November 5th.
It was a Thursday
Andres turned 24.
He woke up to the usual flood of messages. His phone buzzed non-stop from midnight. Friends, co-stars, brands, even strangers on the internet. His notifications were chaos—tags, mentions, edits, voice notes, video greetings.
But one name never popped up.
Not once.
Not even a quiet "hey."
Not even a reaction to his story.
Andres scrolled through everything anyway, hoping he had just missed it. That maybe, just maybe, she had sent something simple. Something quiet. Something only meant for him.
But there was nothing.
No Ashtine.
Not even a like.
And in the middle of all the love and noise, that silence was the loudest thing in the world.
—
Ashtine stared at her phone the entire morning.
She had written five different drafts of what she might say. Some were casual:
Happy birthday, Andres. Hope you're smiling today.
Some were heavier:
I know things are weird between us, but I couldn't let this day go by without saying something.
Some tried to be funny:
Old man alert. 24 hits different, huh?
But none of them felt right.
She even typed a message into her Notes app just to see how it looked.
Then deleted it.
Then wrote another.
Then stared at his Instagram story from midnight—balloons, cake, friends laughing in the background, him smiling like he didn't notice she was missing.
Like he didn't care.
But she knew better.
And that made it harder.
—
It was past 3 p.m. when she gave up.
She tossed her phone across the bed and curled into her blanket. The guilt clawed at her chest, but the fear of reaching out and getting nothing back was worse.
It had been six months.
He hadn't replied to her last message.
Maybe he didn't want her in his life anymore.
And maybe a birthday text wouldn't fix anything.
So she didn't send one.
She just watched his stories from the shadows, heart cracking silently with every new update.
—
By evening, Andres was exhausted from pretending he hadn't noticed.
He smiled for cameras, laughed at jokes, blew out candles.
But every time he checked his phone, the weight returned.
She hadn't messaged him.
She hadn't posted anything either. Not even a neutral "Happy birthday to the ever-talented Andres" on her story, like she did for others.
She didn't even pretend.
And he shouldn't have cared.
But he did.
Because last year, she had bought him a rose-gold bracelet with their initials engraved inside.
And this year, she gave him silence.
He lay in bed that night, phone dim in his hand, staring at her profile. Her last post was three days ago.
He clicked it.
She had archived their photos months ago. Unfollowed some fan pages. Muted a few tags.
But she hadn't unfollowed him.
He liked that post anyway.
Knowing she'd see it.
Knowing it would do nothing.
And that night, as he stared at the ceiling in the dark, all he could think about was one aching sentence:
She didn't message me.
And she didn't forget.
She just chose not to.