The city felt quieter than usual that day, though maybe that was just my mind playing tricks on me. My fingers wrapped around the paper coffee cup in my hand, its heat radiating into my palm, but the warmth barely registered. My breath escaped in soft clouds, the chill of winter biting my cheeks.

And then I saw you.

You were there, sitting at the corner table of the coffee shop—the one we always used to claim as ours. The one where we spent countless afternoons, trading secrets and dreams, laughing over mugs of cappuccino that had long since gone cold. But you weren’t alone.

Someone else sat across from you. They leaned in closer, smiling at you in a way I once did, and you smiled back. My heart twisted. I froze on the opposite side of the sidewalk, unable to move, as though the air had thickened into something impossible to push through.

Tears blurred my vision, hot against the icy wind. They spilled over before I could stop them, falling freely, like waves crashing onto the shore. It wasn’t just sadness—though that was there, sharp and unrelenting—it was regret. It was guilt. It was every choice I had made that led me to this moment, standing alone on this side of the glass.

I thought leaving you would make me better. I thought it was what I needed to escape the pain. But I had been so blinded by the worst moments that I forgot how much good there had been. How much love we shared.

I didn’t go inside. I couldn’t. Instead, I turned away and wandered through the city, aimless, letting my feet take me wherever they wanted. The streets became a map of memories. I passed the park where we spent lazy Sundays watching the clouds roll by, the bike trail where you raced ahead of me, always teasing but never too far to help me catch up. I stopped at the abandoned train tracks where we sat together, daring each other to climb higher until the sun dipped below the horizon.

The city was alive with lights, laughter, and movement, but I felt like I existed outside of it all. I kept walking, my shadow stretching long under the streetlights, until finally, I found myself back home.

Inside, the silence was deafening. I sank onto my bed, staring at the ceiling as a single tear slipped down my cheek. I wiped it away, but the ache in my chest didn’t leave.

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“For ending things. For ending us. For not realizing what I had until it was gone.”_

But I knew now. I knew you were gone in every way that mattered, and I would have to live with that. I couldn’t rewrite the past or undo the moment I walked away. All I could do was carry the weight of it, even as it pulled me down.

The next morning, I opened my eyes, the sunlight creeping through the curtains. The world hadn’t stopped for my heartbreak. It never would. As I got up, I realized I had a choice: to let the regret consume me or to carry it forward, to hold it close without letting it define me.

You wouldn’t be on the other side of the sidewalk anymore. But maybe, one day, I’d find my way across—not to you, but to something new.

To someone, new.