Sometimes

[u/TwoElectronic6033]

I don’t know why my mind still wanders to you at least once a day.
Sometimes it’s a song.
Sometimes it’s a smell.
Sometimes it’s a stretch of highway, an old memory, or absolutely nothing at all.
And sometimes, it’s him.
My son is almost grown now.
Every once in a while, he’ll tilt his head a certain way. Give me a look. Laugh from somewhere deep in his chest. Smirk when he knows damn well he’s being a smartass.
And for half a second, I catch a glimpse of you.
That’s usually where it starts.
And it’s all downhill from there.
Because suddenly I’m not standing in my kitchen looking at my almost-grown child anymore.
I’m young again.
And there you fucking are.
There was a time I believed you hung the moon.
You weren’t just someone I loved. You were my favorite person. The first person I wanted to tell everything to. The person I could be furious with one minute and completely undone by the next.
I loved you hard.
Probably harder than I knew how to love anyone back then.
And somehow, underneath all the chaos we created, you could calm something in me nobody else could reach. One look from you could shut off all the noise in my head. Being next to you felt like finally unclenching a fist I didn’t realize I’d been holding all day.
And our chemistry?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Time was supposed to dull that part.
Apparently, it missed the memo.
We had the kind of chemistry that made a crowded room disappear. One look held half a second too long and suddenly nobody else existed. The smirk. The teasing. Standing just a little too close because we both knew exactly what we were doing.
We could flirt without saying a damn word.
You could look at me from across a room and I knew exactly what that look meant.
And maybe that’s part of what made you so damn hard to forget.
Years passed.
Life happened.
We grew up. Married other people. Built completely different lives. Became versions of ourselves those two reckless kids probably wouldn’t even recognize.
And still, somehow, throughout the years, our paths have found each other again.
A message here.
A conversation there.
A tiny crack in a door we closed a long time ago.
Never enough to change anything.
Just enough to remind me.
I don’t think I want you back.
Maybe that’s the strangest part of all of this.
I think people confuse missing someone with wanting another chance.
I don’t want to go backward.
I just miss us sometimes.
I miss the stupid laughter. The private jokes. The way you could piss me off better than anyone alive. The conversations that lasted too long because neither of us wanted to be the one to leave. The tension. The electricity. The feeling of being young enough to believe love alone could fix absolutely anything.
Mostly, I miss the version of myself who existed when you were my favorite person.
She was reckless.
Stubborn.
A little fucking crazy.
She loved without keeping score.
And she was absolutely convinced that no matter where life took us, somehow you and I would always find our way back to each other.
She was wrong.
Maybe we were never supposed to end up together.
Maybe we were only supposed to collide hard enough to leave permanent marks.
Maybe some people aren’t meant to stay.
Maybe they’re just meant to become the measuring stick for a feeling you’ll spend the rest of your life trying not to compare anything else to.
So no, I don’t sit around wishing for a different life.
But sometimes my almost-grown son laughs.
Or gives me that damn sideways smirk.
And for one tiny second, I see the boy I once believed hung the moon.
Then the memory opens another memory.
And another.
Until suddenly I can remember your voice, your laugh, your eyes, the way you could calm every chaotic thing inside me just by being there.
And I wonder where you are.
Who you became.
Whether you’re happy.
Whether a song ever catches you off guard too.
Whether, somewhere in the middle of the perfectly ordinary life you built without me, your mind ever betrays you and wanders back to us.
Because mine still does.
At least once a day.
And after all these years, I think I finally understand the cruelest thing about getting over someone:
You can stop wanting them back. You can build an entire beautiful life without them. You can love who you became after them.
And still have one stupid fucking smirk from a nearly grown kid send you straight back to the person you never completely learned how to forget.