We love a writing prompt when we have a contest underway because it always gets us, well, in the mood to write! With just nine days left of our Narratively x Belletrist True Romance Writing Prize (which you can read more about here), we want to get you energized. So … did you inexplicably ghost your soulmate only to realize shortly after that you’d made a huge mistake — but by then it was too late? Or maybe your lost-true-love saga dates wayyy back. Make a forever promise to your camp crush at age 11 and actually expect to keep it — but learn that she’d long forgotten who you even were? Or something else completely? We want to know all about it!
And, to make this extra fun — because who doesn’t love a side of competition to go with your long-lost love story — we will award a limited-edition “Never Not Reading” hat from Belletrist x Tertulia to the person whose comment gets the most “likes.” So, please share a short tale below about the one who got away — it can be one sentence long or one whole paragraph — and then expand that thought (or any other!) into a longer piece to submit to our Narratively x Belletrist True Romance Writing Prize. Submissions are open now through Thursday, May 1, for short essays and longer ones (again, read all about what we’re looking for and how to submit here). And, go!
We weren’t married, but our lives were threaded together in ways that suggested permanency — family vacations, a shared calendar, and a home we were renovating.
The day before I chased the paralegal’s Toyota down his empty street, we met our contractor for a final walkthrough. Off-street parking, a bright, airy kitchen, double vanities in the bedroom. My favorite part was the sunroom, with its natural stone flooring, high ceilings, and wide, generous windows. The room was bathed in light. The air, thick with possibility. It felt like my future.
Fast forward ten years.
I am at the dog park with another man’s baby in my belly, hurling a nasty tennis ball for my big, dumb, adorable, blockheaded Lab. Around me, the usual small talk drifts in circles: gnats, Netflix, shedding brushes.
Then, a sudden, sharp turn.
“Did you hear about Harley’s dad?” asks Trigger’s mom, a blunt and discourteous woman with a Doberman who shares her disposition.
I didn't know when he left my apartment the next morning, he would never return. He never offered a proper explanation as to why his feelings drifted after he approved the one-sided deal that our last night together would be just that, our last.
I naively believed there could be another chance. That was until I saw a photo that showed him with a bashful grin. The source of the smile coming from the loving embrace of the woman wrapped around him.
Marie was a Belgian. When I met her, on an over-crowded platform at Varanasi Railway Station, she was in the company of a dour Swedish girl who wouldn't shut up about her stomach problems.
'You and practically every other Westerner in India,' I thought.
Some people seemed to be immune. Marie was holding up well, at least she was when I was with her. If you did get sick, then you got really sick. I was really sick; barely holding it together if I am being honest. A few days later, I spontaneously shat myself in the street and then had to sprint back to my hotel before the clock struck noon, which was when the water for the street was turned off.
We were all heading to Kolkata overnight. Marie and the Swede had booked sleeper berths in one of the carriages towards the front section of the train. Eight hours later, or however long it was, we all disembarked. I rushed along the platform until I caught sight of her backpack in the crowd up ahead. I sort of angled into her path, making it look like it was a chance meeting.
Kolkata Railway Station was on one side of the Hooghly River. Most of the city was heaped on the other side. I was happy to walk it, but Marie was adamant that we got a taxi. She had pulled together several other western tourists to share the ride and was now wearing down the resolve of the local drivers with her incessant demands. At some point things got too much for the Swede who wandered off.
We ended up on Free School Street where there were a lot of large, decrepit hotels. Everywhere we went was full. All the guest-houses congregated along this one road and there was apparently nothing else nearby. Eventually we found a place with a room on the fourth floor. Marie, who was used to Varanasi where everything was absurdly cheap, baulked at the expense.
“This is the best you are going to get,” I told her. “You should take it before somebody else does.” She was halfway up the stairs, about to disappear around the turn, when she called back down to me: “Are you coming?”
