Chapter 1
At first, he didn’t save her number. He always knew she’d show up at his weekly parties. He also knew she’d stay after each party, at least for a while, never until morning. Billy assumed she left after he fell asleep, which was fine by him.
Eventually, he saved her number for convenience. Now, he could call her to hook up instead of always throwing a party.
He labeled her ‘chatterbox.’ She was striking—perhaps more so than most he’d slept with. He couldn’t say if she was intelligent or gifted; what amazed him was her relentless ability to talk for hours.
So, just a ‘chatterbox’— no first or last name, no heart emoji. They weren’t a couple in the truest sense of the word, or rather, they were… nothing. He didn’t know about her, only that they were about the same age and that she was a student at the local college.
Billy himself hadn’t really studied after graduating from high school. He was a self-taught IT specialist, and after a couple of years, hunkered down at a computer screen, he began receiving steady orders. A little later, he also discovered a talent for investing. Thus, by his early twenties, he had a steady passive income and occasionally took on new orders.
He planned to buy a house in a small town. Then luck struck. His great-aunt died and left him her house. He hadn’t seen her since he was twelve and couldn’t even pretend to be upset, but took the inheritance—exactly what he’d been seeking.
A house in a small town where he could just… be. He had no grand plans for the future or ambitions. He was kind of a hermit, though he liked being among people.
It also quickly got him a gang. First, he met a friend who was his partner in bike racing when they were eleven. Mike. He became a part of his life in this place within just a few days and brought guys from the local college lacrosse team.
That’s how Billy met her, and from then on, his house became a paradise for local students.
She grabbed his attention at once—too dazzling, like staring into the sun at noon. Yet he did. At their first party, they clicked. She asked him nothing, which pleased him.
She never texted first. But she always responded within 30 seconds.
His messages were simple, without any hint of affection, like:
“10 pm, my place, red dress.”
He always lounged on the couch, watching her. Each time she appeared, he thought even a potato sack would suit her. He also noticed Mike and the other jocks staring—his fingers tightened on the beer bottle.
However, it took him just a nod to make her smile grow wider. She no longer paid attention to Mike and the gang; she looked exclusively at Billy. He would never admit it out loud, but it made something akin to satisfaction warm in his chest.
That’s what he also liked about her. No drama. No hysterics. She demanded nothing from him—no attention, no flowers, no protection. She never asked what he did or who he spent time with on the days they didn’t see each other. Despite her obvious crush on him, she never acted clingy.
She’d show up when he called, smiling and rambling, filling his house’s ringing silence—even during the loudest parties.
Mike once said there was probably something fishy about her behavior.
“It’s impossible for a woman in love to act like that… Especially one like that… Someone like her has a single gray cell in her brain screaming at her to get married and have a bunch of kids… She’s probably already knocked up… coming to you soon with two stripes…”
Then Mike suggested they search the house for her things. He said that people like her gradually leave their things in the “victim’s” house, marking it, and Billy wouldn’t even notice her moving in and staying forever.Billy just shook his head. He searched the house just in case. He didn’t find a thing. No underwear, no toothbrush, not even her stupid peach gloss, though he knew she always had at least two tubes with her.He felt a bit disappointed, surprised by how much it bothered him when he found nothing, a sharp pang of emptiness twisting in his chest. He brought an understated glow to his world. He tried to overlook it. It was nearly invisible, so long as she kept appearing at his door whenever he texted.
But he did notice the first time she didn’t show up. He tried not to think much of it — big deal, right? She skipped a party. So what? That evening, he met another girl; they just made out, nothing happened. He decided he just wasn’t in the mood. Over the past year, he’d rarely been in the mood unless it involved her.
She didn’t text the next day; his messages stayed unread. He waited for her to call, to say she’d lost her phone and found it later, or just forgotten to charge it—some silly reason, as usual.
But she never did. Not after a day, not after a week, not even after a month. She simply vanished, as if she’d never existed. He asked the students who were constantly hanging around his house. She hadn’t shown up at college either, but she’d warned the administration in advance that she was taking a short break for personal reasons. What those personal reasons were, he didn’t know.
