It was raining when you finally opened the notebook. The one he gave you. It still smelled faintly like him—like cologne and beach air and the trace of a summer long gone. You had kept it tucked away for months. Like maybe if you didn’t open it, you wouldn’t have to admit he was really gone.

Three months. Three months of nothing. Of silence so sharp it felt like a wound. Of trying to unlearn a name you used to whisper like a prayer.

But tonight… something in the air cracked open.

The first page was still blank. So you touched pen to paper, and for the first time since he left, you let yourself write his name.

Rafe.

And just like that, the dam broke.

“And I remember when i met him…It was so clear that he was the only one for me. We both knew it. Right away. And as the years went on, things got more difficult, and we were faced with more challenges, I begged him to stay, tried to remember what we had in the beginning.”

The memories hit harder than expected. Late nights on the beach. His voice at 2 a.m. whispering that you were it for him. The way he’d look at you like nothing else mattered.

“He was charismatic. Magnetic. Electric. And everybody knew him. When he walked in, every woman’s head turned. Everyone stood up to talk to him.”

Your heartbeat echoed in your ears. You could still see it—the way he lit up a room without meaning to. And the way, somehow, his gaze always found you in the crowd. Like you were his grounding wire in a life too big for his own skin.

“He was like this hybrid, this mix of a man who couldn’t contain himself. I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him. And in that way, I understood him. And I loved him, I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.”

Tears blurred your vision.

You stared at the page. Rain dripped down the windows. And for the first time in three months, the silence didn’t feel like a stranger.

It felt like he was yours again.