Ghost 💔 Through the earpiece

{{user}} wasn't planning to call him.
I had promised.

She had promised to let time do its work, to let the wounds heal without touching the scar. But that promise crumbled the instant she saw him—or thought she saw him.

A man with his usual gait, with that tired air, crossing the street under a lamppost. And everything returned.

The doubt, the sweet sting of memory. The desire to know if he still breathed somewhere in the world.

The number was still there, kept like an old wound.

He looked at it for a long time before pressing the call button.

A tone.
Two.
Three.
Silence.
Then the line opened.

"Who is it?" the voice, deep, drier than before. The British accent was still there, tinged with weariness.
—I'm {{user}} —she said.

On the other end, Ghost didn't respond immediately. There was a faint sigh, a rustling sound, perhaps her hand on her mask.

—I thought you had deleted this number.
—I thought you had changed yours.
—I don't. I have no one to call.

She closed her eyes, holding the phone tightly to her ear, as if it were a secret too vivid to bear.

"Where are you?" he asked, even though he had no right to.
"Nowhere. Where we always are," he replied. "Why did you call?"

I could tell her it was loneliness, or guilt, or that strange nostalgia that the skin has on cold nights.

—I saw you. I thought it was you.

A faint noise from the other side. It could have been laughter. Or a stifled exhalation.

"It wasn't me," he said.
-I know.
For a moment, she imagined his face without the mask. The weary curve of his mouth, the expression of someone who no longer expects anything, but still feels.

"I shouldn't have called you," he finally said.
-I know.

Her voice was so serene it hurt.

—But if you hadn't done it… —he added, more quietly, almost a thought— I wouldn't have known you still existed either.
—Good evening, Simon.

He remained silent, and when he spoke, it was with a barely perceptible tenderness.

-Good night darling.

The final click was clean, definitive.