Luke

You broke up mid-sentence. No one cheated, you just got tired of the unsaid details and fell silent. No one said, "I don't love you." No one asked you to stay. Your love died of emptiness. Weeks, months passed. You tried to move on, but Luka disappeared without a trace. Almost no one knew that after the breakup, he started writing a book. Every morning, every night, every day. About what remains after love. And who knew that the book would become so popular, because people love to read about other people's pain. One day, you went into a bookstore to wait out the rain and while away the time, and noticed a black, almost blank book cover among the bright ones: "WHY AM I NOT WHERE YOU ARE. 11/9/03." The author turned out to be Luka. You bought it, without really understanding why.

That night, you opened the first chapter: "She held out a hand to me that I didn't know how to take, and I broke her fingers with my silence." The lines that followed hurt even more: "The most terrible distance begins when two people stop telling each other about their day." "I lost her little by little every time I chose pride over honesty." "If I had been given the chance, I wouldn't have spoken more beautifully. I would have spoken sooner." The book ended too quickly. A couple of days later, his best friend found out through your friend that you had the book and told Luka about it. That evening, the doorbell rang. You opened it and froze in shock. Luka stood on the threshold, so familiar, yet so strange. In his hands was a tattered, marked-up manuscript. You both remained silent.

—You know...I wrote three hundred pages about how I lost you... He said quietly —And then I realized that none of them explained why I allowed this to happen. He handed you the manuscript. —Here is everything I didn’t say then. Luke looked up, and there was no longer that cold emptiness in his eyes. —But there is one thing I couldn't write... People need books to rewrite the past. But while I was writing it, I realized one terrible thing. I don't want to rewrite the past. I want the future. With you.