The message I never sent

There is a draft in my messages that is three years old. No timestamp visible anymore, just his name at the top of it like an address to nowhere. I have opened it, edited it, deleted a comma, put the comma back, and closed it again more times than I can count.

It starts with "Hey." Because after everything, what else do you say?

We were never officially anything. That's what made it so easy to leave and so impossible to get over. He was the person I texted at 2am about nothing, and then one day he was the person I texted at 2am about everything, and then one day he was just… a name with a blue tick.

The version I almost sent was honest. It said: I think you were the best thing that happened to me that year and I was too scared to say it out loud because saying it out loud meant it could be refused. It said: you made ordinary Tuesdays feel like something. It said: I still check if you're online.

I never sent it because a small, cowardly part of me decided that a beautiful unsent thing is safer than a sent thing that gets left on read.

Sometimes I think he wrote one too. Sometimes I think we're both sitting in different cities, both staring at the same three dots that never turn into words.