CATEGORY: Relationships

The Return

Part 3

The weekend seemed endless. Alkis spent it caught between hours that passed painfully slowly and moments when he lost all sense of time. He slept little, woke up tired, wandered around the house, and tried to occupy his mind with anything that didn’t bear Irini’s name.

He couldn’t.

Only this time, alongside the anxiety and sadness, there was something new.

Alexandros’s question.

“But you, Alkis? Are you different this time?”

He had pushed it out of his mind dozens of times. And yet it kept coming back. Not as persistently as thoughts of Irini, but often enough to unsettle him.

On Monday morning, he went to work exhausted. Shortly after noon, his phone rang.

Irini.

For a few seconds, he simply stared at her name on the screen. He had been waiting for this moment for days. He had imagined it dozens of times. He had thought about what he would say to her, how he would feel, how quickly the weight he had been carrying inside him would disappear the moment he heard her voice again.

And yet, now that her name was right there in front of him, he felt none of what he had expected.

Or rather, he did feel something—but it was different.

There was still a sense of relief, almost instinctive, but there was no joy. That familiar flutter that once made him grab the phone before it could ring a second time was gone.

He let it ring.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Only then did he answer.

Irini spoke as though she were returning from a brief absence that required no particular explanation. She told him the past few days had been difficult, that she had been under a lot of pressure, that she had needed to step away from everyone and everything for a while. To be alone. To clear her head.

Alkis listened.

Once, he would have clung to every word. He would already have begun filling in the gaps, explaining to himself everything she left unexplained. He would have turned her stress into an excuse, her need for time into reason enough to forget the days he had spent waiting.

Now he simply listened and noticed something strange happening inside him.

He wasn’t trying to justify her.

Not immediately, at least.

Irini must have sensed the distance in him. Perhaps in his brief replies. Perhaps in the silences that, this time, he didn’t rush to fill. Or perhaps simply because she had grown accustomed to an Alkis whose relief was unmistakable every time she returned.

She suggested they meet that same evening.

And something shifted inside him.

Not because he didn’t want to see her.

He did.

But for the first time, her invitation didn’t erase everything that had come before it.

Alkis stood with the phone against his ear as a thought slowly began to take shape in his mind, almost with startling clarity.

Irini truly hadn’t realised the anxiety he had lived through, his anger, the nights he hadn’t slept. The hours he had spent staring at an empty screen. The “I miss you” he had sent while swallowing everything he had really wanted to say to her.

She hadn’t understood how deeply she had hurt him.

Or, even worse, perhaps she had never stopped to wonder.

Until that moment, Alkis had spent entire days trying to understand Irini. Now, for the first time, he wondered whether Irini had ever tried, even for a moment, to feel what he was feeling.

The thought jolted him awake from something that felt almost like a stupor.

He agreed to meet her.

He ended the call and remained still for a moment.

In the past, from that moment on, his entire day would have changed. He would have kept checking the time. He would have thought about where they would go, what he would wear, the moment he would see her walking towards him. Anticipation would already have begun taking over all the space that anxiety had occupied only moments before.

This time, none of that happened.

He went back to work, and when he checked the time later, he was surprised to realise that almost two hours had passed without him thinking about their meeting.

He arrived at the bar first, and when Irini appeared, Alkis watched her approach.

She was the same woman.

The same face he had watched enter a little bar only a few months earlier and felt time stand still. The same smile. The same movements. The same way she swept her hair back over her shoulder.

Only this time, time didn’t stop.

And that saddened him more than he had expected.

On Tuesday afternoon, Alexandros called Alkis.

There was no particular reason. He simply wanted to see him. The past few days had worried him more than he had let on and, although he had decided not to push him anymore, he didn’t want to let him shut himself away at home again either.

“Want to grab a beer tonight?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

For a moment, Alexandros pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen, as though checking that he had called the right person.

“Great,” was all he said.

He didn’t ask if Alkis was sure. He didn’t give him time to change his mind.

