Butterflies and Bruises by Olivia Salter | Short Story | Anti-Romance

 

Butterflies and Bruises

By Olivia Salter

Word Count: 2,359


The first time I saw Jamie, he was standing by the coffee shop counter, arguing with the barista over a double charge for oat milk. His voice was low but insistent, his posture somewhere between relaxed and tense, and there was a tilt to his smile that suggested he enjoyed the sparring.

I should’ve walked out then. But when he turned to look at me—caught my glance lingering, really—he smiled, and for a moment, the world narrowed to just him.

“You a regular here?” he asked, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Something like that.”

“Good coffee?”

“Great coffee. If you can pay for it without getting into a fight.”

The barista smirked. Jamie laughed, shaking his head. “You’re probably right. First round’s on me—assuming I ever get out of oat milk jail.”

I should’ve said no. I should’ve walked away.

But I didn’t.

***

Jamie had a way of making you feel like you were the only person in the room. It was in the way he leaned in when you talked, his eyes locked onto yours like he couldn’t get enough. It was in the small touches—a hand on my back as we crossed the street, his thumb brushing my knuckles when we held hands.

“I don’t usually do this,” he confessed on our third date, over cheap beer and loaded fries at a dive bar. “Get so into someone this fast, I mean. But with you… I don’t know. You make me want to try.”

I wanted to believe him. And for a while, I did.

For weeks, it was perfect. Late-night conversations that stretched into morning, stolen kisses in quiet corners, the rush of falling into something that felt bigger than either of us.

But cracks started showing early, even if I didn’t want to see them.

***

It started small. Jamie was late to dinner one night—“Got caught up at work,” he said, flashing that disarming smile—and spent most of the evening scrolling through his phone.

“You good?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, slipping his phone into his pocket. “Just busy. You know how it is.”

I didn’t. But I nodded anyway.

The next time, he canceled outright.

“Raincheck?” he texted, an hour after we were supposed to meet. “Something came up.”

I stared at the message, frustration bubbling in my chest. He didn’t offer an explanation, didn’t call, didn’t even pretend to care how his flakiness might feel.

I let it slide. I told myself it was just a rough patch, that everyone had off days.

But deep down, a voice I didn’t want to acknowledge was whispering: He’s not who you think he is.

***

Jamie’s absences became more frequent. When he did show up, he was distracted, his attention drifting to his phone or the sports highlights playing on the bar TV.

One night, after he bailed on plans for the third time in two weeks, I confronted him.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” I asked, my voice quieter than I intended.

He looked at me, his brow furrowing like I’d asked him to solve a riddle. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my frustration spilling over. “Maybe the fact that you keep canceling on me? Or that you’re here but not really here half the time?”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Look, I’ve just got a lot on my plate right now. Work’s been crazy, and I’m trying to figure out some stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Just… stuff, Tasha,” he snapped. “Why do you always have to make everything so heavy?”

The words stung more than I wanted to admit.

***

The first real blow came a month later. I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw the picture: Jamie at a rooftop bar, his arm slung casually around a girl I didn’t recognize.

The caption read: “Rooftop vibes with my favorite people.”

My stomach sank.

When I confronted him the next day, he didn’t even try to deny it.

“She’s a friend,” he said, his tone defensive. “We were out with a group. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that you didn’t tell me about it,” I said, my voice shaking. “The big deal is that you’re always too busy for me, but somehow you’ve got time to hang out with other people.”

“Oh, come on,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’re blowing this way out of proportion.”

“No, Jamie. I’m not.”

But he didn’t listen. He never listened.

***

By the time our relationship fell apart, it felt like a relief.

Jamie had been pulling away for weeks, his excuses growing more hollow with each passing day. I stopped asking for explanations, stopped waiting for him to show up.

The final straw came during what was supposed to be a romantic weekend getaway.

We’d planned the trip months ago, back when things still felt good, back when I still believed in us. But from the moment we arrived, Jamie was distant, his attention fixed on his phone or the game playing on the cabin’s TV.

On the second night, I finally snapped.

“Why did you even come here?” I demanded, my voice cracking with frustration.

“What do you mean?” he asked, not even looking up.

“I mean, you’re not here, Jamie. You’re checked out. You’ve been checked out for months.”

He sighed, setting his phone down. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’ve just got a lot going on right now.”

“You keep saying that,” I said, tears spilling over. “But you never tell me what it is. Do you even want to be with me?”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said.

And that was it.

***

When Jamie left the next morning, I didn’t try to stop him.

For days, I felt hollow, like a part of me had been ripped away. But slowly, I began to see the truth: Jamie hadn’t taken anything from me. He’d just shown me what I was willing to give up for someone who didn’t deserve it.

One afternoon, I opened my journal and found an entry from the early days of our relationship:

I wish I could tell him how he makes me feel. How the sound of his voice gives me butterflies, how his smile makes my heart skip a beat. I’ve never felt this kind of happiness before.

Reading it now, I felt like a stranger to the girl who had written those words.

He didn’t give me happiness, I wrote beneath it. I gave it to myself. And I can do it again.

***

Months later, Jamie reached out.

“Hey,” his text read. “Been thinking about you. Can we talk?”

When we met, he looked the same—charming, confident, his smile as disarming as ever. But to me, he seemed smaller now, less significant.

“I messed up,” he said, his voice low. “I didn’t realize what I had until it was gone.”

I listened quietly, letting him say his piece. Then I stood, leaving my untouched coffee on the table.