I was 26-years-old. Marie was 19. She had crossed the Nepalese border with her shoes stuffed full of cannabis. We lay on the bed and smoked some of her trainer weed. Reciprocating her generosity, I went downstairs to reception and paid for five nights in advance. I didn't tell her until later. When I came back to the room, she was gone. I found her across the corridor teaching some Japanese tourists how to roll a joint.
Literally her first words to me the following morning were “I need to see a gynaecologist”.
I had dropped in at the British Embassy the previous afternoon. I suggested that we go there and ask if they knew of anyone reputable, or we could go to the Belgian Embassy if she preferred. She got dressed-up for our semi-formal outing in a mini-skirt and a T-shirt that was so tight that her bare nipples poked through the yellow fabric.
“Do you think the men will stare at me?” she enquired.
While I was formulating a response, she decided “They stare anyway.”
On our way to the Embassy, we passed a large tourist information centre. Marie decided that she was going to ask in there whether they knew of a good female doctor. I loitered outside in the unbearable heat, watching her at the counter through the smoked glass. As she was leaving, an Indian man grabbed a generous handful of one of her buttocks. She shrieked loudly. It took me a few moments to register what had happened. Her assailant was already making his way off up the road. I could make out what I thought was the top of his head. I began to give chase but then I stopped. The damage was already done. The temperature had climbed into the high-30s. I was sick and probably dehydrated. Even if I caught up to the man, what then? Would I hurl accusations? Would we both roll up our sleeves and fight?
Instead, I accompanied Marie to the gynaecologists. I sat in a waiting room full of women while she was examined. Afterwards, we visited a bakery where she purchased several cakes and then demanded that I intervene to prevent her from eating them all.
It was fun exploring Kolkata with her. I had been one too many times around the block, figuratively speaking, and it had been a disheartening experience. I had kind of given up on the world and on myself. The previous year, I had visited in Yemen in the hope that someone would shoot me. Experiencing India through the eyes of this girl who, up until now, hadn't travelled outside of Europe, was rejuvenating; even watching her telling the beggars, all of whom were hideously maimed and/or missing limbs, to “get a job”. She harboured an unfounded notion that, somewhere in the city, there was a vibrant nightlife waiting to be discovered. Maybe there was. but it was very well hidden and likely inaccessible to Westerners. There were very few places where you could buy alcohol. We stood, for a while, on the threshold of an insalubrious looking establishment called Bar Rambo, peering into the uninviting gloom.
Finally, I said: “If you really want a drink, I'll take you to Fairlawns.”
Fairlawns was a hotel across the road from where we were staying – a bona-fide throwback to the Raj, where they banged a gong to summon the guests down for dinner.
Marie and I were travelling at cross purposes. She was planning to spend New Year's Eve on the Andaman Islands, as the calendar transitioned from 1999 to 2000. I was heading for the Sundarbans – a tract of mangrove forest where I was hoping to see tigers. Both of us needed permits, which took some organising. The evening before I left, I told her that I'd paid for the room.
“You've got another night on me if you need it.”
She made a show of ponying up her half of the rent, but I turned her down.
“Stay somewhere nice on the Andamans. Think of me on New Year's Eve.”
I left at 4am, in the pitch black.
In the darkness, I heard her croak sleepily: “Goodbye Sam. I hope you see some tigers.”
“Be sure to get up and lock the door after I'm gone,” I said.
I waited silently in the corridor until I heard the tumblers of the lock fall into place. I never saw her again.
I liked Marie, though it was hard to say why. She wasn't particularly good looking – well, compared to me she was, but in a broader context there were many more beautiful women. Her underwear was ridiculous – great silken parachutes, garnished with the kind of floral pattern that an 80-year-old church spinster would choose to decorate her chinaware. Her personality was obnoxious and overbearing, though it was likely that what I saw was an over-exaggeration – a defence against the overwhelming newness of her situation. It was funny when it was being directed towards other people and not so great when I became the focus.
Years later, I released that she was the last girl in my life, balanced on that fine line between youth and adulthood. After Marie, I only dated women. Although I didn't know it at the time, when I chased her along the platform of Kolkata Railway Station, I was running for a door that was about to close on me forever.
