Stopped Chasing the Two Who Ignored Me

While we were out shopping, I stopped to tie my shoelace.

When I looked up again, my boyfriend Robert and my best friend Nia were already ten feet ahead.

I was about to step forward to catch up, but the space between them — the space that had always been mine — was slowly closing.

They fell into step side by side, picking up a conversation I had no way of joining.

As if there had never been a third person there at all.

Back in school, Robert and Nia were the ones everyone called gifted.

After graduation, Robert and Nia became the youngest attending physicians at the hospital.