That evening, when they met, Alexandros realised almost immediately that something had changed.

Alkis was calm.

Not happy. Not carefree. It was a strange kind of calm, heavy and thoughtful, nothing like the anxious, restless man of the previous few days. He wasn’t constantly checking his phone. He didn’t react to every little sound. He didn’t start talking about Irini before they had even properly sat down.

He was unusually quiet.

He drank his beer slowly, and every now and then his gaze drifted towards the people around them.

Alexandros watched him without asking questions.

He knew Alkis had seen Irini the night before. He expected that sooner or later Alkis would start telling him what had happened. Whether they had worked things out. What she had said. What he had said in return.

Alkis said nothing.

And Alexandros didn’t push him.

For quite a while, they drank in near silence. They exchanged a few words about work, commented on something happening at the next table, laughed briefly over an old story, and then the silence returned.

Only Alkis didn’t seem uncomfortable in it.

He seemed to be thinking.

At some point, he picked up his bottle, slowly turned it between his fingers, and looked at Alexandros.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

Alkis hesitated for a moment.

“What exactly do you do at those self-awareness seminars you go to?”

Alexandros had just taken a sip of beer.

He nearly choked.

He coughed, brought a hand to his mouth, and hurriedly put the bottle down on the table.

“You okay?” Alkis asked.

“Fine.”

Alexandros cleared his throat and tried to keep his expression as neutral as possible.

Inside, however, alarm bells were ringing.

He knew his friend very well. And if there was one person who, until only a few days ago, would probably have preferred doing his taxes to spending an evening at a self-awareness seminar, it was Alkis.

He didn’t smile.

He didn’t tease him.

Most importantly, he didn’t make the mistake of showing just how much the question had surprised him.

Because something in the way Alkis had asked it told him this wasn’t a passing thought.

The question had been working its way through him for some time.

Perhaps since that night at home.

Perhaps since his meeting with Irini.

Perhaps since the words Alexandros himself had left behind before closing the door.

“But you, Alkis? Are you different this time?”

Alexandros didn’t know which of those things had happened. He only knew that, for the first time in a long while, his friend wasn’t asking him something about Irini. He was asking about a path that perhaps, without even knowing it yet, might lead him back to himself.

On Thursday morning, shortly after nine, the familiar message appeared on his screen.

“Good morning ❤️”

And immediately after:

“Cinema downtown tonight and then a drink?”

Alkis looked at the two messages. A few days earlier, an invitation like that would have been enough to change his entire mood.

Now he simply replied:

“I can’t tonight. I’m going with Alexandros to a self-awareness seminar.”

Her reply came almost immediately.

“A self-awareness seminar? You? Are you kidding me?”

And before he had time to respond:

“Did Alexandros talk you into this again? Soon you two will be searching for the meaning of life together.”

Alkis stared at the screen. Once, he would have laughed. Perhaps he would have replied with a joke, perhaps he might even have cancelled on Alexandros to go to the cinema with her.

This time, he didn’t laugh.

Something about the ease with which she mocked one of his choices—and, along with it, someone who had been part of his life for almost as long as he could remember—bothered him more than he had expected.

He didn’t bother explaining himself.

He simply wrote:

“Maybe. I’ll let you know when I find it.”

He tossed the phone onto his desk in irritation.

How is it possible that I fell in love with this woman?

He shook his head and smiled bitterly.

Seriously… am I an idiot?

And almost immediately, Alexandros’s voice came back to him.

“But you, Alkis? Are you different this time?”

“Fuck you too, Alexandros,” he muttered.

And went back to work.

That afternoon, at 7:00 p.m., he arrived at the psychologist’s office where the seminars were held. He greeted his best friend, sat down beside him, and glanced discreetly around the room. Strangers, chairs arranged in a circle, notebooks, quiet conversations.

He felt awkward.

He was almost regretting coming.

What exactly am I doing here?

Another thought made him tense even more.

