With a cold IPA in hand, you sit at your usual bar with your favorite friends. You’re guzzling your fourth drink of the night, and the glass sweats into your palms and fingertips. Beads of condensation drips down your wrist. Beer warms your flushed face while surrounding laughter and conversation warms your heart. The corners of your mouth start to curl into a smile. You soak in the moment and sink deeper into the chair.
You sloppily throw your left elbow onto the sticky table and rest your heavy head onto your loose fist. Suddenly, everything seems to mute. You watch your friends carry on their conversations, but music floods the bar and drowns out everything but that song. Once upon a time, it was your song. You know the one I’m talking about, the one that always reminds you of that particular person. Despite the fuzzy numbness from four drinks, sharp pangs of nostalgia pierce your chest. Panicked, you look around the table. Your friends are still there, but all of them wear the face of that person from the past.
Seeing that face you haven’t seen in months (maybe even years) fills you with immediate comfort, and the feeling of longing seeps into your thick skull. You reach into your jean pocket and feel the weight of your phone. With a sigh, you swipe your thumb across the dark screen. Your phone awakens and casts a bright light onto your drunken face. Searching through squinted eyes, you thumb through your contacts and stop when you see that name. Memories from a shared past flash through your head like a slideshow. That song continues to play in the background, goading you to press the call button. That person’s contact picture stares up at you. “I do miss that smile,” you concede. “And that beautiful laugh,” you think, as the room spins. Your shaky thumb hovers over the button, as you continue to recall memory after memory.
“Make it stop,” you silently plead. “Maybe pressing this button will make it stop,” you reason. Closer and closer, your thumb approaches the tempting light of your phone screen. But suddenly, you hear the familiar voices of your friends fill the room again. Their faces are now their own. The song has faded into the background. After escaping the spell of nostalgia, you press your phone’s sleep button, and the screen goes dark again.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, and you embarrassingly recall the times you couldn’t resist the sirens’ song. “Not this time,” you decide. With more conviction than ever before, you slide your phone back into your pocket and look up at the love around you.