I still remember the first time I saw her—like a moment frozen in time. She wasn’t just beautiful; she was radiant, carrying an aura of warmth and kindness that made the world around her seem insignificant. I wasn’t sure if it was love at first sight or just admiration wrapped in fascination, but one thing was certain: my heart whispered, “She’s the one.”
Fate brought us together in ways I could not have imagined. Our conversations stretched into the night, filled with laughter, dreams, and the kind of honesty that made my soul feel safe. She had this remarkable way of seeing into me, past my words and actions, deep into my unspoken thoughts. In her eyes, I found a reflection of the man I wanted to be—strong, loving, and unwavering in devotion.
But love is rarely just about two hearts; it is also about time, circumstances, and choices. Despite our deep connection, life had other plans. The paths we were on, though parallel for a while, eventually diverged. Responsibilities, expectations, and the weight of reality stood between us like an invisible wall, keeping us apart even when our hearts still longed for each other.
I told myself I had time. Time to fight for her, time to change the course of our story. But time is a cruel teacher, reminding us that hesitation is often the thief of opportunity. She moved on, not because she stopped loving me, but because life demanded it. And I let her go—not because I wanted to, but because I thought it was the right thing to do.
Regret is a silent companion, always whispering, “What if?” What if I had fought harder? What if I had chosen love over fear? What if I had held her hand and never let go? I see glimpses of her in the world around me—in a familiar laugh, in a song we once loved, in the scent of the rain after a long day. And each time, I smile, knowing that even though she isn’t mine, she was once part of my story.
Some love stories don’t end with a happily ever after. Some remain unfinished, lingering in the heart as a reminder of what once was and what could have been. She will always be —not because our love was weak, but because life had a different plan. And maybe, just maybe, that is its own kind of love story—one that stays with me forever.
Love often arrives unannounced, slipping through the cracks of our rigid expectations and surprising us in the least expected ways. Sometimes it arrives in the most unexpected ways, wrapped in the ordinary moments of life—a smile, a glance, a shared silence. But sometimes, despite its undeniable presence, fear, self-doubt, and circumstance conspire to let it slip away. Yes, it slips through our fingers, not because it wasn’t real, but because we were too afraid to reach out and hold it.
This is a story of such a love—a love that could have been but never was.
It’s a story of two souls who crossed paths at a time when life was still a puzzle, and the pieces didn’t quite fit. It’s a story of missed chances, unspoken words, and the haunting question that lingers long after the moment has passed: What if?
The Beginning: A Glimpse of Heaven
It all began on a day that felt utterly ordinary, yet fate had a masterpiece hidden in its folds. Many years ago, I was a young man—ambitious yet naive, determined yet uncertain—stepping into a world that felt too vast for my unsure footsteps. Fresh out of school, I had secured an internship at one of the most prestigious firms, a golden opportunity not just for my career but to honour the memory of a father who never made it home from work one fateful evening. His unfinished journey had become the torch I carried, and with that weight upon my shoulders, I had only one mission: to make a lasting impact.
No distractions. No missteps.
I arrived early, dressed in the only suit my mother had painstakingly saved to buy for me. It wasn’t the finest suit in the world—far from it. The fabric was stiff, the fit a little too snug, and the sleeves just a whisper too short. But to me, it was armour, woven with love and sacrifice. I sat at the reception, my hands pressed together as if in silent prayer, my heart pounding with a mixture of excitement and nervousness.
And then, she appeared.
She didn’t just walk into the room; she arrived—like a golden sunrise after a stormy night, like the first raindrop on parched earth, like a melody so hauntingly beautiful you’re afraid to breathe lest it stops. Her presence was a symphony, an unspoken poetry, an artist’s most delicate brushstroke.
She was elegance, effortless and unassuming. The kind of beauty that didn’t scream for attention but commanded it, nonetheless. Her steps were unhurried, each one carrying the quiet confidence of someone who knew their worth without flaunting it.
And I?
I was doomed.
My heart, that foolish traitor, leapt and hammered against my ribcage, betraying the carefully crafted discipline I had promised myself. My mind flared in protest—Focus! You are here to build a future, not to be derailed by a pair of mesmerizing eyes!
But my soul?
Oh, my soul was already drowning, willingly sinking into the quiet poetry of her presence.
She stopped right in front of me.
“Hello, I’m Natalie,” she said, extending her hand.
Her voice was like dawn’s first whisper—soft, warm, carrying the promise of something new, something uncharted.
