You'll Think Of Me:
(Jennifer And Jake)

The night Jake found himself truly alone, there was a full moon in a dark navy sky, shining bright enough to read by. It was four in the morning when he woke, tangled in the bedsheets, the space beside him an unbearable, aching emptiness.

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The old clock ticked too loudly in the corner. He lay still, breathing slow, trying to trick his mind into escaping back into dreams, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw her — Jennifer — smiling like she used to, back when she loved him, back when forever still seemed possible.

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Jake pulled the covers over his head like a child hiding from monsters. Only this time, the monster was memory itself.

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Since the day Jennifer left — since she packed her bags and drove off in her dusty red Honda Civic, leaving nothing but a note and a ghost of perfume in the air — Jake had done everything he could to keep moving. He fixed the leaky faucet she used to curse at. He stacked wood for the winter she wouldn’t see with him. He scrubbed the house so clean it no longer looked like a place where love had once lived.

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But at night...
At night, grief was a stubborn tide that dragged him under.

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He swung his legs over the bed and stood, the wooden floor cold against his feet. The moonlight cut across the room, slicing through the dark, illuminating the chaos she left behind: a record collection, a cat she forgot to love anymore, and his favorite old sweater, still draped on the arm of the chair where she used to curl up and read.

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It was all just... remnants now.

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He didn’t cry. He hadn't cried since the day she said goodbye without looking back. Instead, he dressed in yesterday’s jeans, grabbed his truck keys, and headed out into the night, trying to outrun the weight in his chest.

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The roads outside of town stretched empty and silver in the moonlight, and Jake drove without a destination, the radio playing low — a voice singing about heartbreak that only made the feeling inside him worse.

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He thought maybe if he drove far enough, fast enough, he could leave the ruins of their love behind — the arguments, the whispered apologies that had come a little too late, the dreams they once planned like they were promises.

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"I guess I'm just tired of this," he whispered to no one, gripping the wheel tighter.

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The truth was uglier than he wanted to admit: Jennifer hadn’t left because of some giant, catastrophic moment. No affair, no betrayal. Just... a slow erosion. One late night at a time, one missed "I love you" too many, one tearful conversation where neither of them knew how to fix what was breaking.

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And then she found someone else. Someone easier to love. Someone she didn’t have to fight so hard to be somewhat happy with.

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Jake laughed bitterly into the dark cab of his truck. It sounded foreign in the heavy silence.

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By sunrise, Jake found himself parked outside the little lake where he and Jennifer used to spend summers, back before life got too big, too complicated. The mist hovered above the water like it was hiding secrets.

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He stepped out of the truck, breathing in the damp earth and the sweet rot of fallen leaves.

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"You can take it all," he muttered, speaking to her ghost. "Take the records, take your damn cat, take all the memories."

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He tried to picture her new life — laughing with someone else, building dreams that didn't include him. It hurt more than he thought it would, even now, even after all the ways he had tried to convince himself he was fine.

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But someday, he knew, she'd think of him.
She’d be lying awake next to someone else, and his name would slip quietly into her mind — a crack in the foundation of her new life.
And she'd wonder... what if?

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It wasn’t revenge he wanted. He didn’t even want her sadness.

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He just wanted her to remember and know:
He had loved her.
Completely.
Flaws and all.
And she had walked away from that certain kind of love.

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Jake sat down on the grass, elbows on his knees, and watched the sun break over the horizon, scattering gold over the water. For a moment, he allowed himself to feel everything. The betrayal. The longing. The endless, aching tenderness that refused to go away even long after she did.

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Then he stood up.

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It was time.

Time to try and let her go for real.

Time to stop letting the memory of her steal the life he still had left to live.

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Back at the house, he boxed up their records.

The cat — Bella — twined around his legs, sensing the shift in the air, sensing that maybe she wasn’t just leftover baggage after all. He bent down and scratched her behind the ears.

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"You can stay," he said softly. "Some things are worth keeping."

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He packed up all the photos too — the smiling snapshots of summers and Christmases and ordinary Tuesdays — but he didn’t throw them away. He just put them out of sight, in the attic where he thought other ghosts lived.

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When he reached for the sweater she left behind, the one she used to steal on cold mornings, he hesitated. His fingers brushed the fabric, soft and worn.

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He thought about keeping it. About holding on to it like an anchor to the past.
But instead, he folded it neatly and placed it by the door.

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Maybe someday, Jennifer would come back for it.
Maybe she'd feel that familiar ache and remember him — not perfectly, not even fondly, but enough to know she had once been loved beyond reason.

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And if she did?

