Start Again (C.T.H.)

Part 3

As much as I didn't expect anything from it, I woke up with another message from Calum.

@calumhood: morning:)

Simple yet effective I guess. I didn't see any harm in talking to him again since we were friends before we got together. Maybe that's all he wants.

@y/n: good morning, Calum

@calumhood: any plans today?

@y/n: not really, I've always been boring. you couldn't have forgotten that

@calumhood: you've never been boring. You're one of a kind.

@calumhood: do you maybe want to do something today? With me?

@y/n: why not, you're still in (your city name) right?

@calumhood: of course, I never left. Meet at our spot in thirty?

@y/n: see you then

As much as I didn't want to, I dressed up. This was my high school sweetheart after all, and he left me so it's only fair he sees what he's been missing. What I didn't expect though was what I saw when I walked in to "our spot", a local coffee shop we always seemed to meet up at in high school. Calum was there looking as flawless as ever and in a full suit. He saw me and smiled largely. He always had the ability to make everything around me in this constantly moving, "time is money" world just stop racing a mile a minute and bring it all to calm with a single smile. Calm. I hadn't felt a calm like this since that day and the feeling was blissful and welcoming. I had always thought that he was summer for me in every sense of the word. His smile was an escape to a cabin on the beach; home in a sense, for two months of sunlight and ocean waves, but only for then. And I remembered him like that: the vacation I wanted to escape to when it all got to be too much; thoughts of him creeping into my mind like the sun into the short days during a long winter. I wanted to go back.

But I can't. I can't go back to the warmth and the humid concerts as I sit on his shoulders and the tackles into the salty ocean; the soft pictures drawn with clumsy fingers in the sand, the golden sunsets and the grey thunderstorm clouds in the distance. I can't want him again, because I know what it leads to. Love. By the time I truly needed him, depended on him, craved him- He was already lightyears away and for months, I stupidly stayed up waiting to see or hear from him again. He was a once in a lifetime spectacle, a glimpse into worlds unknown. Maybe it's for the best if we keep it that way.