The Last Text I Never Sent

We met in the most unexpected way—on a delayed train. He sat beside me with a backpack covered in band patches and a crooked smile. He asked if I liked The Smiths. I said I didn’t know who that was. He laughed and said he’d make me a playlist.

An hour turned into three, and before we arrived in Islamabad, I had given him my number. His name was Eesa. He had warm eyes and a calm energy that made me feel instantly safe.

Our chats were endless, filled with memes, dreams, music links, and late-night truths. We were both in our early twenties, still figuring life out, but we understood each other in a way no one else ever had. We shared stories about our childhoods, our parents, our fears. He told me about his dream to start a music blog, I told him about my fear of growing old alone. Somehow, nothing felt off-limits.

We never labeled what we were. Friends? More than friends? Lovers without the complications? Maybe all of it. Maybe none. We were something that made sense only to us.

He once texted, “You’re my soft place. My favorite pause in a loud life.”

I never replied to that message. I didn't know how to. I read it again and again for hours, heart racing, fingers hovering above the keyboard. But no words came.

Time passed, and we both got busy. He moved to Karachi for work. I started a new job in Rawalpindi. The distance wasn’t kind. Fewer calls. Shorter replies. He stopped sending voice notes. I stopped asking why. Silence grew like a wall between us, and we let it stand.

Then one day, I saw him tagged in a post with someone else. A girl. She was beautiful, and they looked happy. Her caption read: "With my favorite person." My stomach sank.

I drafted a message that read, “I’m happy for you. Just wish I had the courage to say I loved you before she did.”

But I never sent it. I couldn’t. Pride? Fear? Both, maybe.

Weeks passed. I deleted our chat. I blocked him on Instagram. I muted his number so I wouldn’t be tempted to text during weak moments. I pretended I was over it. I forced myself to laugh at parties, to swipe on dating apps, to smile in pictures. But none of it felt real.

Months later, a mutual friend told me he’d been in an accident. A fatal one. He died instantly. They said he was on his way to surprise his girlfriend.

I didn’t cry at first. I just sat in silence, staring at the wall. My friend kept talking, but the words stopped making sense. I kept thinking about the last message I never replied to. The playlist he never sent. The time we wasted dancing around feelings.

That night, I opened my Notes app and found that unsent message. I cried for hours. Not because he loved someone else, but because I had never told him what he meant to me. Because I waited too long.

Regret is a quiet kind of grief. It doesn’t scream. It whispers in the middle of the night when you least expect it. It shows up when you hear a song he loved, or when someone mentions Karachi, or when you're on a train and the seat beside you is empty.

Every now and then, I open our old messages and re-read our conversations. His texts feel like echoes from a life that could’ve been. A version of us that only existed in the space between what was said and what was felt.

I imagine sometimes what might have happened if I’d just told him. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe he would’ve said it back. Maybe we would’ve tried to make it work. Maybe we would’ve failed. But at least I wouldn’t be left wondering.

Love isn’t always loud. Sometimes it lives in the silence. In the pauses. In the words never spoken.

If I could go back, I’d send the message. I’d tell him he was my soft place too.

Because sometimes, the things we don’t say haunt us louder than anything else ever could.