“Goodbye, Jamie,” I said.

And for the first time in a long time, I walked away without looking back.

***

As I stepped out into the sunlight, I felt a strange sense of peace.

The butterflies, the joy, the love—they had always been mine.

And I didn’t need anyone else to feel them again.

***

In the weeks following that conversation with Jamie, something shifted in me. At first, the quiet was unbearable—the empty space where his laughter used to live, the pauses in my days when I’d wonder what he was doing, where he was.

But as the days turned into weeks, I began to fill that silence with my own thoughts, my own life. The quiet no longer felt like a void but a kind of freedom.

Sasha noticed.

“You seem different,” she remarked one afternoon as we sat on the porch of her apartment, sipping iced coffee under the heavy summer sun. “I mean, in a good way. You seem lighter.”

“I feel lighter,” I admitted. “I didn’t realize how heavy it was carrying him around, all that emotional baggage.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Emotional baggage? Girl, Jamie was more like a full-on suitcase you tried to drag up a mountain.”

I laughed, but it wasn’t the easy, carefree laugh that used to come when I was with Jamie. This one felt more like an exhale—long overdue, but good.

“I kept thinking there was something wrong with me for not being happy,” I continued. “Like, it was my fault that I wasn’t feeling complete or that I didn’t get what I wanted from him. But... maybe it wasn’t about me.”

Sasha nodded, her face softening with understanding. “It wasn’t about you, babe. Jamie’s the one with the issues. He’s the one who couldn’t meet you halfway, no matter how hard you tried.”

I smiled at her, grateful for the reminder.

***

I threw myself into the work I’d been neglecting during the months I spent lost in Jamie’s orbit. I enrolled in an online photography class, something I had always wanted to do but never found time for. I started painting again, filling my apartment with color and chaos—bright yellows, deep blues, swirls of orange.

One evening, as I was rearranging a canvas in my living room, my phone buzzed. It was an Instagram notification: Jamie liked your post.

I froze, my heart skipping a beat. It had been months since we’d last spoken, months since I’d felt that pang in my chest when his name appeared on my screen.

I didn’t look at the post. Instead, I set the phone down on the counter and walked to my window, staring out at the city below.

I had wondered if he’d try to reach out again. The doubt that crept in didn’t feel like longing—it felt like curiosity, like I wanted to know if he would have the guts to admit his mistakes.

But deep down, I knew the truth. The Jamie who had left months ago wasn’t the same Jamie who might have reached out now. And I wasn’t the same person who would have waited.

***

A few days later, I saw Jamie again—not by chance, but because he’d asked to meet up. I wasn’t sure why I agreed at first, maybe out of some need for closure, or maybe because I thought I could confront the version of him that had haunted me for so long.

We met at a small, dimly lit café, one of those places that felt like a sanctuary from the city outside. He looked almost exactly the same—tall, unshaven, his dark hair falling into his eyes—but there was a distance in his eyes now, a kind of heaviness I hadn’t noticed before.

“I’ve been thinking a lot,” he began, his voice soft but unsure. “About us, about everything.”

I waited, my heart a strange mix of indifference and curiosity.

“I get it now,” he continued. “I hurt you. And I... I’m sorry. I was so caught up in myself that I couldn’t see what I was doing to you.”

I held his gaze, but I didn’t feel the rush I once did. There was no flutter in my stomach, no racing pulse. There was only the echo of my own voice in my head, saying the words I should have said months ago: It’s too late.

“I don’t need your apology,” I said quietly. “What I needed was for you to be there when I needed you. I needed you to show up, to stop making excuses for why you couldn’t be the person I thought you were.”

Jamie winced, the words hitting him harder than he expected.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t that person,” he whispered. “But I was trying. I swear, I was trying.”

I shook my head. “No, Jamie. You weren’t. You were trying to keep me around while you figured out what you wanted. And I let you. I let you take more from me than you ever gave.”

The silence between us stretched out, thick and suffocating. And in that silence, I realized something: Jamie wasn’t the problem. I was.

***

As Jamie sat there, looking at me with that same mixture of regret and helplessness, I knew it was time. Time to let go for good. Time to stop wondering about what could have been and start building what was waiting for me.

“I don’t think we can be friends,” I said, my voice steady. “I need more than that. I need to be okay without you. And I can’t do that if you’re still here, lingering in the background.”

Jamie opened his mouth to respond, but I held up a hand.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I forgive you. But I’ve got to let you go.”

He nodded, his eyes filled with something I couldn’t place—maybe understanding, maybe sorrow. “I get it,” he whispered. “I really do.”

I stood, my legs shaking slightly, but my heart stronger than it had been in months. “Goodbye, Jamie.”

And this time, there were no regrets, no lingering doubts. I left that café with a quiet certainty I’d never felt before.

***

The next few months were a whirlwind of growth. I poured myself into my art, my relationships, and my own happiness. I started traveling again, capturing the world through my lens, finding beauty in the chaos.

Sasha’s apartment became my second home, the place I could laugh, cry, and feel like I belonged.

But one evening, when I was standing on the rooftop of a hotel in the city, snapping a few photos of the skyline, my phone buzzed.

Jamie liked your post.

I stared at the notification for a moment. The old me would’ve dropped everything and reached out. But this time, I didn’t feel the need to.

Instead, I smiled to myself, tucked the phone into my pocket, and turned back to the city lights.

I was enough.