A Love So Broken

The first time Nathan saw Olivia, she was sitting alone in a coffee shop in downtown Chicago, stirring a cappuccino she never drank. He was just another lost soul trying to find meaning in a city too big to care. He wanted to speak to her, to say something poetic or memorable, but all he could muster was a clumsy, "Hey, you okay?"

She had looked up at him then, her hazel eyes filled with a sadness so profound it made his breath hitch. "I’m fine," she had replied, her voice barely above a whisper.

Of course, she wasn’t fine. Nathan had known that from the start.

A Love So Unexpected

They met again, by chance—or maybe by fate—when he spilled his coffee on her sketchbook a week later. Olivia had stared at the ruined pages with a blank expression before shrugging. "It’s fine," she had said. "I wasn’t drawing anything important."

But Nathan had seen the sketches before the coffee washed them away. A woman crying in the rain. A man standing at the edge of a bridge. A couple kissing under dim streetlights but looking like they were about to break apart.

"Let me make it up to you," he had offered.

She hesitated, then nodded. "Okay."

And just like that, Olivia and Nathan became something. Not quite friends, not quite lovers—just two people tethered by their own loneliness, orbiting each other in a city that swallowed people whole.

A Love So Real

For months, they existed in a fragile kind of happiness. Nathan would take Olivia to small diners at midnight, where they’d share pancakes and talk about everything except themselves. She would drag him to the art museum, where she’d stand for hours staring at paintings that made her cry.

"Why do you like sad things so much?" he asked once, watching as she traced a finger over a portrait of a woman clutching a letter.

She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. "Because sadness is honest."

And Nathan had understood. He, too, had his own sadness—his own past he never spoke of.

But Olivia never asked, and he never told.

A Love So Fragile

One evening, as they lay in bed, Olivia traced patterns on his chest with her fingers. "Do you ever think about leaving?" she whispered.

"Leaving what?" he asked, though he already knew.

She sighed. "This. Me."

Nathan propped himself up on his elbow, looking at her as if he could memorize her face and etch it into his bones. "No. Never."

She smiled at him then, in a way that made his heart ache. Because deep down, he knew Olivia never believed in permanence.

And he was right.

A Love So Broken

One day, she was just gone.

Her apartment was empty. Her phone was disconnected. The coffee shop where they first met had no idea where she’d gone. It was as if Olivia had been a ghost all along, slipping through his fingers like smoke.

Nathan searched for her. For months. He asked everyone. Checked every hospital, every shelter, every place she might have gone to hide. But Olivia had vanished, leaving nothing behind except a single sketch taped to his door—

A man standing alone in the rain, looking for something he would never find.

Nathan knew then that he had loved her more than she had ever been able to love herself.

And maybe, just maybe, that had been the most tragic part of all.