Tangled in Red Threads

A Name I Still Wait For

Chapter 5: A Name I Still Wait For

(Romeo's POV)

The café was too quiet after she left.

Romeo stood behind the counter, still holding her empty mug. He hadn't meant to hold onto it. He just did. Her fingerprints were still there, faint and vanishing, like the memory of her voice.

"I won't."

He didn't believe her.

Not because he thought she was lying, but because he knew how easy it was to leave when the world was asking you to. And how hard it was to stay for something that wasn't fully real anymore.

He'd done this once already. He knew the rhythm.

Juliet comes back. She says something that means almost everything. Then she disappears again.
But this time, she'd left a trace. That look. That whisper. "You still feel like home."

God. He could still hear it.

He closed up late that night, taking longer than usual to count the register and clean the tables. He kept seeing her sitting there, the way she curled her fingers around the cup, the way she laughed like she didn't mean to, like it snuck out by accident.

Back in high school, she used to call him "steady." Said he was like the ocean on a still day.

But no one ever talks about how lonely the stillness is. How quiet it gets when everyone else is chasing storms.

He locked the door and stepped outside, breathing in the salt-and-rain air.

The sky was gray, the kind that threatened rain without ever delivering.

Kind of like her.

That night, he sat on his bedroom floor, guitar across his lap, fingers still remembering the chords of the song they never finished.

He hadn't written anything decent since she left.

He plucked a few notes, letting the melody wander. It kept slipping into something soft, something sad.

Something that sounded like her name.

He didn't want to be angry at her. He wasn't even sure he had the right. She had her life. Her future. Her reasons.

But it still felt like she'd taken something when she left. Something small and invisible. Something only he noticed was missing.

________________________________________________________________________________

The next day, he spotted her.

Across the street, near the old bookstore. Not walking toward him. Just... watching.

He saw her before she realized he had. She ducked behind a lamppost like she was seventeen again, hiding from her mom after skipping class.

He almost laughed.

Almost called out to her.

But instead, he let her hide.

Because if he was honest, he wasn't ready either.

Not ready to ask what Charlie was to her.

Not ready to hear the answer.

So, he kept walking. Pretended he didn't see her.

But her name stayed in his mouth the rest of the day.

Unspoken. Heavy.

A name he still waited for.

End of Chapter 5