The Weekends That Were Ours

 They were never officially together.

That was the strange part.

If anyone asked him about her, he would say, “She’s a friend.”

If anyone asked her about him, she would smile for half a second too long before saying the same thing.

But every Friday afternoon, she packed her camera bag.

And every Friday afternoon, he texted her:

Practice at four. You coming?

She always came.

He played soccer, and during practice she usually sat somewhere near the edge of the field with her camera beside her. She wasn't the kind of girl who spent two hours staring at him like the rest of the world had disappeared. She had her own little universe.

While he trained, she wandered.

She photographed the streets surrounding whatever town his team happened to be playing in—the bakery with fogged-up windows, bicycles leaning against old buildings, children chasing pigeons across a square, sunlight falling through church windows, strangers drinking coffee alone.

She filmed little clips for her vlog.

“Okay,” she'd whisper into the camera, “he has practice for another hour, so I'm exploring.”

Sometimes he'd spot her leaving the field with her camera and wonder where she was going.

And strangely, he liked that.

She wasn't waiting for him.

She was living beside him.

After practice, sweaty and exhausted, he'd find her again.

“What did you see?”

She would grin.

“You'll see at dinner.”

That became their ritual.

At some little restaurant that neither of them had researched beforehand, she'd put her phone between them and show him what she'd filmed.

A dog sleeping underneath a café table.

A street musician who forgot half the lyrics.

A tiny bookstore she'd discovered.

An old couple holding hands while crossing the road.

Then it was his turn.

He'd tell her about practice.

Who annoyed the coach.

Who missed an easy shot.

What formation they were trying.

How his legs felt.

Whether he thought he'd start in tomorrow's invitational.

Sometimes she understood absolutely nothing.

“So basically,” she'd say, stealing one of his fries, “you kicked a ball badly today.”

He'd stare at her.

“I am never explaining football to you again.”

“You say that every week.”

And he'd laugh.

Those dinners were where the danger began.

Because limerence doesn't necessarily grow from grand romantic gestures.

Sometimes it grows from ritual.

From anticipation.

From unpredictability mixed with intimacy.

From never knowing exactly what you are to someone while repeatedly experiencing moments that feel suspiciously like love.

Friday became associated with her.

Away games became associated with her.

Hotel breakfasts.

Train stations.

Her camera battery dying.

Her stealing food from his plate.

Her voice saying, Tell me what happened.

And because they weren't officially together, neither of them ever became ordinary to the other.

There were no arguments about laundry.

No discussions about bills.

No boring Tuesday evenings.

Their relationship existed almost entirely in highlights.

That made it intoxicating.

She saw him when adrenaline was still running through his body after matches.

He saw her when she'd spent the afternoon discovering something new.

They were repeatedly meeting each other at heightened emotional moments.

And the brain remembers intensity.

After games, he searched the crowd for her without admitting that he was searching.

Sometimes she was behind the camera.

Sometimes she wasn't filming at all.

She was simply watching him.

Those were the moments that stayed with him.

After one invitational, his team lost badly.

Everyone else told him the usual things.

You'll get them next time.

Bad luck.

Shake it off.

She didn't.

At dinner she quietly pushed his plate toward him because he'd barely touched his food.

Then she said,

“Tell me which part hurts.”

He looked at her.

“The loss?”

“No.”

She tapped her finger lightly against his chest.

“That part.”

And somehow he told her everything.

Not just about soccer.

About disappointing people.

About feeling like he was running out of time.

About how terrified he was that maybe he wasn't as good as everyone thought.

She listened.

That's when attachment slipped underneath attraction.

Because now she wasn't only associated with excitement.

She became associated with relief.

And relief can become addictive.

But they still never defined anything.

That uncertainty intensified everything.

A delayed reply could ruin an afternoon.

A sudden I miss you could make an entire week.

A hand on the small of her back meant too much.

A night when he seemed distant became something she replayed repeatedly.

Limerence thrives in that space between having someone and almost having them.

The mind fills uncertainty with imagination.

She imagined what it would be like if these weekends became their normal life.

He imagined coming home from practice and finding her editing videos at his kitchen table.

Neither said it.

Because saying it would force the fantasy to become a decision.

And decisions can be rejected.

Possibility cannot.

Then one weekend she couldn't come.

He told himself it wouldn't matter.

It was one match.

But after practice he reached for his phone automatically.

Nothing.

At dinner, his teammates were loud around him.

Someone told a story.

Everyone laughed.

He laughed too.

But something felt wrong.

Nobody asked him what happened during his day.

Nobody showed him photographs of theirs.

And for the first time, he understood that somewhere along the way, she had become the person he mentally returned to.

The following weekend she came again.

He saw her walking toward the field with her camera bouncing against her hip.

His entire mood changed before she'd even reached him.

That should have told him everything.

Instead, he teased her.

“Finally decided to show up?”

She smiled.

“Missed me?”

He could have said yes.

He should have said yes.

Instead:

“Maybe.”

And she rolled her eyes.

That single word would haunt him later.

Because eventually the weekends ended.

Not dramatically.

That was almost worse.

Life changed.

Schedules changed.

Messages became less frequent.

One of them began protecting themselves.

Then the other did too.

There was never a spectacular breakup because there had never been an official relationship to break.

Just one weekend when they didn't see each other.

Then another.

Then another.

Months later, he could talk about former girlfriends without feeling much.

Those relationships had beginnings, anniversaries, arguments and endings.

His mind knew where to file them.

But her?

She remained unfinished.

He'd travel for a match and pass some tiny café and immediately think:

She would've photographed that.

Someone would steal a fry from his plate and he'd remember her.

After a particularly good game, his first instinct would still occasionally be:

Wait until I tell—

And then he'd remember.

There was no one waiting for the story anymore.

Years later, she found an old memory card.

She plugged it into her computer.

There were hundreds of forgotten clips.

Cobblestone streets.

Coffee shops.

Rain against train windows.

His teammates warming up in the distance.

Then one video started playing.

She had accidentally left the camera recording on a restaurant table.

Neither of them knew.

He was sitting across from her, laughing while telling some ridiculous story about practice.

Then the girl behind the camera—her younger self—laughed too.

And suddenly he stopped talking.

He just looked at her.

Not casually.

Not like a friend.

Like someone trying to memorize a person while they were still sitting in front of him.

She froze the video.

For years she had wondered whether she'd imagined it.

Whether the intensity had existed mostly inside her own head.

But there it was.

Three seconds of him looking at her when he didn't know he was being filmed.

She whispered to the empty room,

“You idiot.”

She didn't know whether she meant him or herself.

Maybe both.

Because the tragedy wasn't that they hadn't loved each other.

It was that neither had ever demanded an answer from the other.

And perhaps that's why they remained unforgettable.

They never stayed together long enough to become disappointing.

Never stayed long enough for fantasy to collide completely with reality.

Instead, each carried an idealized version of the other through adulthood—the photographer wandering unfamiliar towns while he practiced, the footballer looking toward the sideline to see whether she'd returned.

They had become each other's unfinished possibility.

And sometimes that is harder to grieve than a relationship.

You can mourn something that ended.

But an almost leaves the mind asking a question for years:

What would have happened if one of us had simply said, “I want you to stay”?