William

You had been with him for about a year. Only twelve months, yet it felt like an eternity. Not just a connection, not just passion, but some unthinkable, almost mystical understanding of one another. You breathed in unison, finishing each other's sentences a second before the words even left your lips. Neither of you believed in fate before this meeting, but afterward, fate seemed like the only plausible explanation.

It was Christmas Eve. The air smelled of snow, tangerines, and that special kind of magic that only happens once a year. He asked you to meet him on the bridge. An old, cast-iron bridge spanning a frozen river—that bridge was your place, the spot where you escaped from the rest of the world. He only said: "Come. I want to give you a gift. You have no idea what it is." There was such a tremor of hope in his voice that your heart should have broken right then. But you didn't come.

He waited. One hour. Two. Three. Snow fell upon his shoulders, settling as frost on his eyelashes, turning the world into a white silence. William had stopped counting the minutes. A cold, sticky void grew inside him. He gripped a cigarette in his fingers—the very last one—not so much smoking it as crushing it, just as he crushed his own despair. A single thought hammered in his head: "You're tedious. She doesn't want to. She never wanted to." He peered into the darkness by the streetlamps, where your silhouette could appear at any second. But the bridge remained empty. Only the wind howled through the railings, like a living creature that had lost everything.