“Hello.”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, this is—”
“I know who this is. You’re not dead. I hope you got to see your grandma.”
“Yes, thank you,” I said, remembering I had told him that lie the other day. “I think I need a lift to the station.”
“I was expecting that. Where are you?”
I described Weeny Man’s bookshop, hanging up once he confirmed he was on his way.
I leaned against the car, tapping my phone screen over and over, as if his message might miraculously appear. I was hoping his name would flash across it with some small confession, or a small protest about my departure. It didn’t. The screen stayed stubbornly blank.
Some minutes later, the man drove up, and with effort, he shifted all my boxes into the back of his car. I gave the environment one last look before climbing inside, swallowing the hollow feeling that had been growing since I left the house.
He tried to fill the ride with small talk—weather, Nimorran, family talks, mundane stuff—but I wasn’t in the mood. I ignored him, watching the world slide by through the window as I twisted the bracelet on my wrist, until I was lost in thought. It was the bracelet he’d paid for. I hadn’t seen him wear it since I gave him his own.Maybe he’d lost it, maybe he’d never liked it. I didn’t know. But I was going to keep the bracelet because it was all I had, it was the only physical proof he’d been real.
I stared down at it, and with each tiny rotation, memories pooled at the edges of my vision, and I let them in, only for a moment.
When we reached the station, I stepped out and helped him with my boxes. We carried them through the archway to the platform. I stacked them neatly near a bench before going back to pay him and purchase my ticket.
He wished me well, and I thanked him for everything.
Back at my boxes, I took the seat beside them and let out a breath that came somewhere between a sob and a laugh. People milled around—some faces I’d seen before—and as time moved, more of them filled the station.
“…So if the storm had to break, it had to break on me first. If you had to die, Nher, let it pass through me first. Do you understand?”
I shut my eyes as the memory pierced me like a blade.Not here, Sanora. Not now.
It was hard to believe that he meant those words. But I chose to believe that he did. He said he did, and through his actions, I believed that he did.
And that thought only saddened me more.
Nher.
Nher.
Nher.
I never even asked him what that nickname meant. There were so many questions I hadn’t asked, so many truths I hadn’t told him. If that really was the last time I would ever see him, it should have been the moment to tell him how I felt. But I hadn’t. Because if those words left my lips, I wasn’t sure I could ever let him go.
The wave broke suddenly, and I bent forward, sobbing into my palms. My body shook as all the tears I had been damming up cameflooding out. I was leaving him behind, saying goodbye after making him feel so much, after doing the same thing everyone else had done to him for centuries.
Leaving him.
But maybe he was used to goodbyes. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt him the way it was ripping me apart.
Still, it hurt. Damn, it hurt. My chest burned like it was splintering open. I cried harder, loud enough to draw stares, but I didn’t care.
“No. Because if this was me ‘catching fun,’ watching you in pain wouldn’t break me twice as hard.”
Was he breaking now? Twice as hard as I was? I wanted to know. I wanted to see it.
The sound of the train arriving cut through my sobs. I wiped at my face, bracing myself to leave everything behind in Nimorran.
When the train stopped, I stepped forward, and after the usual procedures, the crowd began boarding with their luggage.
I waited back, glancing at the archway every few seconds. I knew it was hopeless, but still, I waited. I wanted to remind myself later, when the grief swallowed me whole, that I had tried, that I had waited until the very last possible moment.
