He Said He Was Lonely

I met Rahim at a friend's wedding in KL. He was charming — the kind of charming where you don't even realise you've been talking for three hours until someone tells you the bride already left. We exchanged numbers, and within a week we were texting every day.

The problem was distance. I'm based in KL. He was in Penang for work. Four hours by car. He said it didn't matter. "Distance is just geography," he told me once, like he was quoting some motivational poster in his office. I believed him.

For the first few months, I drove up to Penang twice. Four hours there, four hours back. I'd take Friday off work, arrive exhausted, and spend the weekend with him. He'd show me his favourite spots — this char kuey teow uncle near Gurney, the hill trails at Penang Hill. It felt real. It felt like something worth fighting for.

But around month five, things shifted. He started replying late. Not hours late — days late. When I visited, he seemed distracted. Always checking his phone, always stepping outside to "take a call from work." I told myself I was being paranoid. Long-distance is hard. People need space.

Then came the eighth month. I was planning my next trip up when a mutual friend, Anis, sent me a message. Just a photo. No caption. It was Rahim at a café in Bangsar — not Penang, Bangsar — holding hands with a woman I'd never seen before. They were sitting across from each other, fingers intertwined, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I called him. I didn't even cry. I just asked him straight: "Who is she?"

He didn't deny it. He didn't even pause.

"You don't understand how lonely it is here," he said. Like loneliness was a defence. Like being alone justified everything.

I hung up. I haven't spoken to him since.

The hardest part isn't the betrayal. It's the questions that come after. My mum keeps asking why we broke up. I just say "tak jadi" — it didn't work out — because how do you explain to your mother that the man she was starting to like was holding someone else's hand in a café while you were planning your next four-hour drive?

My friends say I should've seen the signs. The late replies. The distracted weekends. The way he never once offered to drive down to KL to see me. Maybe they're right. Maybe I was too busy driving to notice he never met me halfway.

But here's what I keep coming back to: I didn't do anything wrong. I showed up. Every single time. I drove the four hours. I took the days off. I made the effort.

Were there signs? Or did I just trust someone who didn't deserve it?