Strings of Fate: The First Loop

chapter 36 : the ghost in the byline

they get to cheer. he gets to shine. and i, i am a ghost in this narrative. the girl in the shadows, watching her best friend turn into someone she doesn’t quite recognize.

someone who doesn't need her anymore.

he finishes the song. the applause roars. JAMES smiles, not the smirk i used to know, but something real. quiet. fulfilled.

he doesn’t look at me. not once. not even a passing glance.

and that, i think, is what grief feels like. not death. not absence. but standing in the same room as someone who once made you their world… and realizing you’ve become scenery in theirs.

i throw a look at her.  Betty in her fairy costume, glittering like she can grant any wish, anytime. and here i am, a witch, someone who belongs in the shadows.

she’s crying harder than everyone, hands trembling, breath hitching. even their little friend group looks glassy-eyed, sniffling quietly in the dark. the kind of crying people do when something finally lands. like they were all holding their breath and now they’re exhaling at once.

my eyes keep flicking toward her in the hush of the auditorium. i don’t know why. or maybe i do.

because that’s what you do when someone replaces your spot in somebody's story.

you don’t just get sad. it’s not that simple.
first, you feel the grief, the dull, slow kind, like mourning someone who didn’t die, just walked away. you grieve the inside jokes, the late-night calls, the version of them that only existed with you. it’s a funeral with no ceremony. just silence.

then comes the jealousy. not the loud, dramatic kind people roll their eyes at. no, it’s quieter than that. a twinge every time they laugh with someone else the way they used to laugh with you. a small ache when they look at someone like they once looked at you, like that person is home now.

and finally, resentment. the kind you don’t want to admit, because it doesn’t make sense. you tell yourself you should be happy for them. That they found someone, that they’re healing, that they’re better now. but some part of you, some small, wounded corner, keeps whispering, why not me? why wasn’t i enough to be the ending?

it doesn’t even grow into anger at the other person. not really. it turns inward. becomes self-blame, self-doubt, self-loathing.
did i misread it all?
did i imagine being special?
was i just the placeholder until the real story began?

i don’t care if i'm wrong or right. if i have the right to feel this way. if it’s selfish or dramatic or pathetic.

right now, right here, this is what i think.
this is what i feel.

and it hurts in a way that doesn’t even have a name.

because back then,  back when JAMES and i were just teens, trying our best to be better. wanting him was enough, for me it was enough to live for the hopes of it all, that maybe someday, he will see that he belongs with me. but, so much for love and dreaming about "us" because truth is... he was never mine to lose in the first place.

that night, i sat on my bed, knees pulled to my chest, the room quiet except for the buzz of my charger and the occasional honk from the street outside. i stared at my screen, at nothing, really, just blinking through old messages. Ours.

his name still pinned. his replies… slowly decreasing in frequency, then enthusiasm, then not at all.
my last three messages left on read. the one before that, delivered. the one before that, a kind of joke he used to love, ignored.