The Call I Had Been Waiting For Two Years

It was a regular Thursday afternoon. I was sipping lukewarm coffee and aimlessly scrolling through my phone when I saw it—his name, lighting up my screen like a ghost I thought I had buried.

Two years. That’s how long it had been since we last spoke. Not even a “happy birthday” or “how are you?” He had vanished without warning, like smoke, and all he left behind was an unanswered silence. I had stopped expecting anything a long time ago—or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

My thumb hovered over the screen as the phone vibrated. My chest felt tight. I wasn’t sure if I was about to throw up or cry. Maybe both.

I answered.

“Hello?”

For a moment, all I heard was silence. Then came the voice I used to know better than my own thoughts.

“Hey… it’s me.”

I wanted to scream, laugh, and hang up all at once. But I stayed quiet. Maybe because part of me still needed this. Maybe because I had rehearsed this call a thousand times in my head.

“I wasn’t sure you’d pick up,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“I know it’s been long. Too long. I’ve thought about calling so many times…”

I finally found my voice.

“Then why didn’t you?”

There it was—two years of confusion packed into one short sentence.

He sighed.

“Because I was ashamed. Because I didn’t know how to explain why I left the way I did. Because I knew I’d hurt you.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the couch, the pain from those early days suddenly flooding back like it had just happened yesterday.

“You could’ve said something. Anything. But you chose silence.”

There was a pause. I could hear cars in the background on his end. Life had gone on for both of us, just in very different directions.

“I know. And I don’t expect you to forgive me. I just… I had to call. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I think about you every day.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, not because I still loved him—I had moved on—but because this version of him, this apologetic, broken version, was the closure I never thought I’d get.

“I waited for this call for so long,” I whispered.

“I used to cry myself to sleep wondering what I did wrong.”

“You did nothing wrong,” he said quickly. “It was all me. I got scared. I didn’t know how to love you properly.”

There it was—honesty. Raw and late, but still, it mattered.

We talked for twenty minutes. About nothing and everything. About the dog we almost adopted, about the apartment we never moved into, about the future we once pictured but never got to live.

And when the call ended, I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel broken. I felt light. Like I had finally exhaled after holding my breath for two whole years.

Sometimes closure doesn’t come in a perfect package. Sometimes it’s a phone call on a random Thursday, from a name you tried to forget but never really could.

And sometimes, that’s enough.