This evening, as sun goes down on the day and twilight floods the garden and slowly darkens the April sky, I think of you, Marie. A considerable expanse of time now separates us. We are both what is considered to be middle-aged. We will likely never see each other again, nor do I think that a reconciliation would be desirable for either one of us. I wonder if you even remember my name. You were special to me in a way that, for a long time after, I did not fully understand. I hope that life has been kind.
When I was in kindergarten there a little redheaded boy I asked to kiss on the cheek. He said yes, so I did. We were in the back of the school van, coming back from a field trip fishing for trout at an old grist mill.
We eventually started 1st grade at different schools, and I never saw him after that. Except for that one time in 3rd grade when I did. We had some district wide testing and we ended up in the same room at a school I’d never been to before. I kept looking at him to make sure I wasn’t making it up, but each time I studied his face, I was sure. Of course we didn’t say hi to each other, but I wonder what would have happened if we had.
He became my best friend. I was 16 and he a year or so older. We worked side by side in the pizza restaurant. We laughed, flirted and the butterflies danced up a storm in the meadows of my stomach. We listened to air supply and melted away to in the feelings that enveloped us. I was living the fantasy of being in love but shying away from making the connection to Tony because he was my friend. Only after marrying a man that could not and would not ever be my friend did I realize I what I lost.
He got away, but he’s not gone yet. He leaves for the East Coast – back home – in seven days, six hours, and fourteen minutes. It’s been planned long before we met only two months ago at the brewery near our homes. We just happened to sit next to each other at the bar, where we tended to ourselves, our drinks, our food quietly, watching golf on the large screen in front of us, separately, until twenty minutes later when we started talking about life and loss and love. Everything. We closed out the bar four hours later.
Nine months ago, his wife of twenty-six years passed away from colon cancer. Listening to him talk about his wife is beautiful. No other word can describe it. The love between them, it’s clear, was genuine, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. However, reconnecting with other family members is what he needs. I know that. This is his direction for life right now. He stood by his wife in sickness and in health, he loved her, took care of her, never left her side throughout her two-year illness. I understand.
But he is mine. The one who got away. Who I will always cherish. My beloved.
He left on a business trip to Hong Kong with a promise to return to me. He landed safely then sent a cryptic message and I never heard from him again. Weeks later, his boss that knew we were dating and knew I was his last point of contact called me because he hadn’t returned to work. His emergency contact was null and his best friend that had gone to meet him at the airport also never returned to work. The friend’s emergency contact was also null. I still get a little pang of hurt when someone asks about Frank because I just don’t know and I’ve had to resign myself to the fact that I will never know.
Oh wow, that's so mysterious. Could this be an investigative story in which you try to find the answers? Definitely sounds like there's something there…
Slow wiring of branch to trunk. Snips of bark with scissors you can close your hand around. You are working at the kitchen counter on a tiny tree in an antique moss-rounded bowl. Week after week. Slowly and deliberately, you remove leaves smaller than tears. You must discard all that interferes with your vision of perfection. No matter how lovely the arc of the branch, if it flares off in the wrong direction it must go. No cause for sentimentality. It’s not like that. You are not interested in the branch. You are after the whole tree.
I sit on my bed engaged in bonsai of my own. Day after day I think that if I can train the direction with judicious elimination, I can shape and control my heart. I am so tired of all the crying. I am exhausted with the effort of going every day to work and knowing you are not in your office downstairs, knowing that I won’t see your car rounding a corner, knowing that you won’t call me because you’ve decided you need to get on with your life where you are. You are lying in the bed you’ve made, why can’t I accept that, you ask in our last real conversation.
I am trying to accept. And I am trying to change what I cannot accept. So I am binding the wire tighter. I get confused when I try to translate the instructions, though. Am I training my heart to not miss what it can no longer feel or to no longer feel what it misses?
