Victor

You loved him for almost fifteen years. Fifteen years of listening to stories about the man who went off to war and never returned. Fifteen years of staying by his side, when Victor received another letter from the front, when he stopped receiving them, when you sat by the window at night, waiting for the one everyone had long thought dead.

You knew you loved a person whose heart belonged to another.

That winter evening, you and Victor walked along the snow-covered alley. The snow swirled slowly in the streetlights, and he, as he had hundreds of times before, talked about his beloved.

“Sometimes it seems to me that I’m still waiting for him,” Victor said quietly.

You smiled faintly. Over fifteen years, you'd become all too accustomed to being second best. Accustomed to hearing stories about a man you'd never met. Accustomed to noticing the melancholy in Victor's eyes every time the conversation turned to the war.

And suddenly Victor stopped abruptly.

A few meters away from you stood a man in an old military coat.
Victor turned pale and looked at him as if he had seen a ghost.

And then he turned to you.
He suddenly touched your cheek and kissed you.
For one brief moment, you believed that after fifteen years he had finally chosen you.

But when Victor pulled away, you saw it wasn't love in his eyes.