​Edinburgh

I’m the one who suggests the night away, but he’s the one who suggests Edinburgh.

I don’t want to go to Edinburgh.

Edinburgh is where you went with her. Your new girl. The one who I still think of as your ‘new girl’ despite the fact you’ve been with her longer than we were ever together.

You posted pictures of your trip on social media, back before you were blocked. She wasn’t in any of the pictures, but there’s a couple that she took of you. You don’t seem to be having as much fun as you used to with me, and I’m not just saying that. I have so many pictures of you still on my phone, where you’re doing goofy things, making me laugh. You’re not doing anything goofy on the pictures you posted of your trip with her though. They all look so serious.

There’s a lyric in a Noah Kahan song, “I’m no longer funny, because I miss the way you laugh”, and I wonder if that’s why you seem to have lost some of your humour. Maybe you were only silly to make me smile, and now I’m not around you’ve lost your motivation.

Or maybe I’m reading too far into it – trying to make myself the leading lady of your story instead of just a footnote.

I don’t want to go to Edinburgh, but he seems enthusiastic and I don’t want to burst his bubble by saying “well, actually, the love of my life took the girl he chose instead of me there and so I’d rather avoid it”. So, we go to Edinburgh.

We don’t really speak on the train there. He’s hungover from a night in the pub with his friends, and I’m annoyed that he spent the night in the pub with his friends the day before our trip, so I look out of the window while he rests his head on the table.

I think about when you and I got the train together. It only happened once and it was only a twenty minute trip. We were both hungover, but you continued to make jokes and make me smile. When we got off the train and went our separate ways, you hugged me and I clung to you in a way I don’t cling to people who are just my friends. I couldn’t help thinking that you don’t hug your friends like that either, like they’re a buoy in a rough ocean you’re not sure you’ll make it out of alive.

But neither of us said anything about it, both too afraid of destabilising the equilibrium we’d created.

A lot of good that did us.

The first place he and I go when we get to the city is to the castle. As I’m looking at the view, I realise I recognise it. On one of the pictures you posted, you’re standing right here!

You’re smiling in the picture, but your teeth aren’t showing and your eyes look dull. In the pictures I took of you, you always had a wide smile illuminating your face, your teeth showing, creases by your eyes, and a light that could make even the darkest night seem bright. When I saw the picture of you, the one she took, I wanted to send you a comparison. I wanted to say, Look! You don’t look as happy when she’s the one behind the camera! You should be with me instead!. But what good would that do?

Here, with him, he steps away from the wall to move on to the next part of the castle. He doesn’t take a picture of me or of the view, like he doesn’t want to document this moment.

You might not be as happy with her, but you still must be happy, at least a little. When you were here, something at least made you want to capture the moment, so you could look back on it in the future.

I step away from the wall without taking out my camera.

We go to a pub in the evening. It’s a quaint, cosy place, with a sign saying it opened in the 1800s. I wonder if you came here with her and whether or not you liked it. I would have liked to have come here with you, to sit nestled in a corner, people-watching and talking about everything and nothing all at once.

He doesn’t say much the whole evening. I keep rambling on about anything that comes to mind, trying to fill the silence, but he doesn’t bite at any of the topics. His phone is on the table between us and keeps buzzing, he glances at it every time it does, and I feel my patience waning.

You never used to look at your phone when we were together. You once said your friend had complained about it, “you never reply when you’re with her”. I had felt bad, had assured you that you could still message people when you were with me. “I know I can,” you had said, “I just kind of forget that other people exist when I’m with you.”

He doesn’t seem to have that problem. As soon as I finish my sentence he picks up his phone, and I sigh and look around the room. I have given up trying to make conversation, have resigned myself to a quiet night.

So, I people-watch alone while he scrolls on his phone. I think of things that I would have said to you. I think about what you and her talked about when you were here – I’ve somehow decided that you *did* come to this pub, with no proof to back it up – and half an hour later I decide I’m bored. “We can just go back to the room,” I say. It’s early enough that a lot of people wouldn’t have even gone out yet, never mind be calling it a night. “I’m tired anyway.” It’s not quite a lie.

On the walk back to the hotel, I wrap my arms around myself, trying to preserve heat in the chilly northern wind.

There was a night when you and I met up in a city in the middle of our hometowns. We stayed in the pub till it closed, then went to a club, then another club, and at 4am we stumbled back to our hotel (separate rooms, of course, we couldn’t disturb that equilibrium). We’d been together well over 12 hours and still hadn’t run out of things to say – we never did. We’d danced and danced in the clubs, having as much fun as we would have if all our friends were there. And as I shivered on the walk to the hotel, with warm cheeks and loose lips, you took off your jacket to wrap around me.

“I love this jacket,” I’d said. “you’ve worn it since we met. It’s a part of you now, inextricably.”

“I’ve actually been thinking of getting a new one,” you’d said, and I gasped, outraged at the idea.

“You can’t!”

You laughed. “Change is good,” you said. “It means we’re growing.”

I tugged the jacket tighter around myself, taking a deep breath so that your scent would reach my nose. I wish there was a way to capture other senses. You can take pictures of what you see, you can record what you hear, but how can you bottle the scent of your safe place, your home?

“I don’t like change,” I said. “Sometimes things are just right and changing things ruins it.”

You didn’t reply, and looking back, I wonder if you knew her then. Your new girl. I wonder if you’d just met her, the first person you could envision replacing me with. I wonder if our conversation wasn’t about your jacket, but about us. Because we were inextricably linked too before she came along. I was as much a part of you as that jacket was, in my eyes at least. But maybe you knew, even then, that it was time to move on, time to grow.

When we’d got back to the hotel, your room on the left and mine on the right, I’d almost pulled you in for a kiss. I’d been thinking about it all evening, but I hadn’t managed to pluck up the courage, to draw attention to the string that bound us together, that had bound us together since we’d met. Not even alcohol could make me brave enough to risk losing you. Life without you would be empty, I’d be lost, and tugging on the string that bound us wouldn’t help me find my way home. Who would lead me back to safety when I lost my way?

In my hesitation, you smiled at me, “night.” You turned and walked to your room.

But it was fine, it was all fine. I still had you in my life, you were still my person. I just couldn’t risk something bringing an end to that. Being greedy wasn’t worth it. There was too much at stake. Having you as my friend was enough.

But I’m not there anymore. I’m in Edinburgh, with him. He’s asleep, and I slip out of bed and make my way to the couch. I pull my knees up to my chest, wrap my arms around them while silent tears roll down my cheeks.

What we had was a once in a lifetime thing. Some people aren’t lucky enough to experience it at all. It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Is it? Because this loss feels too deep, it feels like I’ll never feel whole again. No one is enough to fill the gap you left, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t to you what you were to me. I was replaceable. You filled the absence of me with her. But you left a void in me, a black hole that destroys everything that gets close. Everyone that gets near me gets sucked in, crushed till they’re microscopic compared to you, and the void in me remains. It’s destroying me, tearing me apart bit by bit, making me an empty shell of who I once was.

Isn’t it ironic? What I really need right now is someone with eyes bright enough to light up even the darkest night, who can light up this black hole in me?

What I need is the very person who did this to me in this first place.