Some Nights

one

"...on some nights like this, shawty, i can't help but think of us..."

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NIGHTS LIKE THIS LAST FOREVER. Warm summer nights, wasted on a million memories of midnight mistakes. All the loneliest people in the bar hit that fleeting feeling sometime late in the night, drunk on nostalgia and long-lost love.

Imani just happens to be one of them. For her, it's always one minute after midnight. That's when everything starts to fall apart. 

It's less of a surrender and more of a defeat—down and out, dizzy, and a little self-destructive. It's that time of night when Imani always glances at her phone, no matter what mixed drink she's nursing, no matter where she is in the city, no matter who she's with.

Because it's never her.

Most nights, that empty hope only leads to disappointment. As Imani sits alone, staring at the screen and willing it to vibrate with a silent call, her heart sinks.

The numbers blink. 12:02 AM.

With a heavy sigh, Imani drags her gaze back to her drink, her fingers skimming the rim of the glass delicately. It shifts an inch, gently sliding into her palm as she searches for the memento she knows is in this exact spot.

A shallow heart, scratched into the edge of the bar.

Imani remembers it like it was yesterday—brushing her thumb over it softly and wondering if some love story had started... or ended right here, tucked into the corner of this dimly lit bar in Bed-Stuy.

If it had ended, wouldn't there be a small sliver carved into the middle? A crack that would forever remain etched into the bar to remind someone of a broken heart?

Heartbreak is inevitable, isn't it?

Her lips curl into a bittersweet smile. Heartbreak is inevitable when you're dealing with someone who is emotionally unavailable. Someone who is always just... out... of... reach. As she traces the grooves with practiced perfection, Imani almost wants to laugh. A heartbreak was always on the horizon for her, in every hesitant call that came after midnight, in every bated breath that waited for her, in the tangled web of lies that constructed this beautiful deception.

So why did it still hurt? Why did it still feel like an unexpected blow to the chest? A sucker punch to the heart?

Even after months of waiting, of wasting these late nights in bars and hoping for a text or a call, it still hurt when she got nothing. It hurt to think that things had changed, or that maybe nothing had changed at all. Maybe that's all it ever was. Nothing.

Maybe she was the on—

Ping!

Her heart stutters.

No, not stutters. Beneath the low music and the faint conversation and the clinking of glasses and the hitch in her breath, Imani is almost positive that her heart comes to a grinding halt. 

Everything stops.