The worst thing was, he could neither know that nor had any right to know.
She was gone.
His mates were delighted.
After a while, he realized that despite the weekly parties at his house, the silence around him was unbearable—it pressed in with an ache. The weird part was that, without the crowds of strangers, the silence grew gentler but still left him feeling starkly alone. Later, he snapped.
That morning, cleaning the house, he found it—the only thing she’d left behind: a cheap faux pearl bracelet she wore almost every visit.
He knew for sure it was hers, because he’d given it to her. It wasn’t really a gift… They weren’t a couple, after all. The bracelet had arrived by mistake from a cheap Chinese website, instead of a phone case, and she was there when he unpacked the parcel. So, he just gave it to her. She was on cloud nine.
From then on, he saw it on her wrist every time they met, and for some reason, it gave him a curious satisfaction.
When he found the bracelet under the kitchen counter, he stared in disbelief. He rolled the artificial pearls in his palm, then lifted them to his nose, breathing in the absent scent.It smelled of nothing.
What else did he expect?
It wasn’t a scarf or a T-shirt.
.And yet, holding the bracelet, he was glad.
He rolled the beads between his fingers like a rosary and kept them in his pocket. For days, every ten minutes, he touched the beads, calming himself with their smoothness.
One evening, friends dropped by uninvited. When he reached into his pocket, panic rose—he couldn’t find the beads. Searching everywhere, he finally saw the bracelet in Mike’s hands.
He was twisting and turning the thing, flirting with a group of girls, as if he didn’t even notice what he was holding. Billy froze at first, then unhesitatingly made his way across the room toward Mike.
But Billy didn’t make it in time. Mike was too careless, and the thread simply gave way. The beads were scattered all over the living room, rolling into every corner, just as Billy finally reached Mike.
Mike looked bewildered, seeing anger on Billy’s face. Billy didn’t explain or ask how Mike had gotten the bracelet. He just lost it, hitting Mike until someone pulled him off.
He didn’t even notice that the music had stopped and the people around him had frozen, watching the scuffle with fear.
Afterward, he kicked everyone out. People stopped coming. He spent the evening gathering beads in total silence.
A few days later, he wandered the town’s alleys. He rarely walked, preferring solitude at home. But lately, home had become unbearable, so he started taking tired walks before bed, then lay in bed thinking about nothing.
That’s when he saw her again, in the window of a small café. She was sitting alone, reading something very intently, periodically raising a cup of steaming liquid to her lips, her lips covered in peach lip gloss, and it seemed that this was the only thing about her that had remained the same.
He stood frozen, noting every change in her image. She used to arrive overdressed, nearly tacky, but now her beauty was understated—striking yet modest—in a white polka-dot dress and a silk scarf in her black curly hair.
Now, however, her beauty was skillfully framed. She was still striking, but compared to her past outfits, she was dressed almost modestly—a white polka-dot dress just above the knees and a silk scarf tucked into her pitch-black curly hair.
And that book—he hadn’t known she liked to read. Why would he? He knew only her name and number. She’d changed or blocked him, and he didn’t know her last name, exact age, or college major.
That’s why she stopped coming.
His hands clenched into fists, and his fingers burned with the aching need to touch her again, if only for a moment. It seemed that if he had the chance, this ringing silence, which hurt more than he expected, would ease. But he knew he no longer had any right to her; the loss stung sharply. Just as he made that decision, taking a step back, she suddenly raised her bright eyes to him. Their gazes locked, and time froze, turning to jelly.
He thought she was about to scowl and turn away, pretending they were complete strangers, but after a few seconds, she smiled broadly, leaping from her chair and racing toward the café exit. A second later, he felt her arms wrap around his waist, squeezing tightly.
“Billy!” She buried her face in his chest, still smiling. “I missed you so much!”
He froze, but his hands automatically settled on her shoulders, pulling her even closer, as if his body was acting out of habit, even after many weeks of separation.