For a moment, time lost its grip. I was no longer a young man on his first day at work. I was a traveller at the edge of a discovery. A sailor spotting an island that didn’t exist on the maps. A poet staring at a blank page, knowing that whatever would be written next would change him forever.
I opened my mouth to respond, but my tongue turned traitor. The words I reached for slipped through my fingers like grains of sand. I must have said my name—at least, that’s what I was later told.
She smiled—God, that smile!—and sat beside me. And just like that, the world, my world, tilted ever so slightly on its axis.
She spoke, and I answered.
She laughed, and my heart memorized the sound.
She asked questions, and I struggled to remember the answers because my thoughts were elsewhere—wrestling with the impossible paradox she had become.
She was everything I had been warned about. A distraction. A temptation. A road I was not meant to walk.
And yet, she was also something else.
Something I never knew I needed.
And something I was afraid to want.
The Dance of Friendship
Days blurred into weeks, and weeks into months, yet our paths intertwined with a rhythm neither of us had choreographed. Fate, in its mischievous wisdom, placed us in the same department, our desks mere heartbeats apart—close enough for stolen glances, for unspoken conversations that danced in the spaces between words.
She was a National Service personnel, a university graduate standing at the threshold of the real world, while I was just an intern, still straddling the line between student life and the responsibilities of adulthood. In every way, she was ahead of me—more experienced, more refined, more certain of herself. And me? I was just a boy with borrowed confidence, struggling to find my place in a world that often felt too big for me.
I saw the gap between us, and in my naivety, I thought it was a chasm too vast to cross. She’s out of your league, I told myself. She surely has suitors—men with polished shoes and deeper pockets, men far more deserving.
And so, I built walls.
I kept my distance, speaking only when necessary, guarding my heart as if love were a thief lurking in the shadows. I convinced myself that ignoring her would be the antidote to whatever this was—the flutter in my chest, the way my thoughts kept circling back to her, the way she turned ordinary days into something worth remembering.
But fate is a patient trickster, and she? She refused to let me disappear into my self-imposed exile.
She saw through my cold façade, through every forced indifference, and she stayed. Not just as a presence, but as a choice.
She chose me.
She chose me when she could have chosen the waiting car and the luxury of her boyfriend’s embrace. She chose the dusty streets over comfort, the packed trotro over air-conditioned ease, the simplicity of my company over the whispers of men with promises on their lips.
She walked with me to the bus stop every single day, rain or shine, weaving our moments into something sacred. And when the men in gleaming cars rolled down their tinted windows, calling out to her with voices dipped in charm, she would dismiss them with a smile—a smile meant only for me.
And though I told myself it was nothing, just kindness, just coincidence, just… friendship—deep down, I knew better.
Her love—though unspoken—poured out in a thousand little ways.
She noticed when I struggled to make ends meet. When I had no money for lunch, she always found a way to help without bruising my pride. Sometimes, she’d casually buy more food than she could eat and insist I take the extra. Other times, I’d find money slipped into my wallet with no explanation, her silent rebellion against my stubbornness.
And when I was too broke to afford transport and pretended to be sick to avoid the humiliation, she saw right through me.
“You can’t lie to me,” she would say, shaking her head with that knowing smile. “You don’t even know how to.”
And she was right.
She took me to my first real restaurant—a Chinese place I had only heard about in conversations among the well-to-do. I remember how nervous I was, scanning the menu, calculating numbers in my head, heart pounding at the thought of a bill I couldn’t afford. So, I played it safe, ordering exactly what she did.
When the bill arrived, I braced myself, already rehearsing an excuse, but before I could reach for my empty pockets, she discreetly handed me the money under the table.
“It’s my treat,” she whispered. “For being there for me.”
And in that moment, I understood something profound: love isn’t always grand declarations or poetic confessions. Sometimes, it’s quiet. Sometimes, it’s a simple act of saving someone from embarrassment, of making sure they keep their dignity intact.
She became my safe place, my home away from home.
Even my mother—wise and intuitive—began to notice. She would tease me, her eyes twinkling with curiosity.
“Is that your wife?” she’d ask.
And I’d laugh, shaking my head. “Maa, I’m just a small boy.”
But deep down, I wondered.
We spent Saturdays at work just to steal more time together. Sundays felt incomplete without hearing her voice. And when she was in pain, I felt it too.
Once, when menstrual cramps had her curled up in agony, she called my mother, and my mother, oblivious to the depths of our bond, guided her over the phone with remedies and gentle reassurances—speaking to her as though she were already a daughter-in-law.
