You know those random little routines in college that somehow become the highlight of your day? For me, it was sharing a cab with him. He wasn’t my boyfriend, not even someone I could really call a friend, just a boy who made an ordinary commute feel worth anticipating.
Every morning and evening, the universe handed me forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes to sit across from him, to act as if I wasn’t sneaking glances, to let the silence stretch between us in a way that felt oddly comforting. His voice became the soundtrack to traffic jams, his laugh turned the honking chaos into something almost cinematic. And me, being the hopeless romantic I am, spun every ride into a secret little story.
It was a one-sided crush, the kind that makes you overanalyze every small thing. A smile that lingered too long, a joke shared while stuck at a red light, those accidental moments of eye contact that stayed with me way longer than they should have. To him, I was probably just another cab mate. To me, he was already the main character of a Wattpad story I’d written in my head.
And then one day, poof-he wasn’t there. No goodbye, no “last ride,” nothing. His timetable shifted, mine didn’t. Suddenly the seat across from me was empty, and the cab rides went back to being quiet. But this time the silence wasn’t peaceful, it was hollow. It’s strange how someone can go from being a small but steady part of your day to just another face you pass on campus.
Here’s what I realized though — not every story is meant to last. Some exist just to be experienced. Maybe his role in my life was simply to make a mundane routine feel special for a while. To remind me that even one-sided love can be beautiful, because it’s not always about forever. Sometimes it’s about fleeting warmth, stolen glances, and the thrill of something that only lives inside your head.
Now when I think of him, it’s not with sadness, it’s with a bittersweet smile. Sure, I sometimes wish the story had ended differently. But there’s something I love about the fact that it stayed unfinished. It makes it uniquely mine. He may never know how much those rides meant to me, but that’s okay. Not every story needs an audience. Some are just quiet chapters you carry with you, whispered only to yourself; unfinished, unspoken, but unforgettable.
My story ended in silence, but it left me with a reminder that even a one-sided story can make your world a little brighter, for however long it lasts.
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