Laila, now completely hidden among her friends and sisters, cried.

  This was supposed to be her luckiest day, and yet Ian, without knowing, made it the most miserable.

  “Why did you even have your hopes up? My dear Laila, you said you didn’t care,” Phoebe, her 40-something girlfriend, said.

  # Will Ian come or won’t he?

  Ian managed to ruin her ceremony with his arrogance, but she didn’t intend to let it go halfway ruined.

  She had to spoil the rest of the night for Ian’s sake as well.

  Luckily, Laila had preserved some logic cells in her brain. She didn’t explicitly explain to Thomas who they waited for until 4 a.m. in the morning.

  It was the term used for those charming guys whom girls call to feel better after fuckboys beat their egos to the ground. They are not in the friend zone. Pocket boys are boyfriend materials. Laila and her girlfriends would contact pocket boys only when they needed a big favor or an ego boost, until they got over those cold-hearted bastards and knew better how to deal with real men who have healthy boundaries.

  He could be on a plane and be late. Maybe that’s why he’s late. Laila kept looking for valid excuses for Ian. Even though Ian himself never bothered to give her an explanation. She always understood him. In a way, Laila was a pocket girl for Ian, a glorified booty call.

  This time, if Ian appeared, Laila would shout and spat. She would make a scene that he well deserved and was always scared of. Fuckboys are scared of drama.

  The venue closed its doors to Thomas and Laila. They were asked to courteously get out.

  Thomas and Laila sat outside on the bench before the hotel’s entrance for an arduous wait.

  After a while, Thomas brought a plaid blanket from his car to Laila.

  “I bet you have a survival kit for every occasion,” she said.

  He treats me like his baby. That’s what I always wished Ian to be, Laila thought as she kept eyeing him for the first time seriously. Thomas warmed Laila’s hands in his palms as she shivered from the cold. Slowly, she came to her senses, understanding who truly deserved the love she had.

  Laila kept shivering, as a response to the deadly cold weather outside.

  “Let me take you home,” Thomas said.

  She shrugged.

  “Look, I don’t care who you wait for here, but I don’t want you to get sick. Let’s at least sit in the car,” he added.

  “No. What if he comes and doesn’t see me here? You don’t know him,” Laila said.

  He will drive away immediately.

  The poor guy didn’t even ask who they were waiting for outside in this cold weather.

  “All right, I’ll be back,” he said as he ran to his car.

  As Laila continued to sob, check her phone, and wait for Ian to come, Thomas drove away.

  Thomas probably got the idea that I am waiting for another guy. He has every right to be sick of me.

  A few minutes later, Thomas returned with a plastic tray filled with hot coffee, buns, tea, and a sandwich.

  Laila laughed as her tears dropped to her cheeks. He didn’t leave me. Laila forgot that she hadn’t eaten anything the whole day. She hugged Thomas’s bulky torso.

  A father that I never had.

  To some, father issues or mother issues might seem cheesy. However, nature gifts us with two parents for a reason; we need both of them. And when one of the parents, for whatever reason, is absent emotionally or physically, a person whose needs are unmet will need a crutch, a fake parent, or a father or mother figure to relive what was not experienced.

  “How the hell did you find an open place in the middle of the night?” she said, looking with love-filled eyes at her superhero.

  Ian was the fantasy guy, the superhero from her dreams, he floated somewhere in the air, while here stood bravely Thomas, Mr. Kent himself, standing right before her, whom she failed to notice all along.

  As Laila drank hot-scented tea and fed herself with hot muffins, she understood the difference between Thomas and Ian.

  Thomas would do everything to make her smile and be happy, while Ian would use every opportunity to make her feel miserable and suffer, in any case, from low self-esteem. Even on her happiest day, Ian made her feel miserable about herself. Or maybe it was her fault that she sought love and attention from someone who couldn’t give them.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Ian never bothered to feed her. Sometimes when they were on a date, he would casually ask if you wanted to drink something, Laila wasn’t insane after all. One part of her always knew Ian was playing her.

  “Go home; he won’t come,” Laila received a text from Jennifer.

  Laila wanted to “shut down” Gestalt for Ian once and for all. She wanted to wait until the end and be sure he didn’t come to get closure. She was going to end it all that night and never look back.

  For once, Laila was right. That night, she managed to close her Gestalt.

  # THREE years later. Impostor

  Three years later…

  A lot can happen in three years. Your life can become picture-perfect. One quickly gets used to the good and forgets all the bad memories. After all, this is how our brains work. You may forget that some light years ago, you cried because some guy didn’t call. Or how you got drunk and swore to forget him.

  Laila even had her own theory. As children, we all grow up getting some sort of affectionate love, she would say. If we’re lucky, from everyone. If our family is abusive or emotionally impoverished, heck, we still get some kind of affection from family friends, and acquaintances, or even occasional passersby. It’s biology.

