My thumb hovered over the notification, a traitorous digit wanting to inflict a pain the rest of my body was already trying to reject. It's a strange form of self-flagellation, this modern ritual of willingly visiting the scenes of your own emotional crime. The screen was a window into a universe I was no longer invited to, and yet, I pressed it. I always pressed it.
The image loaded, crisp and cruelly vibrant. It was her favorite bar. The one with the dark wood, the Edison bulbs hanging like captured stars, and the ridiculously overpriced gin cocktails. She was there, Seraphina, laughing. Of course, she was laughing. Her head was tilted back, a cascade of dark hair falling over the shoulder of a leather jacket I'd never seen before. Her hand rested on Liam's arm. It wasn't a possessive grip, but a gesture of easy, implicit ownership. They were a portrait of effortless happiness, bathed in a warm, golden light that made my own rain-streaked apartment feel a hundred shades colder.
I zoomed in, a detective searching for clues in a case I had already lost. I saw the drink on the table in front of her. A gin fizz with a sprig of rosemary. Our drink. The one we discovered on my twenty-first birthday, the one we'd toasted with while swearing we'd still be doing this when we were ninety and gray. "To us," she had said, her eyes shining with more sincerity than any star in the sky. "The architects of our own damn world."
Now she was drinking it with him. The world they were building now had a new chief architect, and the old one had been relegated to the role of a ghost haunting the blueprints.
The silence in the apartment, which had been a low hum of loneliness, suddenly amplified. It became a physical presence, pressing in on my eardrums, filling my lungs. The rain was no longer a gentle rhythm; it was a frantic, desperate drumming. I had to get out. I couldn't breathe the same air as the ghost of that memory.
Moving was a mechanical process. My body felt like a machine I was operating from a great distance. Feet into boots. Hands into the sleeves of my worn-out trench coat. The jingle of keys in my palm was a foreign sound in the suffocating quiet. I didn't grab a wallet or my phone. This wasn't an outing; it was an escape.
The moment I stepped outside, the cold, damp air was a shock to my system. The city at night was a different beast. The streetlights cast long, distorted shadows, and the rain slicked the pavement into a black mirror reflecting a blurry, bleeding world. I walked without a destination, my pace hurried, as if I could outrun the image burned onto the back of my eyelids.
Each footstep was a dull thud, a counterpoint to the sharp, stabbing memory of her laugh. I passed by glowing restaurant windows where people sat in pairs and groups, their lives full of noise and connection. I was an outsider, a specter on the sidewalk, separated from them by a thin pane of glass and an ocean of experience. They were living in the now. I was trapped in the then.
My mindless wandering led me to the fluorescent glare of a 24-hour convenience store. It was an island of artificial, unforgiving light in the dark, wet night. Inside, the air was sterile and smelled faintly of cleaning solution and burnt coffee. A cashier with tired eyes glanced at me for a fraction of a second before returning his gaze to his phone, his disinterest a strange and welcome comfort. Here, my pain was invisible. I was just another anonymous customer, a collection of wet footprints on a linoleum floor.
I walked the aisles, the perfect, colorful rows of products a stark contrast to the chaos in my mind. Chips, candy, sodas, household items—a miniature, orderly world. I wasn't hungry or thirsty. I wasn't here to buy anything. I was here for the emptiness. For the feeling of being a non-entity.
My eyes landed on the tea section. A neat row of boxes. English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Chamomile. And then, a bright green box: Peppermint.
Sera hated peppermint tea. She said it tasted like "sad toothpaste water." It was a running joke between us. Whenever I was feeling under the weather, she'd offer to make me tea and I'd always reply, "Anything but peppermint," and we'd laugh. It was one of the thousands of tiny, insignificant bricks that had built the fortress of our friendship. A fortress now in ruins.
On impulse, I reached out and took the box. It felt solid in my hand. A tangible object in a world that had become ethereal and dreamlike. I walked to the counter. The tired cashier scanned it without a word. I paid with the few crumpled bills I found in my coat pocket. The transaction took less than thirty seconds.
Walking back to the apartment, the rain had softened to a drizzle. I held the small paper bag in my hand, the box of tea inside feeling like a strange, forbidden artifact. It was such a small thing. A box of tea. It wouldn't fix the gaping hole in my life. It wouldn't erase the image of her and Liam. It wouldn't bring back the girl who used to laugh with me about sad toothpaste water.
But it was something she would hate. It was something that was only mine.
I unlocked the door to my silent apartment. The air was still thick with memories, but as I placed the box of peppermint tea on the kitchen counter, it looked like a small, defiant flag planted on a conquered land. A tiny speck of green in a world of gray.
This is how it begins, I supposed. The rebuilding. Not with a grand gesture or a dramatic declaration. Not with a bang. It begins with a quiet, lonely walk in the rain and a box of tea, a silent acknowledgment that you must now learn to like the things they didn't. It begins with the first, tiny step into a world that is, for the first time, truly and terrifyingly your own.