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He would likely already be gone from her heart.
Just a sweet, aching memory she left too soon.

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Later that night, Jake sat on the porch as the first stars pierced the dark sky.
He sipped his tea, feeling — for the first time in months — something close to peace.

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The pain was still there. It probably always would be, in some quiet way.

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But it wasn’t the only thing left.

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There was still the wind through the pines.
Still the songs on the radio that could make him feel something deep and good.

Still a life waiting to be lived.

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Jennifer would think of him someday with regret, he was sure.

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But by then, he would be long gone — not bitter, not broken anymore, just... free.

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And that was enough.

 

Written by Mark Gammill

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​​You'll Think Of Me:

(Dear Diana)
 

Dear Diana,

 

I woke up at four this morning.
The house was too still, too empty.
 

The moon poured through the window like the headlights we used to race under — when we were young enough to believe that love was enough to outrun everything chasing us.

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I pulled the covers over my head like a child trying to block out the world.
But it didn't work. It never does.

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Because when someone leaves you, it’s not just the door that closes.
It's all the invisible, emotional doors inside you that remain open.

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I thought of you, Diana.
How could I not?
You're stitched into everything: the empty side of the bed, the half-full mug by the sink, the old songs that still cling to the walls of this house.

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You found yourself in someone else’s arms.
I try not to picture it, but my mind paints the scene anyway — cruel and vivid.
I try to pretend it doesn’t wreck me, but lying has always been your talent, not mine.

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I’ve been trying to get along.
Trying to live like I’m not haunted.
Friends ask how I'm doing, and I smile that brittle smile we all learn when life breaks our bones but expects us to keep on going.

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But inside... inside I’m broken.

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There’s not a lot left to say, Diana.

You took it all with you — the promises, the sweetness, even the fights that meant we still cared enough to argue.

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So go ahead.

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Take everything
Take your records.
Take your freedom.
Take the memories, I don’t want or need them now.

Take your space and all your reasons.

Take the cat you barely loved but always claimed.
Take my old sweater, the one you said smelled like "home," even when you no longer meant it.

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Because we have nothing left to weather now.
The storm came.
And you didn’t choose me.
You chose to leave.

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Maybe you thought a different life would save you.
Maybe it will.

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But you’ll think of me, Diana.
I know you will.

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Maybe not tomorrow.
Maybe not next year when someone else holds your hand.
But someday, the weight of what we could have been will settle on you like dust you can’t wipe away.

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You’ll be lying there, proud and stubborn as always, and you’ll remember:
The way my arms wrapped around you like they were made for no one else.
The way my laugh and jokes brightened even your worst days.
The way I always stayed, even when it was hard.

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You’ll remember.
And you’ll wonder.

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Not because I was perfect — God knows I wasn’t.
But because I loved you like a wildfire loves a forest: completely, unapologetically, until there was nothing left untouched.

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Oh, and how I loved to touch you and kiss you.

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This morning after the moon disappeared, I drove.
Miles and miles of open road under a bruised sky.
I thought maybe if I outran the sunrise, I could outrun you too.

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I thought about all the things we now leave behind.
I thought about how tired I am.
Tired of waiting for time to fix things that only you could have fixed.
Tired of carrying all this invisible weight.

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I guess the only blessing left is not knowing what we could have been if you had stayed. We’ll never know.

 

Someday, Diana, you'll be folding laundry or standing in a line or kissing someone who doesn’t know the real you, and out of nowhere, my name will cross your mind.

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And it will ache.

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But don’t worry.
I’ll eventually be fine.

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I’m not there yet.
Today, I’m still bleeding quietly.
Still reaching out in my dreams for someone who's already gone.

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But I’ll get there.

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While you’re sleeping with your pride,
while you’re telling yourself you made the right choice,
I’ll be finding my way back to just myself.
Piece by piece.
Breath by breath.

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I’ll be over you.
And on with my life.

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I don’t hate you, Diana.
I never will.
But when you think of me — and you will —
know this:

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I loved you even more than you deserved.
I loved you in a way you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to find again.

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And you never will.

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Yours once, yours nevermore,
Mark

 

 

Written by Mark Gammill

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​​You'll Think Of Me:

(Dear Rachel)

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My Dearest Rachel,

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I write to you from the hollow hours before dawn, when even the stars seem to wither in the sky. The moon — cold and distant — stares down through the glass, illuminating this house you abandoned, this body you abandoned, this heart you abandoned.

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It is four o'clock, and sleep has denied me again.

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I reach for you even now, even knowing you are not here.
Even knowing you are in someone else's arms, offering the tenderness that once belonged to me alone.