So after all this, am I supposed to decide whether I’m staying with Irini?

He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to hear the answer.

A few minutes later, the psychologist took her place in the circle and let her gaze move briefly over everyone. She welcomed them, introduced herself, and explained in a few words how the session would unfold. Then she gave each person a chance to say a few words about themselves.

Alkis listened to the others without really taking much in. The closer his turn came, the more he wondered what exactly he was supposed to say.

When they reached him, he shifted awkwardly in his chair.

“Alkis.”

He paused for a moment.

“I’m here because he brought me,” he said, nodding towards Alexandros.

A few people laughed, and Alexandros smiled without saying anything.

“And… I don’t really know what I’m doing here.”

The psychologist smiled.

“I hope you discover that along the way.”

Then she turned to the next person.

Alkis leaned back in his chair.

So do I, he thought.

At least no one had asked him to discover himself yet.

There were evenings when he left the seminar feeling as though nothing particularly important had happened. And others when a question, an exercise, or even something he had heard from someone else followed him all the way home.

At first, he observed the others more than he observed himself. He listened to their stories, their struggles, their fears, and sometimes wondered what exactly he had in common with any of them.

Every week, he faithfully attended the group self-awareness sessions. And as time passed, he felt something inside him slowly beginning to unlock.

It didn’t happen all at once. There was no great revelation that suddenly put everything in its proper place. It was more like a series of small realisations, one following another, forcing him to look at his relationship with Irini from angles he had avoided until then.

One of the first things he noticed was how easily he lost touch with himself whenever something happened between them.

Instead of asking himself how he felt within the relationship, he was constantly trying to understand her.

Why had she pulled away?

What might she be afraid of?

What had happened in her past?

Was she under too much pressure?

Did she simply need more time?

He had an explanation for almost everything.

The problem was that Irini had never given him most of those explanations.

He had created them himself.

And whenever reality became difficult to face, he returned to their good moments. To her tenderness, the morning messages, their laughter, the nights when he held her in his arms and everything seemed so simple.

As though he were gathering evidence.

There. This is the real Irini.

The other one—the woman who disappeared, who left him waiting, who made him doubt what he felt—was always a temporary version of her.

A parenthesis that would eventually close.

And Alkis waited.

He waited for the woman he had met in the beginning to return.

Until one day he was forced to ask himself something he had never wanted to consider before.

What if they were both Irini?

The tender one and the distant one.

The woman who sought him out and the woman who disappeared.

The woman who made him feel as though he had finally found what he had been looking for, and the woman who, only a few days later, left him wondering whether there was even a place for him in her life.

Perhaps his greatest mistake wasn’t that he had failed to see the signs.

Perhaps it was that he had chosen which of the two he wanted to believe.

Alkis had fallen in love with Irini.

But he had also fallen in love with something else: the relationship he believed they could have.

He had imagined the whole thing.

But for that relationship to exist, it needed two people who wanted it and who were able to stand within it.

He couldn’t create it on his own.

And above all, he couldn’t create it by continually betraying himself just to keep it alive.

That was perhaps the hardest thing to admit.

Because he began to see how many times he had stayed silent when he wanted to speak. How many times he had apologised simply to end an argument. How many times he had taken responsibility for the tension between them, even when deep down he knew that something had hurt him.

And then came an even more difficult realisation.

Perhaps what was keeping him in the relationship now wasn’t only love.

It was also the need for an explanation.

He was waiting for Irini to answer all those “whys” that had piled up inside him.

To explain.

To acknowledge what had happened.

To understand how deeply she had hurt him.

Perhaps even to apologise, so that everything could finally fall into place.

He wanted an ending that made sense.

But he was beginning to realise that he might never get one.

And along with that realisation, things he had once taken for granted began to change.

Love without peace was no longer enough for him.

Intimacy without respect made him smaller.

And attraction without safety had long since stopped bringing him joy.

Sometimes these realisations calmed him. Other times, they frightened him.

Sometimes they made him angry.

