After enjoying their whirlwind time together, Hayes had to keep travelling but they made plans to meet back up later.

“I messaged him saying I had some spare time while travelling and that I could come back. He said, ‘Yeah, come back. I’d love to see you again,’” she claimed.

After confirming plans, she bought a $300 flight from Birmingham to Edinburgh and sent him the flight details.

During the time apart, they had been messaging and “things were going well,” according to Hayes.

It was only two days before her flight when the romance came to an abrupt end.

“I got a message saying, ‘Hey, I’m really sorry, family things have come up. I can’t do this weekend. I hope you get home safe.’” Hayes said.

Jack knew she wasn’t returning to Australia for a month but Hayes said she realised that he was breaking things off by not suggesting they meet another time.

Undeterred, she flew to his hometown and posted about it on social media. She could see him viewing her stories on Instagram but he made no effort to reach out, which Hayes saw as a form of “ghosting”, whereby someone cuts communication without any warning or explanation.

“No matter how you feel about the situation, ghosting is not an excuse. That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. Just tell me it’s not going to work out,” she said on the video.

She stayed in a shared hotel room for four nights then left on June 20 feeling abandoned and rejected.

“I was blaming myself and thought I wasn’t good enough. I was self-blaming,” she admitted but added that she had realised the incident said more about Jack than her.

Eventually, Hayes claimed Jack revealed he backed away because she was “coming on too strong” and he knew she would return to Australia eventually.

However, Hayes said the explanation came too late.

“To leave someone in the dark like that is beyond crazy to me. I don’t know how you can do that. I think it’s awful – while they’re in your hometown,” she said.

While the romance died, Hayes said she’d found something just as good; friendship. The traveller revealed the girls she stayed with at the hostel decided to get matching lemon tattoos.

“For him, the tattoo’s still the same story but for me, it’s changed to a story of friendship and girlhood. He’s never going to forget me,” she said.

“Just remember you’re a good person and that you’re loved. There’s so many other people out there. There’s a lot of love out there even if it’s not romantic love.”

Hayes isn’t the first traveller with a spontaneous tattoo story and she likely won’t be the last.

In 2023, a Swedish traveller shared a TikTok showing a tattoo she got in Morocco with two Australian expats she’d met days earlier. The unexpected twist? The tattoo was an Arabic word that translated to something totally unexpected in English.

The video gained millions of views as people debated a key question; did the travellers know what they’d gotten permanently inked on their body?