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Do you feel it?
The way the heart trembles with everything we lost?
The way the long nights sometimes mourn us?

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I wonder if you hear me in the silence you chose.
If my name still lingers in your chest like a wound that will never quite heal.

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I wonder if you regret it yet.
If not yet I think you will.

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I rose from the wreckage of our bed and wandered these cold rooms.
Every object bears your fingerprints: the books you never finished, the records we danced to in our wild, unguarded days when we still believed in forever, the cat you once cradled against your heart like a child.

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I have not cried.
Though tears would be a mercy.

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Instead, I gather the fragments you left behind — my old sweater, still soft with the scent of you; your favorite worn-out vinyls; the coffee mug that remembers the curve of your hands — and I lay them with loving care in a box near the front door.

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Take them.
Take all the stuff, and take the freedom you sought with such desperate hunger.
Take the memories you think you can outrun.

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Take the cat.
Leave my sweater.
Leave whatever you must to lighten your soul.

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But you will not leave me behind.

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You cannot.

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Tonight I drove through the empty countryside, the mist floating like spirits across the fields.
I drove without direction, trying to exorcise you from my veins.

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I failed.

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You are a ghost sewn into my skin, a fever that will not break.
You are the ruin I must learn to live with inside.

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There was a time I believed love could conquer anything.
How foolish I was to think you believed it too.

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You wear your pride like armor now, but it will not save you from the hour — and it will come —
when my absence grows inside you like a bruise you cannot hide.

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You will remember.
When the nights stretch long and your lover sleeps soundly beside you,
you will lie awake, aching for something you cannot name.

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And it will be me.

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I do not wish you sorrow.
I do not wish you harm.

I wish you to feel.
To remember what it was to be loved beyond reason, beyond fear.

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You will think of me when the years have softened your sharpest defenses.
When regret is the only visitor left at your door.

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You will wonder what life might have been if you had chosen to stay.
If you had chosen to fight for me the way I fought for you and us.
If you had believed in us the way I still, against all reason, believe in us.

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You will wonder.
And it will be too late.

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I will find my way through this desolation.
I will try and build something from the ashes left behind.

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While you drift further from the shore of what we were,
I will learn to rise and stand again.

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I will not hate you.
Hate is too small a consequence for the love I have for you.

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I will remember you and you will think of me.

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Always.

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And someday —
I will be free.

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Yours once, yours nevermore,
Mark

 

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Epilogue​

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"She left him once. But it was she who would spend a lifetime trying to find her way back."

 

The years had not been unkind to Rachel — but they had been long.
 

She lived now in a house that had no memory, its walls bare of old photographs, its corners free of the clutter of laughter and disagreements and love.

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She had made sure of that.
She had built a life without ghosts.

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Or so she thought.

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It was a rainy night when it happened.
A night thick with the scent of wet earth and old regrets.

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Rachel stood at the kitchen sink, washing dishes with mechanical motions, when the radio — long forgotten in the corner — crackled to life with a song from another lifetime. A soft, aching melody about leaving, about loss, about someone who had once waited by the door for her.

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She froze.

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The plate slipped from her hands and shattered on the tile.

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And without warning —
without permission —
his name surged up in her throat like a prayer she no longer believed she had the right to speak.

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Mark.

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She hadn’t thought of him in months.
Years, maybe.

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Or so she had told herself.

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But now the memories tore through her, relentless as a winter storm:
The feel of his arms anchoring her in the dark.
The fierce, stubborn way he had loved her even when she doubted she deserved it.
The night she left without looking back.

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She pressed her palm to her mouth, stifling a sound that was half-sob, half-laughter.
What a fool she had been, thinking she could leave behind a love like that.

A love that didn't vanish with distance.
A love that didn't die with time.

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Rachel sank to the floor, her heart splitting open quietly, like an old wound remembering how to bleed.

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And in that hollow, broken moment, she understood:

She had not left him behind.
She had carried him with her, stitched into the lonely spaces of her soul.

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She had traded a rare, reckless love for something safer, smaller.

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And he...
He had survived her.

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She was certain of it — as certain as the pain growing again in her chest —
that somewhere, Mark was no longer haunted by her.
That somewhere, he was free.

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And she —
She was the one who would remember and regret.
Always.

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She pressed her forehead to her knees and listened to the rain beat against the windows. And in the silence of the house, she heard it:
a whisper, soft and cruel —

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"You'll think of me."

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And she did.

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And she always would.

 

Written by Mark Gammill

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​​​​​All stories inspired by the Keith Urban song "You’ll think of Me”