Mostly with himself.

Why did I do all of this?

Why did I give this relationship so much importance?

Why did I stay for so long?

He didn’t have the answers yet.

But for the first time, he had begun asking the questions of the right person.

Himself.

For as long as Alkis waited for Irini to give him the answers, without even realising it, he had placed something far more important in her hands.

His freedom.

He was waiting for an explanation so he could find peace. An apology so he could feel vindicated. An acknowledgement that she had hurt him so he could finally move on.

But as long as he waited for those things from her, he remained tied to her.

The change began when, little by little, he stopped looking in her direction.

He began returning to everything that had happened, no longer to analyse Irini, but to look at himself. The signs he had noticed and ignored. The times something inside him had told him he was hurting and he had persuaded it to be quiet. The words he had believed more than the actions. The boundaries he had moved, little by little, until he had almost forgotten where they had once been.

He didn’t need to punish himself for loving. Or for hoping. Or for taking so long to see something that now seemed so clear.

He began to forgive that version of Alkis.

The one who stayed longer than he should have.

The one who begged.

The one who believed words and ignored actions.

The one who, every time he was afraid of losing Irini, abandoned himself a little more.

And the less he blamed that man, the more he began to protect him.

Somewhere along the way, something happened that he hadn’t planned.

He stopped needing to understand Irini.

He no longer felt the same need to discover why she behaved the way she did. He didn’t want to convince her that his intentions had been good. He didn’t need to prove that he had loved her the right way.

For the first time, what mattered more was understanding himself.

Not out of selfishness.

Out of love.

And then pieces from long before Irini began falling into place.

Thalia.

Teresa.

Different women. Different times. Different stories.

And yet, the feeling was strangely familiar.

The waiting.

The uncertainty.

The need to try just a little harder.

The belief that if, this time, he loved enough, endured enough, understood enough, he might finally change the ending.

That was when he understood what Alexandros had been trying to tell him that night.

The women weren’t the same.

He was the one returning, without realising it, to something familiar. To relationships and experiences that touched old places within him. Places that had left their own deep emotional imprint.

And every time, he believed this story would be different.

That this time, he would manage to change the ending.

But now he was beginning to understand something else.

He didn’t need to change the ending of the same story.

He could stop repeating it.

And perhaps that was the most important change of all.

Little by little, Alkis began making different choices.

A little more of himself.

A little more peace.

A little less of the chaos he had once learned to mistake for love.

Meanwhile, the more Irini sensed him pulling away, the more she returned.

With new plans.

Suggestions for trips.

Evenings that resembled those first, beautiful ones.

With all the tenderness that had once been enough to make Alkis forget everything that had come before.

Only now, something had changed.

Alkis no longer needed Irini’s crumbs.

Once, he had waited for her to give him the sense of security he was missing. A message, a return, an embrace had been enough to make him feel all right again.

Now that sense of security had begun to come from somewhere else.

From himself.

And perhaps that was why, when he finally closed the door behind him, he didn’t do it in anger.

He didn’t need to punish her, nor did he need to make her understand what she had lost. He didn’t even need the answers he had once believed were necessary in order to move on.

He left with dignity.

And, strangely enough, with love.

Not only for her.

Mostly for himself.

He never received all the answers he had wanted from Irini.

But by then, his questions had changed.

They were no longer:

Why did she do this to me?

Why does she pull away?

Why can’t she love me the way I love her?

They were different now.

What kind of love is born from peace?

Who did I become through this relationship?

Where do I want to travel?

What do I still want to discover, experience, create?

For the first time in a very long time, there wasn’t a woman at the centre of his questions.

There was himself.

And the life he was beginning to imagine was no longer one in which someone would come along and make him whole.

He was already whole within it.

Perhaps love would come again one day.

Perhaps there would be a woman beside him, journeys for two, evenings on the same sofa, a hand reaching for his.

But now he knew something he hadn’t known before.

Companionship is beautiful when it allows you to bloom.

The End