Blue. Deep ocean blue.

It’s been your favorite color ever since your eyes first met his. That shade—alive, impossible, unforgettable, shimmered like sunlight through the sea in the depths of Johnny’s gaze. Ever since, no blue has ever compared. No pigment, no paint, no canvas ever captured that precise hue that once looked back at you with love, with fire, with promise.

You still try. You still walk the aisles of your favorite art store, fingers grazing across tubes of paint, lifting swatches to the light, hoping maybe— just maybe— this time you’ll find it. That exact color. That exact feeling.

But every attempt is wrong. Too dark, too cold, too pale. Nothing matches the blue you lost.

And sometimes, on quiet nights, when the world seems wrapped in shadows, you find yourself passing the same corner pubs where laughter drifts out of open doors, where music hums low and soft like a heartbeat. The musky scent of cigars mingles with whiskey on the breeze, a scent you once hated, until it became part of him.

And each time, instinct takes over. You turn your head. You search the faces. You chase ghosts.

But you never find him.

You search for that one pair of eyes— the ones that used to stare at you like you were the only truth in a world full of war and noise. The ones that made you believe in forever.

He left. Not with anger, not even with words. Just with silence. Just with duty. His heart couldn’t take your tears anymore, couldn’t bear to see you crumble each time he walked out the door in uniform. And your heart? It broke piece by piece, each time he left, like a tide slowly pulling away everything you ever built together.

Some days you hate him for leaving. Some days you hate yourself more, for asking him to choose between you and a world you could never compete with.

Years have passed. The colors in your life dulled, flattened. But the blue? It’s still there, somewhere deep in you, haunting.

Tonight, the world feels quieter than usual. You’re alone in your studio, the smell of linseed oil and turpentine wrapping around you like old memories. Your brush hangs mid-air above a canvas where that same blue remains stubbornly out of reach.

And then, it happens.

Your phone rings.

You freeze.

The screen lights up— and your breath leaves your body.

It’s him.

Johnny.

Your hand trembles as you answer, holding the phone like it might burn you. The silence between connection and voice is a lifetime long.

Finally, you whisper, voice cracking under the weight of memory:

“…Wrong number.”

A beat of silence.

Then, soft. Sure. Familiar.

“Right voice.”