I didn't know he was gone until the obituary popped up on my screen. That face I remember so well, that smile I loved, that name that is burned into my brain. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. And then, the million-times-worse realization: There will be no good-bye. No one more chance.
I got away, 9000 miles away, to the Philippines for two years in the Peace Corps because he stayed married because of taxes and wouldn't marry me. Now she's dead, he's 1500 miles away, we're in our mid-80s and reuniting. It's fun, scary but fun. What will become of us? Is there an us?
We weren’t married, but our lives were threaded together in ways that suggested permanency — family vacations, a shared calendar, and a home we were renovating.
The day before I chased the paralegal’s Toyota down his empty street, we met our contractor for a final walkthrough. Off-street parking, a bright, airy kitchen, double vanities in the bedroom. My favorite part was the sunroom, with its natural stone flooring, high ceilings, and wide, generous windows. The room was bathed in light. The air, thick with possibility. It felt like my future.
Fast forward ten years.
I am at the dog park with another man’s baby in my belly, hurling a nasty tennis ball for my big, dumb, adorable, blockheaded Lab. Around me, the usual small talk drifts in circles: gnats, Netflix, shedding brushes.
Then, a sudden, sharp turn.
“Did you hear about Harley’s dad?” asks Trigger’s mom, a blunt and discourteous woman with a Doberman who shares her disposition.
Harley’s dad = my ex.
I didn't know when he left my apartment the next morning, he would never return. He never offered a proper explanation as to why his feelings drifted after he approved the one-sided deal that our last night together would be just that, our last.
I naively believed there could be another chance. That was until I saw a photo that showed him with a bashful grin. The source of the smile coming from the loving embrace of the woman wrapped around him.
(names have been changed)
Marie was a Belgian. When I met her, on an over-crowded platform at Varanasi Railway Station, she was in the company of a dour Swedish girl who wouldn't shut up about her stomach problems.
'You and practically every other Westerner in India,' I thought.
Some people seemed to be immune. Marie was holding up well, at least she was when I was with her. If you did get sick, then you got really sick. I was really sick; barely holding it together if I am being honest. A few days later, I spontaneously shat myself in the street and then had to sprint back to my hotel before the clock struck noon, which was when the water for the street was turned off.
We were all heading to Kolkata overnight. Marie and the Swede had booked sleeper berths in one of the carriages towards the front section of the train. Eight hours later, or however long it was, we all disembarked. I rushed along the platform until I caught sight of her backpack in the crowd up ahead. I sort of angled into her path, making it look like it was a chance meeting.
Kolkata Railway Station was on one side of the Hooghly River. Most of the city was heaped on the other side. I was happy to walk it, but Marie was adamant that we got a taxi. She had pulled together several other western tourists to share the ride and was now wearing down the resolve of the local drivers with her incessant demands. At some point things got too much for the Swede who wandered off.
We ended up on Free School Street where there were a lot of large, decrepit hotels. Everywhere we went was full. All the guest-houses congregated along this one road and there was apparently nothing else nearby. Eventually we found a place with a room on the fourth floor. Marie, who was used to Varanasi where everything was absurdly cheap, baulked at the expense.
“This is the best you are going to get,” I told her. “You should take it before somebody else does.” She was halfway up the stairs, about to disappear around the turn, when she called back down to me: “Are you coming?”
I was 26-years-old. Marie was 19. She had crossed the Nepalese border with her shoes stuffed full of cannabis. We lay on the bed and smoked some of her trainer weed. Reciprocating her generosity, I went downstairs to reception and paid for five nights in advance. I didn't tell her until later. When I came back to the room, she was gone. I found her across the corridor teaching some Japanese tourists how to roll a joint.
Literally her first words to me the following morning were “I need to see a gynaecologist”.
I had dropped in at the British Embassy the previous afternoon. I suggested that we go there and ask if they knew of anyone reputable, or we could go to the Belgian Embassy if she preferred. She got dressed-up for our semi-formal outing in a mini-skirt and a T-shirt that was so tight that her bare nipples poked through the yellow fabric.
