At first, I didn't know I was a ghost. I wasn't leaving the restaurant, no one could see me, but I thought it was just a dream, so I waited to wake up. And I woke up... with my dead body lying on the cold ground.

        I was there when the coroner and the police came. It seems that my poor heart couldn't take it anymore, so the unexpected happened: heart attack at 23.

        I heard people saying what a shame it is that such a beautiful girl died alone in the darkness. It was true, I was very beautiful. I still am. Beautiful, intelligent, mannered, charming... and yet, I wasn't enough to make him stay close to me, to know how to keep him.

       Him. The man that I thought was the love of my life, the one. The man next to whom I dreamed about having five children and building our ideal house. The man who, at 17, stormed into my house to hold me in his arms because he knew I was afraid of lightnings and thunders...

        The same man who told me he found someone else. In my favorite restaurant. Three months before our wedding. He wasn't wearing his engagement ring when he told me it was for the better to break up, but he still asked for mine back. They were inherited from his great-grandparents. But he gave it to ME. He proposed ME. He told ME that he will be mine for eternity...

        I think eternity it's not quite as long as I would have expected. Maybe it doesn’t exist at all. We, as humans, always needed to believe in something stronger than us, something heavenly. You believe in God or other deities. You believe in science, advanced technologies, maybe in the future.

        I believed in eternity. I believed in "I love you". I knew he loved me, but this is the problem. „Loved”.

        In that night, while holding the glass of white wine in my shaky hand, he told me that that he will always love me, but he is no longer IN LOVE with me.

        I dropped the glass. I can't remember if the sound I heard was from the glass or it was my heart breaking. Maybe both. I had shards at my feet and in my heart.

        When I was little, I always thought that the feeling of love is much stronger than when you are in love. I think it’s not. I don’t really know. You can love your mom, your friends, the dress that fits you perfectly, and still... you’re not in love with them. It will always be one person you are really in love with. I wasn’t that person, not anymore.

         I wasn’t hurt by his words, or by the cruel truth that another woman will have him close... my own expectations hurt me. The image I had created of him, our relationship, the life we could have had together. In my mind, we had five children. In my mind, I was living a completely different life. I couldn't even see that this man was moving towards someone else.

        Up until that moment, I had felt the tears stinging my eyes, but only when all the thoughts hit me, they begin to fall like rain. I was wearing mascara. The only mascara I have ever known. Funny how I was more worried about how I look than the decisions I will make.

        He couldn't look me in the eye. Better, he would have seen how messed up I was on the inside. Beauty with a shattered heart.

        He got up from the table and left quickly, not before he left a kiss on my forehead that burned my skin. He said he would call me to set up a day to pick up his things, but I never got the call.

        Maybe because, in that same night, I died. Remember? Heart attack?

        I died on the street in the back of the restaurant, which disappointed me a bit. I was dressed in my favorite dress, the gold one. I could at least die in the restaurant.

        Perhaps it is not a coincidence that my last memories are from this restaurant. The building belonged to my father. I used to play here when I was little, even though it was an empty place full of insects, it gave me peace.

       My dear father sold it to a nice family from Thailand. They turned it into a restaurant with the specifics of the country.

        These people were very nice to me, letting me come and keep playing, but the room was starting to come alive. I became friends with their little girl and we spent most of our time together.

         And, because everything happens for a reason, this family also had a boy. But don’t panic, this boy was not the man I was supposed to marry. It was his bestfriend.

         However, I was always jealous of them. Even when I didn't know what jealousy was. They were a family that gave every last penny to achieve their dreams, and even if they didn't have a very good financial situation in the first years, they stayed by each other's side. The kind of family that spends weekends together, going for walks or watching a movie to talk about for hours.

        My parents and I were never like that. My father was buried in work and mother was spending her time with her friends, going to parties or buying expensive purses. Or alcohol. The kind of family movies are made about. More precisely, dramas.

