The modeling agency hall was always buzzing, packed with girls hungry for attention in all the usual ways—gel hair slicked back carefully like armor, eyes wide with ambition, the typical competitive bitchy energy in the air. But in a quiet corner, on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, Patricia noticed Vicky. Vicky was standing by the wall, awkward in her oversized sweater, looking very much out of place and painfully aware of it.
Patricia liked her instantly. She was all graceful, humble, and shy, with intelligent eyes, and a smile that took its time to appear but was beautiful when it did. Patricia, already on her way to becoming the agency’s next breakout, reached out. “Hey,” she said, with an honest, friendly tone, one with which Vicky was not familiar in these kinds of places. Vicky looked at her, a little surprised, but then her face softened.
From that day on, they were inseparable. Patricia and Vicky—two halves of something rare and unnamed. They’d hang out after school to do homework, shared music and danced with no sense of embarrassment whatsoever,they shared late-night dreamy conversations on rooftops, whispered laughter at sleepovers, afternoons exploring the city between castings, hands brushing each other’s as if by accident, lingering a moment too long. They never spoke about what they were. “Friends,” they’d tell others, but alone, they’d look at each other with that understanding. They were something else entirely, something too delicate to be labeled.
But Patricia was on fire, her modeling career taking off in a way neither of them had expected. She was everywhere: glossy magazines, billboards, campaigns that paid in five-figure sums. Vicky, by contrast, worked steadily but never caught the same spotlight. She was quieter, keeping up with her studies, slipping into normalcy even as Patricia grew brighter, almost untouchable.
And then, one day, Vicky started pulling away. She told herself Patricia deserved better—someone less pathetic, less mundane, less likely to disappoint her. So she stopped calling as often, let Patricia’s messages unanswered, and let herself vanish from Patricia’s past. Patricia was furious at first. Her anger uncontrollable, rightfully so. Patricia tried to give Vicky everything she had, as a friend, a sister, a platonic lover, a spiritual half. And yet Vicky’s response after all these years was that she wasn’t good enough for her spotlight. Wasn’t she supposed to be the one to decide that?
15 years passed.
Vicky didn’t wait. She moved forward, but still aching. The online dating game was pathetic to say the least, and she struggled living alone, the absence of a beautiful soul who was once her soulmate. But she didn’t give up, she finished her studies, took up work at a nursing home, and found peace in the slow, everyday rhythms of life. She met Stefan, someone kind and steady, who gave her the security Patricia had never been able to. She settled into a quiet life, far from the fashion world, content. And now, three months pregnant, Vicky felt the completeness of it, a happiness she’d never believed she’d find.
Patricia, meanwhile, had slipped into the shadows. Fame had an ugly side that no one spoke of, but everyone knew about, and she was lost somewhere in it. Alcohol numbed her disappointments, and drugs blurred the edges of her life. The once-bright path she had paved with ambition and talent had led her here: a high-end escort by night, haunted by the memory of a life she’d abandoned.
But the city eventually became too suffocating, and with what little self convincing she had left, Patricia took a one-way ticket back to her hometown, hoping for the mercy of anonymity.
One chilly afternoon, she wandered into the town’s modest library, not expecting to see anyone she knew. But there she was. Vicky—older, calmer, glowing in a way that softened Patricia’s jagged heart. Vicky looked up, and for a second, her face was a mirror of the girl she’d once been, the girl who’d loved Patricia with such purity that it broke Patricia’s heart all over again.
They talked for hours in a café on the edge of town, catching up as if no time had passed, slipping back into an ease that felt as natural as breathing. Patricia’s heart ached with memories of all the nights they’d spent as teenagers, dreaming of lives they hadn’t lived. And Vicky’s eyes still held that unspoken love, even as she spoke of her fiancé and her unborn child.
Over the next few weeks, they met often, rekindling a closeness that had never truly died. One night, in a rare moment of bravery, Patricia leaned in, and Vicky didn’t pull away. They shared a kiss that held fifteen years of longing, years of unspoken love and aching memories. That night, they became what they had dreamed of so many years ago, two women sharing a love that was fierce, beautiful, and devastating in its impermanence.
But as the weeks passed, Vicky felt the weight of her life pulling her back. She had a family now, a child on the way. She couldn’t leave them behind, couldn’t bear the thought of her baby growing up without the stability she had always craved herself. And so, in the soft morning light, she took Patricia’s hands in hers, tears glistening in her eyes.
“I’ll always love you,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “But I can’t stay.”
Patricia nodded, the sadness settling in her chest like an old, familiar weight. She understood, and she would let her go, with grace, with love, holding on to the knowledge that Vicky would always be a part of her.
They parted that day, walking in opposite directions, two souls that had been one, now severed but whole in their own ways. They knew they would think of each other in quiet moments, remember the love they had, a bittersweet and beautiful thing that could never last.
And they knew, too, that it was enough. In a world full of unfinished stories, theirs had found its ending—gentle, bittersweet, and eternal.