And though we never put a label on what we had, it was real. It was powerful.
It was love.
Even if we were too afraid to call it by its name.
The Unspoken Truth
But love, when unacknowledged, is like a flower left unwatered—it wilts, fades, disappears.
She had a serious boyfriend. And me? I convinced myself she was never mine to love in the first place.
So, I let fear silence me.
I let self-doubt keep me at arm’s length.
I let the love that could have been become .
And yet, even now, I wonder… what if?
Beneath the surface of our friendship lay a truth neither of us dared to voice. It simmered beneath stolen glances, beneath quiet moments that stretched too long, beneath words left unsaid. It was there in the spaces between our conversations, in the way silence was never uncomfortable between us.
But she had a boyfriend. A man who, though unseen, hovered over us like an unspoken rule.
I often wondered if she ever noticed how his presence made me retreat, how I always took a step back whenever his name slipped into our conversations. He was growing increasingly jealous of our bond—I could sense it in the way her phone calls became shorter when he was around, in the way she hesitated before mentioning his name.
And me? I was paralyzed by my own insecurities. She’s too good for me, I thought. She’s out of my league.
So, we danced around our feelings, pretending not to notice the way our hands would accidentally brush and linger a second too long, the way our laughter was just a little too full, the way our eyes betrayed everything our lips refused to say.
There were moments when the truth threatened to spill out.
Like the time she missed her brother’s graduation to accompany me to an eye appointment. It wasn’t an emergency. It wasn’t even important. But she chose me. And when I told her she didn’t have to, she simply smiled and said, “I know.”
Or the time she shared her lip gloss with me at work—an innocent, fleeting moment. But as we walked through the hallway, a colleague smirked and asked, “Have you two been kissing?”
We laughed it off.
But later that night, when I was alone with my thoughts, I wondered: Would it have been so wrong if we had?
Yet, we never crossed the line.
We never said the words.
We buried our emotions beneath layers of denial, pretending that friendship was all we ever wanted.
And maybe—just maybe—if we told ourselves that lie enough times, it would become the truth.
The Love That Could Have Been
Looking back, I still wonder.
What if I had been braver?
What if I had silenced the voice that whispered she was out of my league?
What if I had told her how I felt before it was too late?
Would we have built a life together? Would we have been happy?
These questions haunt me like unfinished sentences, like melodies left unresolved. They play on loop in my mind, taunting me with the echoes of a love that was never given the chance to bloom.
She was the one who taught me that love isn’t always about grand gestures or fairy-tale endings. Sometimes, love is in the quiet moments—the ones that seem insignificant until you realize they were everything.
It was in the way she always waited for me after work, choosing dusty streets over luxury, my company over comfort.
It was in the way she noticed my struggles, slipping money into my wallet without ever making me feel small.
It was in the way she shared the last bite of her lunch, the way she listened like my words were sacred, the way she called the moment she got home just to make sure I had arrived safely.
She loved me in a thousand unspoken ways.
And I? I let fear and doubt stand in the way of what could have been.
Because love—no matter how real—can only flourish if it’s given a chance.
And I never gave us that chance.
So, I am left with only memories, with only questions, with only the aching knowledge that sometimes, the greatest love stories are the ones that never truly begin.
The Echo of What If
Years have passed, yet she lingers like a familiar song—one I never quite learned the lyrics to, but whose melody plays on in the quiet corners of my heart.
Time has moved forward, but she remains frozen in my memory—the way her laughter danced through the air, the way her eyes held stories she never told, the way her dimpled smile spoke a language my heart understood, even when my lips refused to translate.
And still, I wonder.
What if I had been bold enough to tell her?
What if I had matched her courage—the courage she showed every time she chose me over convenience, over expectations, over the easy path laid before her?
Would she have stayed?
Would she have been mine?
Or was she always meant to be just a fleeting miracle, a love letter never sent, a page in my life left unwritten?
is both a lesson and a wound. It is proof that sometimes, the greatest tragedies are not the things we lose, but the things we never dared to claim.
And yet, I smile.
Because love—spoken or unspoken, realized or lost—always leaves us changed. And she changed me in ways I never expected.
She was my almost.
My never.
My forever in a fleeting moment.
And though she is gone, her presence still echoes in the spaces between my thoughts, in the silence between heartbeats, in the what-ifs that will never fade.
To be continued…
#Puobabangna
By Victor Raul Puobabangna Plance from Eggu in the Upper West Region of Ghana
