“When you call, I’ll know it’s you.”

“How?”

“Because, I have a ringtone just for you. It’s something for you and me alone. When you call it, I’ll know it’s you, and…”

“…And?”

“And I’ll know you love me.”

That was how the conversation had gone several months ago. Or, if you wanted to be exact, it was five months, twenty-two days, six hours, and fifteen minutes. Yes, she had remembered the exact moment. She loved him that much. She was sitting on her bed again, reliving this conversation for the fifty-third time.

“Alright, sure kiddo.” He always called her kiddo. Even when they had dated in the past, he never spoke her name. She was his ‘kiddo’, or if she were feeling particularly upset or he particularly romantic, then her name was ‘Hime’.

He reached out and grabbed a hold of her shoulder-length hair and scratched her scalp, like always. Like she were a kid. This was his joking way of saying that he didn’t believe her. They had been broken up for a year, and they had been struggling since then to maintain their friendship. They wanted it, but it was hard to do. She was openly showing her never fading affections for him, and he…

‘Was I really childish back then?’ she thought. In high school, as an underclassman, she had many older friends. She got along better with her teachers. Didn’t that mean she was more mature for her age? Or was it that when she was near him, her inner child broke free into a thousand different smiles? It certainly wasn’t that she was young, not unbearably young at least. He was only five years her senior; her own parents were farther apart than that. Even so, she was his ‘kiddo’.

After that meeting, they had seen other again on the passing street, or in the bookstore where he worked, and she frequented. They would chatter like normal, and she never again mentioned her cell phone. Not that exact conversation anyway. He had promised he would call her back then when he had the time to do so, so they could meet up for lunch or something of the sort, like friends would do. Yet, her phone never rang, and she would on occasion tease him that he worked too hard, because he never called her. He would only shrug and smile, and scratch her head.

“Give it time, kiddo. I work a lot, you know that.”

Sometimes, when she wouldn’t see him for several days, she would start to think of him. She would sometimes even imagine he were in the room with her, and she would hold conversations in her head between the two of them. Sometimes she would laugh, or cry. Other times she would scream and curse at him, depending on how the conversation went. Sometimes, she would even imagine him coming back to her, and loving her like she knew he should. She would lose herself in these conversations, and wait for them to come true, but they never did. And she would fall asleep, and forget them until the next time she wanted to speak with ‘him’.

Tonight, she was just finishing another one of these conversations with the him in her head. But, it was a dull conversation this time, and she was falling asleep in her usual position on the bed. Her cell phone gripped tightly in one hand against her face so she would hear it, while a sad looked crossed her sleeping features. Tonight, she dreamed that he called her, as she did so many times.

But it couldn’t be a dream. The ringtone was louder than the usual volume in her dream. Slowly, she pulled her eyes open, and stared at the phone in her hand. It flashed colors and vibrated in her hand while music played. The vibration was so real, it was then she knew the phone was ringing.

To ‘the’ ringtone.

She watched it go through the lyrical loop one and half times before she answered by clicking the phone open. “Hello?”

“I told you I would call when I had the time,” was the voice on the other end.

“…….I see.”

There was a silence, and she could hear him clearing his throat and struggling for words.

“Well, it isn’t that I haven’t had the time….”

“Oh?”

“You were right,” he breathed out in one swoop, “you’re always right, and I never believe you until it happens. You were right again. I’ve just been trying so hard not to think about everything happening between us, because I was scared of coming back, in case it were a bad choice. But, the truth is, that I love you again.”

“Again?”

“I mean that, I never stopped loving you.”

She smiled on her end of the phone and let out the half laugh that only he knew. “I’m glad,” she finally mustered out.

“Can we have dinner sometime?”

“Tomorrow?” She was almost pleading.

“Of course,” he said in his hearty laugh, “so tell me, what was it like to hear the ring tone?”

“Like meeting you all over again.”