I can't wait to see you in person." His eyes sparkle with a hope that makes my chest tighten. He meant it. I know he did. But now I wonder if that future was ever real or if I simply believed in it too much for the both of us.

I keep his hoodie folded in the back of my closet. It still smells faintly like him-warm, musky, safe. Sometimes I take it out and just hold it, like it might hold me back. But it doesn't. It's just fabric and memory.

There are nights I still reach for my phone, forgetting for a split second that he's no longer on the other end. My thumb hovers over his name, my chest tight with words I'll never send. Because what do you say to someone who shattered you and still owns a part of your heart?

The hardest part is how the missing sneaks in. It's not just at night, or when I see a couple laughing in public. It's in the little things-the smell of his cologne on a stranger, a meme I know he'd find funny, a movie we promised we'd watch together. It's in my laugh when I catch myself sounding like I used to around him. It's when I make coffee and still instinctively reach for a second cup. It's the song playing in the background of a store that once played through the speaker while we slow-danced over video.

Grief isn't loud. It's subtle. A quiet ghost that brushes past you when you least expect it. It lives in the pauses. In the almosts. In the could-have-beens.

Sometimes I hear someone call his name in a crowd, and I turn around before I can remind myself he's not here. Sometimes I smell something on the wind-his cologne, maybe, or something that reminds me of the place we once planned to visit-and suddenly I'm not where I am. I'm back in that imaginary life, the one we stitched together out of hope and late-night promises.

Even TV shows feel different now. I skip the ones we used to talk about. I mute love songs on the radio. But sometimes, when I'm alone, I let one play. Just one. And I listen with closed eyes and let the ache move through me like a tide I can't control.

I miss him on the sunny days, too. When everything is beautiful and part of me wants to tell him about it. When the sky turns pink and I want to send him a picture, just to say, "This reminded me of you." But the picture stays in my phone. The words stay in my mouth. And the ache stays in my chest.

This chapter wasn't supposed to start like this.

But maybe grief is a kind of hunger. And maybe healing begins when you stop trying to feed it with things that don't love you back.

And so, I eat. But now, I pay attention. I taste. I pause.

Because if I can learn to savor small things again, maybe-just maybe-I can learn to savor being alive, even without him.