chapter 2 the Way He Vanished part 1

Neon never said goodbye.

He just disappeared.

One day he was there—sitting on the edge of the fountain, flicking pebbles into the water like he was trying to erase something. The next, he was gone. No message. No warning. Just silence, like a door closing in a dream.

I waited for him that Friday. I sat on the same bench, headphones in, pretending not to look for him. But I was. Every shadow that moved, every footstep that echoed down the path—I thought it might be him.

It never was.

I told myself he was just late. Then I told myself he was busy. Then I told myself I didn’t care.

But I did.

I cared in the way you care about a song that ends too soon. In the way you keep replaying the last note, hoping it’ll sound different this time.

The days stretched out like threadbare ribbon.

I started seeing him in places he’d never been. In the reflection of a café window. In the back of a bookstore. In the way someone else touched their lips when they were thinking.

But it was never him.

It was just the ghost of him, stitched into the fabric of my days.

I started writing again. Not poems, not really. Just fragments. Sentences that felt like bruises. Words that tasted like him.

He was the silence I never learned to live with.

He left fingerprints on my thoughts.

Some people leave. He lingered.

I didn’t know what I was writing. Maybe a letter. Maybe a confession. Maybe a map back to the version of me that existed before him.

If that version even existed at all.

I stopped going to the fountain.

It felt too much like waiting. And I hated waiting for someone who didn’t want to be found.

Instead, I walked different streets. Sat in different cafés. Listened to different music. I tried to rewrite my habits, hoping it would rewrite my heart.

But it didn’t.

Neon had carved himself into places I didn’t expect. The way I stirred my tea. The way I paused before answering a question. The way I looked at the sky and wondered if he was looking too.

He was everywhere.

And nowhere.

It was two weeks before I saw him again.

I was walking home from class, the sky bruised with sunset, when I heard someone say my name.

Not loudly. Just enough to stop me.

I turned, and there he was—Neon, standing under a flickering streetlight like he’d stepped out of a memory. His hair was longer. His eyes were tired. But it was him.

And I hated how my heart reacted. Like it had been waiting for this moment the whole time.

“Hey,” he said.

That was all.

Just hey.

Like he hadn’t vanished. Like he hadn’t left me wondering if I’d imagined him.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My throat was full of all the things I wanted to scream.

He looked down, then back at me. “I’m sorry.”

Two words. That’s all he gave me.

But they cracked something open.

We sat on the curb, knees almost touching, silence between us again. But this time, it wasn’t peaceful. It was sharp. It buzzed.

“I had to go,” he said finally. “I didn’t want to. But I had to.”

“Why?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. Just stared at the ground like the truth was written there.

“I break things,” he said. “People. Moments. I didn’t want to break you.”

I laughed. Not because it was funny. But because it hurt.

“You think disappearing didn’t break me?”

He flinched. “I thought it would be better than staying and ruining everything.”

“You already ruined everything,” I said. “By leaving.”

He nodded. “I know.”

And then he did something I didn’t expect.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was creased and worn, like it had been opened and closed a hundred times.

He handed it to me.

“I wrote this,” he said. “The night I left. I didn’t send it. I didn’t think I had the right.”

I took it with shaking hands.

I don’t know how to say goodbye to someone I never really had.

You were never mine. But you were everything.

I’m leaving because I’m scared. Not of you. Of me.

Of what I become when I care too much.

I ruin things. I ruin people. I don’t want to ruin you.

So I’m going.

Not because I want to.

Because I have to.

—N

I read it twice. Then a third time.

And then I tore it in half.

He looked startled.

“You don’t get to write endings,” I said. “Not alone.”

He looked at me, really looked at me, and for the first time, I saw it—the fear. The softness. The hope.

“I don’t want to be a chapter you skip,” he said.

“Then don’t be,” I whispered.

We walked together after that.

Not toward anything. Just away from the curb, away from the moment, away from the version of us that had been sitting in silence.

The city was quiet. The kind of quiet that feels earned. Like the world had exhaled and was waiting for something to happen.

Neon walked with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slightly hunched, like he was trying to make himself smaller. I wanted to reach out, to straighten him, to remind him he didn’t have to hide.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I asked, “Where did you go?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just kept walking, his steps slow and deliberate.

“Nowhere,” he said eventually. “Everywhere.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

I didn’t push. I knew better than to chase ghosts.

We ended up at the bridge.

It wasn’t far, just a few blocks from the park. But it felt like another world. The water below was dark and restless, reflecting the city lights in broken patterns. Neon leaned against the railing, staring down like he was trying to find something he’d lost.

“I used to come here when I was a kid,” he said. “Before everything got loud.”

“What got loud?”

He hesitated. “Life.”

I nodded. I understood that.

“Do you ever wish you could go back?” I asked.

He didn’t look at me. “All the time.”

“What would you change?”

He turned then, his eyes meeting mine. “I wouldn’t leave.”

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