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the time they spent together, not even to ask him if he
remembers when she mentioned that internship she was
thinking about applying for. She will say it like it is new, like it
is information he never knew, because it is. Everything will be
new. She will not want it that way. She will not know how to
make it better.

She will not speak to him when she is drunk. Every time
she feels that third rum and Coke starting to kick in, she will
stare at his name on the screen of her phone, and she will
want to type something to him, and she will know she cannot.
She will think that this is a sign of progress. She will think,
people drunk-text people who they are not over; she will
never text him, and that must mean she is getting over him.
She is wrong. It means she will never be able to, and it means
that even through the ripples of intoxication, she knows that
some wounds ought not be reopened.

It will fade. The sharpness will heal to a dull ache, and
someday it will only hurt when prodded. There will be other
men who wash up on her shore, other lost travelers. Maybe,
eventually, one of them will stay. As she was not the end of his
journey, he will not be the end of hers. But the scars he left,
those will stay, and sometimes, she will stare out across the
wine-dark seas of her past and think of him.

She will never be able to hate him for leaving. She will
know that he only travels home again.

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