“Can we talk?”
“If it’s not about your brother, sure.” I look up, meet her eyes, and force a breezy tone I don’t feel. “Anything else, Lola. Seriously. Ask me about politics or death or taxes. Just don’t say his name.”
“Well…” she starts, already walking towards me and sinking into the chair opposite, swallowed in a shirt I definitely don’t want context for. “I wasn’t going to talk about him but…”
“No. No, but. We don’t need to talk about him. The kiss was a mistake. Meeting him was a mistake. My girlish crush. A fucking mistake.”
Lola flinches.
She tucks her legs beneath her like she’s trying to make herself smaller, like she’s bracing for whatever comes next, and maybe she should, because she doesn’t drop it — not today.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this,” she says softly, eyes flicking to the chipped edge of the kitchen table, the one we’ve had since uni, the one full of burn marks and memories neither of us have the heart to sand down, “but he’s leaving. In thirty days.”
My stomach drops.
But I don’t blink.
I don’t breathe.
I just sip my cold coffee like she didn’t just carve open my chest and pour salt straight into the wound.
“Good,” I say, voice flat. “Hope the next girl he breaks is better at pretending it didn’t mean anything.”
“He’s being deployed again,” she adds. “It wasn’t his choice.”
I shrug, mechanical. Cold. Hollow. “Still leaving though, right?”
“Cass…” She reaches for my hand, but I pull away like it burns, like even her touch might be enough to unravel the veneer I’ve stitched across my skin.
“No. Don’t. You don’t get to tell me he’s going off to play war like that excuses anything. He doesn’t get to use duty as a reason for turning me into a fucking placeholder.”
Lola stares at me, jaw tight, shoulders tense in a way I recognise, a way that means she’s holding too many truths in her mouth and deciding whether to spit or swallow.
Then she says it — quiet, like softening it will make it hurt less.
“He was engaged once.”
Silence.
Everything inside me stills. The kitchen, the faint hum of the fridge, the traffic outside — all of it fades beneath the thundering stillness pressing against my ribs.
“Three years ago,” she continues. “Her name was Mia. They met in training. He loved her. Like… properly loved her.”
I stare at her.
At the face of the only person who’s ever really known me.
And I wonder if she realises what she’s doing — what she’s tearing open.
“She died.” Her voice cracks. “On his last tour. He watched it happen. Held her when she bled out. Said he didn’t even know which part of her he was trying to keep warm.”
My throat tightens.
But I don’t show it.
Not a flinch.
Not a flicker.
