Are You Up

He texted "u up?" at 2:03 AM. I was. That's the problem.

Eight months of silence. I'd deleted our chat, blocked him on Instagram, and unfollowed his mum. I had a whole new life. A new haircut. A new gym. A new, quietly unbothered personality I'd built from scratch.

His name was Ryan. He ghosted me after three months of everything. Not because anything happened. Just because he got bored.

Now his name lit up my dark ceiling. "u up?" Two lowercase words, no effort, like leaving a shopping trolley in a car park.

I typed, "Why?"

He replied in four seconds. "just thinking about you."

Four seconds. He was waiting. Phone in hand. Probably in bed. Probably out of options.

I watched the typing bubble appear and vanish. Appear and vanish. And I felt the old me, the girl who used to wait, stretching awake inside my chest.

I opened his chat. I typed, "I've missed you too."

Then I looked at it for a long, long time. I thought about all the nights I sat up at 2 AM, begging the universe for exactly this message.

I deleted it.

I wrote, "I was up. But I'm not anymore." And hit send before I could change my mind.

I turned my phone off and lay in the dark.

It's strange. I thought closure would feel like a door slamming.

It felt like finally falling asleep.