Finally, she pours more wine, topping up our glasses even though neither of us has finished the first. Her hands tremble, but she doesn’t hide it. I don’t point it out.
We drink in silence.
A heavy silence, thick with fear and love and the slow-burning ache of something that already feels like goodbye.
“He won’t even notice I’m gone,” I whisper again, softer this time, more to myself than her, like maybe if I speak it enough I’ll believe it.
Lola turns to me, eyes glistening.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t shrink yourself to make leaving easier. Not for him. And not for yourself.”
I swallow hard.
She takes my hand again.
And in a voice that trembles but never wavers, she says:
“You’re not forgettable, Cass. Not to him. And not to me. Don’t rewrite yourself into a ghost just because you’re afraid he’ll disappear.”
The breath leaves me in a shudder.
Because hope is a cruel fucking thing.
And I’ve always been better at goodbyes than hope.
Lola falls asleep with her head on my lap, her lashes stuck together from old mascara and her heartbeat heavy against my thigh, heavier than it should ever be for someone who has fought so hard to carve out a little peace in a world that keeps stealing it back from her.
I thread my fingers through her hair — slow, rhythmic, careful — and stare up at the ceiling like maybe, somewherein the cracks and shadows of this old apartment, there’s a sign waiting for me, a map, a direction, a single merciful answer to all the endings barreling towards us.
But there isn’t one.
There never was.
When her breathing shifts, turning soft and shallow and edged with the tiniest snore, I slide out from under her, easing her head onto a cushion like I’m placing something precious down in a museum glass case. I move through the apartment on bare feet, quiet as breath, quiet as heartbreak, quiet as the version of myself I never let anyone see — the one that feels too much and says too little.
Because if I’m loud…
If I let even one sound slip…
All of this will spill out of me.
Every fear. Every ache. Every truth.
And I can’t let that happen.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
I open the kitchen drawer and pull out my old notebook — the one with the bent spine and faded cover, the one I used to write songs in back when I thought dreaming was something that could save me instead of hurt me. I flip through the pages, scanning the old lyrics, the old metaphors, the ghost versions of myself clinging to every line.
And then I tear them out.
All of them.