“Do you think the men will stare at me?” she enquired.
While I was formulating a response, she decided “They stare anyway.”
On our way to the Embassy, we passed a large tourist information centre. Marie decided that she was going to ask in there whether they knew of a good female doctor. I loitered outside in the unbearable heat, watching her at the counter through the smoked glass. As she was leaving, an Indian man grabbed a generous handful of one of her buttocks. She shrieked loudly. It took me a few moments to register what had happened. Her assailant was already making his way off up the road. I could make out what I thought was the top of his head. I began to give chase but then I stopped. The damage was already done. The temperature had climbed into the high-30s. I was sick and probably dehydrated. Even if I caught up to the man, what then? Would I hurl accusations? Would we both roll up our sleeves and fight?
Instead, I accompanied Marie to the gynaecologists. I sat in a waiting room full of women while she was examined. Afterwards, we visited a bakery where she purchased several cakes and then demanded that I intervene to prevent her from eating them all.
It was fun exploring Kolkata with her. I had been one too many times around the block, figuratively speaking, and it had been a disheartening experience. I had kind of given up on the world and on myself. The previous year, I had visited in Yemen in the hope that someone would shoot me. Experiencing India through the eyes of this girl who, up until now, hadn't travelled outside of Europe, was rejuvenating; even watching her telling the beggars, all of whom were hideously maimed and/or missing limbs, to “get a job”. She harboured an unfounded notion that, somewhere in the city, there was a vibrant nightlife waiting to be discovered. Maybe there was. but it was very well hidden and likely inaccessible to Westerners. There were very few places where you could buy alcohol. We stood, for a while, on the threshold of an insalubrious looking establishment called Bar Rambo, peering into the uninviting gloom.
Finally, I said: “If you really want a drink, I'll take you to Fairlawns.”
Fairlawns was a hotel across the road from where we were staying – a bona-fide throwback to the Raj, where they banged a gong to summon the guests down for dinner.
Marie and I were travelling at cross purposes. She was planning to spend New Year's Eve on the Andaman Islands, as the calendar transitioned from 1999 to 2000. I was heading for the Sundarbans – a tract of mangrove forest where I was hoping to see tigers. Both of us needed permits, which took some organising. The evening before I left, I told her that I'd paid for the room.
“You've got another night on me if you need it.”
She made a show of ponying up her half of the rent, but I turned her down.
“Stay somewhere nice on the Andamans. Think of me on New Year's Eve.”
I left at 4am, in the pitch black.
In the darkness, I heard her croak sleepily: “Goodbye Sam. I hope you see some tigers.”
“Be sure to get up and lock the door after I'm gone,” I said.
I waited silently in the corridor until I heard the tumblers of the lock fall into place. I never saw her again.
I liked Marie, though it was hard to say why. She wasn't particularly good looking – well, compared to me she was, but in a broader context there were many more beautiful women. Her underwear was ridiculous – great silken parachutes, garnished with the kind of floral pattern that an 80-year-old church spinster would choose to decorate her chinaware. Her personality was obnoxious and overbearing, though it was likely that what I saw was an over-exaggeration – a defence against the overwhelming newness of her situation. It was funny when it was being directed towards other people and not so great when I became the focus.
Years later, I released that she was the last girl in my life, balanced on that fine line between youth and adulthood. After Marie, I only dated women. Although I didn't know it at the time, when I chased her along the platform of Kolkata Railway Station, I was running for a door that was about to close on me forever.
This evening, as sun goes down on the day and twilight floods the garden and slowly darkens the April sky, I think of you, Marie. A considerable expanse of time now separates us. We are both what is considered to be middle-aged. We will likely never see each other again, nor do I think that a reconciliation would be desirable for either one of us. I wonder if you even remember my name. You were special to me in a way that, for a long time after, I did not fully understand. I hope that life has been kind.
When I was in kindergarten there a little redheaded boy I asked to kiss on the cheek. He said yes, so I did. We were in the back of the school van, coming back from a field trip fishing for trout at an old grist mill.