        Anyways, as expected, people are leaving this earth, stepping into a better or worse place. The restaurant was left to the children, who decided, however, to break away from it to start something of their own. From a person who never understood the purpose for which she was put into this world, I can understand them. We do what seems right to us and, sometimes, running away and starting over alone is the only option.

        So, I have always been connected to this restaurant. Physically and mentally. Like an invisible string who didn't want to let me go.

        After a while, my father came here before closing time. The news made him 10 years older: his hair turned gray like the ashes, his face was furrowed with wrinkles, but his eyes... the saddest eyes I had ever seen. His ocean blue eyes were now a storm. Our relationship was never close, but I knew he cared a lot about me...in his twisted way. When I was 15, he found my pack of cigarettes in an old printer. We had a long fight, but in the middle of the night, when I went out on the balcony to calm down, I found him smoking my cigarettes. I sat down next to him and, with puppy dog eyes, begged him to let me have at least a few smokes. He gave me a whole cigarette and we agreed by looking at each other that we weren't going to tell mom about it. She cared a lot about society etiquette, so it was not allowed for her daughter educated at the most expensive schools to commit such a thing. But again, she was an alcoholic.

            I hated to see him in this state, especially since I was the one who caused it. So, I did the same thing which I did at 15: I sat down beside him, and, with my eyes full of melancholy, watched him drown his bitter. He had ordered whiskey first, which he drank without blinking. But he quickly switched to vodka, and he never really liked vodka.

        I stayed all night with him. I heard him screaming that he wanted his little princess back. I cried with him. I held him tight as he fell by the bar, and even though he couldn't feel my touch, I wanted to think he knew I was there. It's painful when you realize that if you gave your relationship with your parents a chance, if you tried to rebuild the bonds that were broken long before you, if you tried anything, maybe something would have been different. But for my family, time was up. Sometimes, I am reassured by the thought that, if we meet again in another life, in another universe, we will be able to make everything work, together.

        That was the last time I saw him. I've heard rumors about my parents getting divorced, my mom rebuilding her life with an excuse of an actor. She always had an affinity for pathetic men, even if my father was far from that. I haven't heard much about him. It seems that he moved to another country, but no one knows anything anymore.

        I've been haunting this place ever since. At first, I had lost track of time, months feeling like minutes. The time loop begins to disappear when around you strangers get born, strangers get buried. I saw so many faces that I had begun to forget what mine looked like. Despite being surrounded by joy, my reflection no longer existed. I was talking to myself to remind me that I still have a voice. That a little part of myself wasn’t really gone.

        Hard to believe, but I made a friend... and this friend walks after her with a scythe and is the terror of 8-year-old children. Her name is Saoirse and she’s death in person. Literally.

        The first time I saw her, she passed me by like a storm. She went into a room that I knew very well, but when I went to look for her, she had disappeared without a trace. I was to learn later that the poker I was playing with the dead was paying off. I was skating the fine line between the realm of the living and of those whose souls perished, which was a dangerous game. What's dead must stay dead, keep the balance.

        So Saoirse has been paying me visits lately, waiting for me to finish whatever was left unfinished and get out of here once and for good. I just didn't know what to do. I kept trying to convince myself that everything is okay and that I'm ready, but I don't think that's the truth. I'm a little scared. I never liked to miss something: going out with friends to a club or some new gossip. And now, the fact that I will have to leave and not take part in anything that will happen, scares me. What if a new continent will be discovered? Or people will find the elixir of youth? Or someone will beat Jules Verne's record and circumnavigate the globe in less than 80 days? I would like to take part in all these events that will change everything I knew at one point.

       My place was no longer here. But I stayed...I’m still standing. I just don’t know how to leave this restaurant.

        Everything was about to turn upside down.

        In one aimless night, a family would enter this restaurant, sit at the table where I used to sit. Nothing strange. People come and go, they never stay forever. Although, it was strange for me. Because, after a long period of lethargy, I knew who was sitting at that table.

        I didn’t recognize him at first, the last memory was when we were 23. But the eyes, they never lie. They never get older, but you can guess how old life has made them. Especially the dark blue ones. How to forget those eyes?