“Really?” His voice was husky and deliberately calm. “Missed me, huh?”
“Mm…” She chuckled, rubbing her face against the fabric of his T-shirt.
She was so warm and smelled so good that he barely stopped himself from burying his head in her hair and inhaling the almost forgotten scent of her.
His heart sank.
It felt so right and so natural. Touching her, holding her, listening to her chirp. Everything was as it should be.
“Where have you been?”
The question silenced her.
Her smile faded slightly. She pulled back a bit, though she didn’t try to escape from his embrace.
“Um… I…” She frowned, pursing her lips.
His heart sank at her hesitation. Hesitating was definitely not in her nature. She always had something to say, and now she looked down, biting her lower lip, trying to find the right words.
He reached out, cupping her face in his palms, tilting it up.
“Look at me,” he said, leaning toward her mouth.
His breath hovered against her lips.
“Frankly speaking…” she whispered, finally looking up at him. “I didn’t think you’d notice…”
“Notice?!” He almost growled the words, ignoring the people passing by, staring at them. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice if you just disappeared? If you stopped answering?” He searched her face, searching for an answer in her eyes, but saw only guilt.
“You ignored me… for weeks… and you thought I wouldn’t notice? That I wouldn’t worry?” he said more quietly.
“I didn’t ignore you…” she said calmly, a few seconds later. “I just changed my number… Besides, I thought you were a little busy.”
She shrugged, and from her expression, the way her eyes dropped, and the way the corners of her lips went down, he knew what she meant.
She’d seen him with someone else.
Even though he never tried to hide anything, to pull the wool over her eyes about the nature of their relationship, the thought of her seeing him with someone else had been a nasty tangle in his stomach, even during their half-relationship, let alone now.
“Why didn’t you at least text? A few words… just to warn me…,” he asked after a long pause.
“Billy… You know why… Besides, it’d happen sooner or later. And we both knew it.” She said softly.
It sounded so reasonable. So logical. Of course, he was aware. In fact, that’s what he liked about her. She always understood that their relationship was doomed to end from the very start.
“You speak as if it were inevitable…” He said bitterly, realizing that it was now contradicting the very essence of their fling.
“But it is,” she replied, pursing her lower lip and blinking rapidly, as if she were about to cry. “Sometimes I forgot about it… but that day… I saw it and…It took me a while to grasp that it was unbearable…But I did eventually.”
That’s why she’d left. No tantrums or jealousy scenes. And for some reason, he suddenly wanted her to throw at least one, yell at him, slap him. Anything.
“I’m not accusing you of anything!” She shook her head. “You’ve never deceived me, and I knew what I was signing up to… it’s just…”
She hesitated, searching for the words.
“Billy, I love you.” She said it so casually, as if it wasn’t even a secret, and her tone made his heart clench unpleasantly, as if all this time he’d simply been using her feelings for his own gain, which, in a way, was true. “But I realized that this doesn’t suit me anymore…”
“Tell me something!” He demanded suddenly.
“What?” She was taken aback.
“Like anything. Tell me where you live, where you’re from, your last name, and what book you were reading five minutes ago. Tell me.” He said, breathing heavily for some reason. “…please…” he added, more quietly.She was silent for a long time, frowning at his face. He seemed so miserable. She had never seen him like this before.
“I… I’d better go, Billy,” she shook her head, taking a step back. “I really missed you.” She was about to turn around.
His heart sank. He realized clearly. If she left now, he would never see her again. The thought struck him. It was as if the ground had suddenly fallen out from under his feet. As if before, when she just disappeared, he had been in a state of anticipation. As if he had been hoping that she would return any minute and only now realized that it wouldn’t happen.
His hand reached out almost involuntarily, grabbing her wrist, almost tenderly, as she showed her back to him.
She turned again, and he saw tears in her eyes. Tears she’d probably been holding back throughout their entire conversation.
“Can I come with you?” He asked in a quiet voice.
It wasn’t a question. It was a plea.
She sighed, and the tears finally rolled down her cheeks.
She nodded, sobbing.
The End.