  For the first few years of our lives, nature bestows us with good looks so that no one leaves us. Because toddlers can’t physically survive.

  So, once we become teens or young adults, it’s very hard to assure us that there could be someone who won’t adore us the way everyone did just a few years ago. And oddly, that is when most of us fall prey as young adults to fuckboys. No matter how much fuckboys show us, they don’t care. We still think deep down somewhere that they still love us.

  Indeed, according to Sufi belief, we’re all one, we all belong to each other. If in this universe, we are all the same body, how can one not love us? Can a person not love a part of their own body? Perhaps yes.

  Maybe because they don’t love themselves we think on a subconscious level. And that’s when we start to “fix” the other, to make them love themselves and then us. In vain need to eventually get some love back. How could they not love us, sweet cute babies?

  Lots of good things happened to Laila in those three years. For one, she had finally settled with surprise-surprise IAN.

  Not really. Laila got to settle with Thomas. He never left her wondering, aloof, or pulling off a hot and cold. For the first year, she expected him to ghost her the way Ian and other rebound guys did after a few dates and sometimes even after a single date.

  Laila started to feel much later confident in Thomas. Things weren’t perfect, of course. Like many couples, they sometimes argued. Thanks to her traumatic past with Ian, Laila shed many tears during each fight, thinking Thomas was going to leave her. Especially in the beginning.

  Each time they fought, Laila would think about Ian and how she could be happier with him. On the nights that Thomas hurt her with his words, she would cry and remember Ian. Cry and remember Ian. Even though Laila knew she was never this close with Ian.

  Thomas did what many others couldn’t care to do. He healed her broken heart and showed her how to properly love.

  She didn’t know how day-to-day living with Ian could turn out. He would never want her anyway. It was not like she left Ian for Thomas. But sometimes she felt like she did leave Ian.

  I could have waited for years and years. Maybe in the end, when Ian grew old and saggy and poor, he would accept my love. Laila brushed her hair, looking at her reflection in the mirror.

  She could stick around a bit more. She could try even harder.

  Who said that Ian was the Ice King? She remembered times when Ian would scream his love for her. Or tell about the minute memory that Laila herself forgot. Even when they didn’t fight and things were perfect, she would feel uneasy, anticipating his Houdini vanishing act every moment around the corner.

  That night was now one of those rare ones where she remembered Ian as she dressed off from her day job at the same plaza where they once worked together.

  Laila couldn’t recognize the reflection of a happy, content person she saw in the mirror. She felt like an actress playing a happy wife or an impostor.

  Sometimes Laila couldn’t imagine how could she forget Ian. How could she do this?

  Life is so cruel. She forgot how he made her feel. She forgot how he touched and kissed her, even how his lips tasted, how his body looked naked. She used to remember all those little details vividly.

  As if she betrayed Ian, their love, and herself by being happy with someone else. She looked in the mirror at herself and couldn’t believe what this stable-looking, happy woman had gone through. The memory of Ian seemed so distant that she couldn’t believe they were ever together. So, Ian was right after all. Laila lied to him when she said, I’d be yours forever.

  She didn’t miss Ian anymore. I don’t want him anymore.

  Did she forget him, really? Maybe she was lying to herself.

  Because we never stop loving completely. The love is somewhere there, only it is a little less.

  It would be a lie to say she didn’t ever fancy him. She had this nagging feeling that she had lost him forever. She yearned for one last meeting where they would confess their feelings to each other, acknowledge their weird romance, and close that door forever.

  Fuckboys are the most democratic tribe in the world. Over the years, Laila has met her fair share of fuckboys. Regardless of their religion, social class, skin color, ethnicity, political views, or economic situation, every fuckboy has the same set of qualities. Behind the facade of good looks, a toned body, charismatic faces, and a carefully curated wardrobe, they are hot and cold, black and white. Very kind prince charming, at first, then distant. However, girls fail to accept that there will never be gray, peaceful, quiet days with them, which is what thenormal life of healthy adults consists of. With them, it will either be happy, festive days or loud fights and tears. This emotional rollercoaster can drain even the most mentally healthy person pretty quickly.

  Until we really do stop caring, occasionally, we remember them, and as sadistic as it sounds, we still want to care. Or we romanticize that unresponsive love as suffering. However, the time comes when we really stop caring. Then they blame women for being heartless cynics.

  On many occasions, Ian’s shadow would come to Laila’s mind.

  His eyes are distant, and his face is cold. He is like the moon. Somewhere there, illuminating, looking at her from the distance. Never really far away and never close enough to hold. Someone who is as beautiful and as distant, just like the moon. Someone very unattainable. A breath of fresh air you can’t live without. But his vision is gone just as quickly as it came.