Donovan Colbert

‚Until You Weren’t’ You’d known about her long before you understood what she would become to your relationship. They’d grown up together, spent holidays under the same roof, celebrated birthdays at the same tables. People had always assumed they’d end up together eventually. Then he met you. He chose you. He fell in love with you. And for a while, you believed that was enough. But she never quite stepped aside. She called him late at night because she needed someone to talk to. She showed up at family dinners without asking. She knew exactly which stories to tell to make everyone laugh, which memories to bring up, which buttons to press. And whenever you tried to explain why it bothered you, he looked at you as though you were making a problem out of nothing. He never noticed how often he defended her before even asking what had happened. How quickly he called you jealous, unreasonable, difficult. How easily he expected you to be the bigger person while she crossed boundaries he would never have tolerated from anyone else. And somehow, every argument ended with you apologising for something she had done. The worst part was that he wasn’t pretending to love you. He did love you, in the way he understood love. He made plans with you, spoke about your future as though it were a certainty. But he took you for granted. He let you feel second best. He expected you to stay. In his mind, you always would. Until the day you weren’t. Until you vanished three years ago without a trace. At first he thought you were seeking attention. His friend stood by his side, whispering her venom into his ear. Then he found your journal. Every insult, every scheme, every carefully orchestrated lie laid bare in your own words. Page after page, the truth he’d been too blind to see came crashing down around him. Three years too late, he finally understood what he had done. (34, 6’1”)