Jade
The seasons changed around me like whispers.
Autumn’s sharp edges faded into winter’s bitter cold, and then, slowly, came the tentative thaw of spring. The world shifted, quiet and uncaring, moving on while I stayed exactly where he left me—wrecked.
Time blurred. One day bled into the next until they all lost their shape—gray, hollow, endless.
After I left campus, I crashed at Jules’s place.
Her apartment was tiny, perched above a coffee shop that always smelled like burnt espresso and cinnamon. The couch was old, sunken in the middle, and the walls were too thin. But to me, it was sanctuary.
Jules never pried. Never looked at me with that pitying tilt of the head people get when they don’t understand your kind of heartbreak. She didn’t ask what happened. Didn’t press for stories I wasn’t ready to tell.
She just gave me space to breathe—space to exist—when breathing felt impossible.
Some nights, we stayed up way too late, drinking wine that tasted like vinegar, watching rom-coms we’d already seen a hundred times. We laughed at the same lines, cried at the same scenes, and pretended we were just two girls navigating normal heartbreak in a normal world.
But even in those soft moments—her laughter, her warmth, the comfort of her presence—I couldn’t escape it.
The bond never let me go.
It was always there. A hum beneath my skin. A low, steady ache. A thread I couldn’t sever no matter how far I ran.
Some nights, when everything was silent—when even the city seemed to hold its breath—I swore I could feel him. Zade. A ghost on the other end of a frayed connection, tugging at me in his sleep. Unaware, but still pulling.
Jules tried her best.
She coaxed me out of the apartment, made me put on real clothes, dragged me to dinners I didn’t want to eat and concerts I couldn’t hear past the noise in my own head.
She begged me to let the world back in.
And for her—because I loved her, because she believed I still existed beneath the ruins—I tried.
I smiled when it felt like glass.
Laughed when it stung.
Pretended I was healing, like I was putting myself back together piece by piece.
But inside?
Inside I was still frozen.
Still stuck in the space Zade had hollowed out and left behind.
It was Jules who convinced me to go on a date.
“He’s nice,” she said, nudging me with her elbow as we sorted through clothes on the floor, trying to find something that didn’t scream heartbreak. “And he’s normal. You need normal, Jade.”
I didn’t argue. I was too tired to argue. I let her paint my lips with color, let her pull a brush through my hair, let her tell me that tonight could be the first step toward something better. I told myself that maybe if I pretended hard enough, my heart would start believing it too.
The boy — Caleb — was sweet in the way strangers could afford to be. He asked questions about my life, about my dreams, and smiled when I answered with half-truths. He laughed too loud at jokes that weren’t funny, and he held the door open like a perfect gentleman. There was nothing wrong with him. Nothing wrong at all.
Except he wasn’t Zade.
He wasn’t the boy whose eyes could silence the world. He wasn’t the boy whose touch made my heart race, whose voice made my soul recognize something ancient and irreplaceable. Caleb’s hand brushed mine across the table, and the bond inside me recoiled violently, a jolt of wrongness so fierce I nearly gasped out loud. I pulled away under the flimsy excuse of reaching for my drink, but the damage was done. I spent the rest of the night drowning under the weight of what I couldn’t forget.
When I got back to Jules’s apartment, I curled up on the couch and let the tears come. I didn’t even try to stop them. Jules found me there a few minutes later, wrapped in one of her oversized blankets, my body trembling with the force of all the things I couldn’t say.
She didn’t ask questions. She just sat down beside me and pulled me into her arms, holding me like she could stitch the pieces of me back together through sheer stubbornness alone. I buried my face in her shoulder and cried until I had nothing left, until I was hollow and aching and raw.
“You’re going to survive this,” she whispered, her voice fierce against the silence. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. You’re going to survive.”
I nodded because it was easier than arguing, but deep down, I wasn’t sure it was true. Surviving didn’t feel like living. Surviving felt like waking up every day with an ache you couldn’t name, a ghost pressing against your ribs, a bond that refused to die even when everything else had burned away.
Jules waved her hand in front of my face. “Earth to Jade.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”
“No… sorry,” I mumbled, forcing a smile as I picked up my coffee.
She smiled back, tight-lipped but trying. She didn’t push. She never did. Just launched into a new story, her hands animated, laughter spilling out like sunlight. I nodded. Laughed when I was supposed to. Let the sound scrape my throat raw.
Later, I stood behind the counter at the bookstore, fingers mechanically sliding across worn spines, barely registering the titles. A couple walked in—holding hands, brushing shoulders, sharing secret glances like the world outside didn’t exist.
My stomach twisted.
I looked away.
The bell above the door jingled behind them as they left. And still, the weight didn’t lift.
The bond hadn’t dulled. Not really. It just lived quieter now—no longer a scream, but a hum beneath my skin. Always there. Always his.
Zade was still out there somewhere.
Breathing.
Existing.
And that—that—was the cruelest part.
He didn’t have to disappear to haunt me. He just had to keep being alive in a world I wasn’t part of anymore.
That night, I lay in bed, arms wrapped around my pillow like it could hold me together. The ceiling above me was cracked in the corner. I stared at it until my eyes burned.
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t move.
I just breathed. Slowly. Quietly. Waiting for sleep that never came.
And in the stillness, a thought I never said aloud crept in like a thief.
Do you feel it too?
Do you miss me, even a little?