I would simply just miss you.

I haven’t seen you for almost five years, love.

It ended just as unexpected as it began, spring time in New York.

I walked by a tree that very morning, it immediately became my favorite tree in east village. I stopped for a minute and just admired it from across the street.

I took a picture of my new favorite tree and quickly initiated a healthy dose of self-loathing for what I was about to do.

Getting on a New York City subway.

Midtown.

Redemption was busy that Saturday afternoon; it was Kentucky Derby day followed by UFC fight night. I was invited to participate in watching both, buy my hangover from the night before laughed at my plan to do so.

And so I rolled into Redemption.

George was hard to miss at 6"4. But you were the only thing in color when everything in the world became black and white the moment I saw you. It wasn’t love at first sight, no. But everything was also in slow motion as I made my way to the table, until today, I still don’t know what all that was about.

You looked at me, smiling like you already knew me.

I sat next to you and we spent the entire time at that bar barely talking to each other and appreciating Matchbox Twenty’s music. I knew you watched me give my number to someone else, just like I knew you were there, beyond just sitting there.

December, Rome.

Six month later, your hand on my thigh as you politely engaged in a conversation with this girl that came up to talk to you. I could never get over the way you turned to look at me in microsecond breaks from it. I could never get over the way you looked at me, period. And I thank God for His perfect plan that I’ve never known you to not look at me that way.

I’ve never known you to not love me, either.

A train station kiss good bye in Roma Termini, tears in my eyes. It was an ocean deep long kiss followed by an “I love you” from you, before I could say anything, you turned around and got on the train. That was the very last thing you’ve ever said to me in person.

And how appropriate it is that it was also the very last thing you ever said to my face from the other side of my laptop screen, after two years of no contact post-breakup.

You made a spoiled brat out of me.

Well, what’s a red-blooded girl to do?

You were hard to get over. The way you loved me was hard to get over. Stubbornly, I refused to move on for years and years, thinking to myself that you are the last man I will love in this life. Moving on from a love like ours was hard, but even more so, it was boring. Because as long as I stay in love with you, it would still be a great love story; a sad one, but still a great one.

Until one day I finally admit that a chance of greater love than what we had is better than staying in love with someone who only lives in my memories.

Only took me years.

Every now and then, I still wonder if you’re the season finale of my love life. No happy ending, but, your green eyes would still be worth it.

Have you given someone else’s heart a home? I hope she loves you more and loves you better than I did, babe.

Tonight I’m just lying here, revisiting that in love feeling, thinking about a Virginia boy from Falls Church with ginger-ish auburn hair that only exists in my memories.

All those memories though, one day, they will fade.

What’s left of us then, is just this bitty post on the internet that doesn’t even do us justice.

I guess that’s just what she wrote.

But the memories haven’t faded yet, and when the journey to love gets a little rough and naggy, I would simply just miss you.