        And this smile. The smile that was like a sea breeze. Like when you catch the sunrise on the seashore, and the wind caresses you as gently as possible. That's what his smile felt like. Maybe I am insane, but nothing is more intimate than when a person's smile is dedicated only to you. Or maybe I don't know anymore.

        He had a beard, which was a surprised. He always told me it wouldn't catch him. His hair turned an ash gray, but neat. Of course it was neat. This man always looked like a Fleetwood Mac song. No matter how many years pass over him, he will always look splendid, with his characteristic charm. Tall and strong, the lightly fitted shirt highlighting his body.

        I knew that if I had lifted the sleeve a little more, I would have stumbled upon that tattoo. An absolutely dumb tattoo, made in a mizerable apartment in the heart of Rome when we were drunk, crazy and in love. But it was kinda special. He had written on his arm a verse from Alone, my favorite poem from Edgar Allan Poe. In that night, I told him to not do it because it was a foolish idea, but he said to me that he would never regret anything about me. And he did it. And in that very first moment, I realized that he was my person.

        My thoughts were intrerrupted by laughter. Children s laughter. A boy and a girl, almost the same age, maybe the boy is little bit older. So beautiful, as if they were made of porcelain. The little girl was dressed in a pink princess dress and had a big bow in her hair. Looking so tight, I would have gone personally to get it out. The boy, on the other hand, was clearly Prince Charming, dressed in a black suit with a pink tie. Through their brown hair passed a few blonde locks, almost unseen, and their eyes had the same colour of blue as...their father s. Because of course, he was a father. Fulfilled his dream of having children dancing around the house. His dream of having a welcoming home and an enormous library. And a family, a real one.

        And oh... his wife. Maybe the most beautiful woman my eyes have ever settled on, I fear. Flawless. I think it hurts that, compared to me, her beauty was not only mirrored by something as fleeting as external presence, but by the way her slightly red lips smiled at the children, by her hands that moved chaotically in the air when she explained something, by the sound of her laughter that crashed like an echo against the walls, and, of course, through the eyes that seemed to say thousands of words. Those eyes, they're always to blame!

        Somehow he achieved all this goals, but without me. Did he think he couldn t do that with me? That I was no longer the right person, the safest choice?

        One of the most agonizing sensations is when you feel tears sting your eyes, but you can't cry, no matter how hard you try. That's how I felt now. At any moment, I would burn. But there was no anger or envy... only sadness, in its purest form. I knew the answer to the previous questions and I knew even more that I was not predestined to be the love of HIS life, of somebody's life, but only the regret. This observation did not reassure me at all, but, at some point, I guess I should come to terms with this reality.

        As my father used to say, the curious die quickly, but I couldn't help but listen to what they had to say. I found out about their holiday in Monte Carlo and how they were to be run over by some Monegasque racing driver who doesn't know how to park. Funny enough for me. I understood that low-waisted jeans were making a comeback (it seems that they had disappeared altogether in a while???) and I heard about an actress who plays in a tennis movie. In my time, she didn't exist, but she sounds like a big deal nowadays.

        I felt a cold hand on my back, then a rustle. Turning my gaze slightly, I see Saoirse patiently standing a little too close to me for my own safety. As much as I would have liked their conversation, somehow I felt that something was different in my body, as if I was going to leave it. I turn to the only person who can see me, but she was already in the doorway that I had never been able to pass. Panicked by time and the situation, I did the thing I wanted most: I went and punched my great love in the face. And after a small, shy kiss on the forehead. Of course he didn't feel anything, but I felt all the closeness... and, perhaps in a small percentage, some sort of “revenge”.

        I hurriedly walked towards the door, but I felt more and more uncomfortable, something squeezing my whole being. I tripped over one leg of the table, and when I lost my balance and landed on the cold floor, I knew I wouldn't be able to get up. With the last of my strength, I looked at Saoirse in a panic, but she just came and caressed my face... with her schyte. I wanted to ask her what was going on, but...

        And I felt it before anything else... infinity.