Nemo - VII - Any...thing?

I looked at the clock. It was just after four in the morning. I knew that, even if I lay down again, I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I put on a sweatshirt, grabbed the room keys and went downstairs without thinking too much. The receptionist barely looked up when I crossed the lobby. Outside, the air was cool and the city remained strangely silent, as if waiting for something to happen.

I walked aimlessly.

I had always found something comforting in cities at night. The empty streets, the dark shop windows and the distant sound of some car made everything seem simpler, as if the world slowed down for a few hours, allowing me to breathe with it.

Without realizing it, I ended up passing by some of the places where we had been months earlier.

That small square where we had shared an ice cream while arguing about which movie to watch.

A bridge from which he insisted on taking an absurd photograph because he said the light was perfect.

A café where we had breakfast before saying goodbye at the station.

It was strange to walk through those places completely alone. They seemed like the sets of a life that no longer belonged to me. Of a season the writers had decided to end too soon.

I kept walking with my hands in my pockets while the memory of the breakup forced its way back into my head. After that call came months I barely remember clearly. Everything had the same gray color. I got up, worked, came home and went to bed hoping the next day would hurt a little less than the previous one.

Sometimes it did.

I would realize I had spent an entire morning without thinking about him, and it felt like a small victory. Other times I managed to laugh with a coworker and surprised myself by remembering what my laughter sounded like.

I can’t say it was happiness, but at least it was no longer that absolute emptiness.

Little by little, the world began to regain some color. I started accepting plans with my friends again, picked up some hobbies again and stopped looking at my phone every few minutes waiting for the impossible. There were bad days, of course, but there also began to be less bad days, and even normal ones.

That was precisely when he came back.

I had spent the afternoon with a friend, talking about anything except him. We had something for dinner and, for the first time in a long while, I came home feeling relatively light. I even thought, as I opened the door, that maybe the worst was over.

I left the keys on the hallway cabinet, took off my sneakers and looked at my phone almost out of habit.

There was a new message.

My heart started beating so hard that I had to read the name several times to convince myself my imagination wasn’t playing tricks on me.

It was him.

A single word.

“Hi.”

I stood motionless in the middle of the living room.

I had imagined that...