Until There’s Something Darker

No one noticed when Theo stopped wearing color. Not right away.

It started with a black hoodie. Innocent enough.

Then came the jeans, the shirts, the shoes. Black on black. Like a walking eclipse. Even his coffee got darker. No more oat milk, just bitter, coal-colored brews that tasted like regret and insomnia.

And every day, that black hoodie.

But this wasn’t fashion.

It was mourning. For something still alive.

It had been 87 days since Mira left. Not that he was counting like some heartbroken cliché—but he was, actually. He kept a running tally in a notebook labeled “After.” Just one word on the cover. No subtitle. No flourish. Just After.

The pages were filled with messy entries:

• Day 6: Saw her favorite tea in the store. Bought it. Let it go cold.
• Day 19: Called her. Hung up after one ring.
• Day 47: Still wearing that hoodie. It smells like detergent now. Not her.

He was unraveling in slow motion. But beautifully, of course. The kind of heartbreak that made him look like a tortured indie musician, the kind that strangers assumed was artistic. Women still flirted with him at bars—drawn to the mystery, the melancholy. He always smiled politely, declined softly, and left early.

No one understood he wasn’t lonely. He was haunted.

Mira had once said he was a “beautiful mess,” a phrase he took as a compliment. In hindsight, she meant it more literally. Beautiful, yes. But a mess that leaked, exploded, dragged her down with it. He didn’t mean to be that way. He just didn’t know how to not be that way.

As soon as things felt real, he started breaking them. Testing love the way people test ice on a frozen lake—poking, tapping, stomping—until the inevitable crack.

He remembered the night she left. No fight. No shouting. Just Mira standing in the doorway with her favorite bag and eyes that looked like she’d already cried all her tears in advance. “I can’t fix you,” she said. “You don’t even want to be fixed.”

Then silence. Then footsteps. Then absence.

The next morning, the world looked the same. It was cruel, really. The sun still rose. People still walked their dogs. Birds still chirped. Didn’t they know Mira was gone?

He tried to numb it. Whisky. Smoke. Noise. Women. None of it stuck. Everything tasted like her memory. Everything felt like trying to hug a ghost.

One night, he found himself at the edge of the city, parked near the cliffs where they used to watch storms roll in. He sat there in the car, headlights off, radio humming static. He imagined what it would be like to let the grief take him all the way—just floor the gas and disappear over the edge.

He didn’t. But he didn’t drive away either. He sat there until morning. Watching the sky go from navy to blood-orange, daring it to mean something.

In his dreams, she still visited. Always in color. Bright yellow dresses, wild laughter, eyes full of everything he no longer had access to. He’d reach for her, say her name—but it always came out as a whisper she couldn’t hear. Then he’d wake up to the quiet hum of a world that no longer included her.

He wrote her letters he never sent.

He deleted photos but never the videos.

He listened to her voicemails on repeat, until her voice felt like both a lullaby and a knife.

And the worst part? She was happy now. Or at least that’s what her social media said. New haircut. New city. A dog. Sunlight in every photo. The kind of light he could never give her because he was always building storms.

He could’ve loved her better. Quieter. Kinder. But love, to Theo, had always been a thunderclap. And she had needed rain.

He wore black like a vow.

“I’ll wear it,” he whispered one night, drunk and shivering, “until there’s something darker.”

But there wasn’t.

Not really.

There was only memory. Regret. And the echo of the life he could’ve had if he’d only said the right thing sooner.

If he hadn’t been his own undoing.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he’d wake up and think he heard her humming from the kitchen. For a second, hope would flicker.

But then the silence would correct him.

And he’d remember:

She’s not coming back.

And nothing ever would.

So he kept wearing black.

Not out of style.

Out of grief.

Until the day came that even black wasn’t dark enough.

And when that day came—

No one noticed.

Just a hoodie left on a park bench.

And a world that kept turning.

As if love hadn’t just died.

Again.