We eventually started 1st grade at different schools, and I never saw him after that. Except for that one time in 3rd grade when I did. We had some district wide testing and we ended up in the same room at a school I’d never been to before. I kept looking at him to make sure I wasn’t making it up, but each time I studied his face, I was sure. Of course we didn’t say hi to each other, but I wonder what would have happened if we had.
He became my best friend. I was 16 and he a year or so older. We worked side by side in the pizza restaurant. We laughed, flirted and the butterflies danced up a storm in the meadows of my stomach. We listened to air supply and melted away to in the feelings that enveloped us. I was living the fantasy of being in love but shying away from making the connection to Tony because he was my friend. Only after marrying a man that could not and would not ever be my friend did I realize I what I lost.
Heartbreaking, Eleni! Have you ever tried to reconnect?
He got away, but he’s not gone yet. He leaves for the East Coast – back home – in seven days, six hours, and fourteen minutes. It’s been planned long before we met only two months ago at the brewery near our homes. We just happened to sit next to each other at the bar, where we tended to ourselves, our drinks, our food quietly, watching golf on the large screen in front of us, separately, until twenty minutes later when we started talking about life and loss and love. Everything. We closed out the bar four hours later.
Nine months ago, his wife of twenty-six years passed away from colon cancer. Listening to him talk about his wife is beautiful. No other word can describe it. The love between them, it’s clear, was genuine, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. However, reconnecting with other family members is what he needs. I know that. This is his direction for life right now. He stood by his wife in sickness and in health, he loved her, took care of her, never left her side throughout her two-year illness. I understand.
But he is mine. The one who got away. Who I will always cherish. My beloved.
Oof, definitely feel the sting of that one, Jen… 🙃 So complicated!
He left on a business trip to Hong Kong with a promise to return to me. He landed safely then sent a cryptic message and I never heard from him again. Weeks later, his boss that knew we were dating and knew I was his last point of contact called me because he hadn’t returned to work. His emergency contact was null and his best friend that had gone to meet him at the airport also never returned to work. The friend’s emergency contact was also null. I still get a little pang of hurt when someone asks about Frank because I just don’t know and I’ve had to resign myself to the fact that I will never know.
Oh wow, that's so mysterious. Could this be an investigative story in which you try to find the answers? Definitely sounds like there's something there…
No. No investigation.
Hear you!
Slow wiring of branch to trunk. Snips of bark with scissors you can close your hand around. You are working at the kitchen counter on a tiny tree in an antique moss-rounded bowl. Week after week. Slowly and deliberately, you remove leaves smaller than tears. You must discard all that interferes with your vision of perfection. No matter how lovely the arc of the branch, if it flares off in the wrong direction it must go. No cause for sentimentality. It’s not like that. You are not interested in the branch. You are after the whole tree.
I sit on my bed engaged in bonsai of my own. Day after day I think that if I can train the direction with judicious elimination, I can shape and control my heart. I am so tired of all the crying. I am exhausted with the effort of going every day to work and knowing you are not in your office downstairs, knowing that I won’t see your car rounding a corner, knowing that you won’t call me because you’ve decided you need to get on with your life where you are. You are lying in the bed you’ve made, why can’t I accept that, you ask in our last real conversation.
I am trying to accept. And I am trying to change what I cannot accept. So I am binding the wire tighter. I get confused when I try to translate the instructions, though. Am I training my heart to not miss what it can no longer feel or to no longer feel what it misses?
I didn't know he was gone until the obituary popped up on my screen. That face I remember so well, that smile I loved, that name that is burned into my brain. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. And then, the million-times-worse realization: There will be no good-bye. No one more chance.
I got away, 9000 miles away, to the Philippines for two years in the Peace Corps because he stayed married because of taxes and wouldn't marry me. Now she's dead, he's 1500 miles away, we're in our mid-80s and reuniting. It's fun, scary but fun. What will become of us? Is there an us?
Please let us know what happens, love this!