An old fling.

I lie in bed, wiling away a Friday evening with only a good book for company. This city has somehow made me a homebody (perhaps it’s the comfort of the garden view from my room) and I’ve grown to enjoy it.

Sometimes I take a break from reading to doomscroll through my Instagram feed. I linger over photos of an old fling with his current partner. They look good together, and happy, and I’m happy for them.

One of the photos – black and white, collared shirts and ties, heads against each other, smiling – reminds me of those old wartime photos you sometimes find of two men known to the public as “great friends” but who were almost certainly more than that. It’s something in that suggestive glint in the eye, or the hint of a secret hidden in the upward curl of a smile.

A younger version of me likely would have been jealous from these photos – would have blazed against the injustice of not having that companionship for myself; would have wondered, “Why not me? What makes them more deserving?”

But I long ago traded in my envy for contentment, and a more optimistic view of the rest of my life. I do not know what comes next for me, but I wait for it happily, expectantly, and with some indelible hope.

I am no longer afraid of being alone. I know that out there exists scores of people – legions of them – who are wrong for me, and I’m willing to wait for the single one who might be right. And if that person never comes, that’s okay. I have enough love – and enough of it to give – to go the rest of my life with a smile on my face too.

There is beauty in life’s twists and turns. There is always so much more to see – to do, to feel, to be.