Then I peel off the false lashes, carefully, carefully, as if they are holding together a version of me that’s about to split at the seams.
My clothes follow—Pandora’s clothes. The tight top. The skirt that feels like armour. The persona I built from desperation and pain.
They fall to the floor in a small heap, a carcass of who I had to become just to survive the last few months.
I pad to the bathroom on bare feet, the tiles cold and grounding under me. The tap groans to life. I splash water onto my face, then scrub harder, harder, until Pandora’s makeup melts down the drain in streaks of black and rose.
It leaves Penn behind. Raw. Blotchy. Human.
I brush my hair next, pulling the comb through slow strokes. The tug at the knots feels good, real. Something physical to tether me to my body instead of the storm in my chest.
My oversized tee waits on the counter, a worn black one with holes at the collar, stretched and soft from a hundred washes. I slip it over my head, drowning in it. It smells like detergent and home, and nights I wished for peace. It falls past my thighs. It feels like safety.
My bed is wide and soft, the blankets a heavy cocoon that has caught me through nightmares and panic attacks and the nights I couldn’t breathe through the ache.
I crawl into it like I’m climbing into the mouth of something that won’t swallow me whole.
The pillows engulf me, soft against my cheek. The mattress dips beneath my weight. And then silence. Not peaceful silence.
The kind that rings in your head. The kind that lets memories in. My mind fires through them tonight with Dane and that almost-kiss, the weeks tightening like threads around my throat, the months of pretending to be Pandora, the years of loving Blake wrong, the years of surviving Blake right, the years of being a mother without a child to hold, the seconds in the car crash that rewired my life, the minutes in the hospital that broke me open, the endless days after that, the group therapy rooms full of shattered hearts, the coffee dates with grieving mums who understood without me needing to explain, the nights waking up sweating, the mornings pretending I’d slept, The stretches of time that passed like pages torn loose from a book caught in the wind, scattering farther and farther from who I used to be. My breathing hitches. My fingers curl into the sheets. My chest tightens, then loosens, then tightens again. I close my eyes because it’s all too much. I close them because I’m afraid of what’s happening inside me. I close them because I don’t know how to stop remembering.
The darkness behind my eyelid’s blooms with faces.
Gracie
Dane
Blake
Carrie
Versions of myself I barely recognise. All turning. All shifting. All blurring together until I can’t separate pain from hope, past from present, Pandora from Penn.
My tears slip quietly into the pillow. The bed holds me. The night holds me. The memories hold me hostage. And then finally somewhere between heartbeat and breath, my body gives in. My mind folds. And I fall. Not into sleep. But into the weight of everything I’ve been running from.
The car stops outside her house as the dawn breaks through the midnight black.
I type her another message.Trust me…Penn nothing else has ever mattered but you...
Her home is dark, the little garden for her baby girl is lit up in dancing warm lights. Her bedroom window has the soft rose hue of her bedside table lamp. The one that casts light over the room so light and beautiful, like her skin when the moonlight hits it. I can envision her now wrapped inside her grey cardigan, holding her pillow like a life raft as she floats through her mind, trying to not drown herself in her over thinking of what ifs and maybes.
Looking at my screen, it’s six-eleven in the morning, exhaustion creeps over my skin. My eyes heavy, my phone vibrates in my hand, she finally messages me.
I just want to dance with you. I wanted you to just call, not ask. But just call me because you need to hear my voice as much as I needed to hear yours.
That one message breaks my soul and has me running up her steps and into her home. Breaking through the threshold of her safe haven to take her in my arms and look in her ocean blue eyes and tell her all the reasons why she makes me happy and how much I want to kiss all the things that make her sad away.
Running through her home and into her room, stopping as I breach the threshold of her bedroom, her body curled up her eyes red from crying and no sleep. Her eyes meet mine and the broken silence between us as we both try to breathe her shock at my sudden intrusion and my hammering heart, seeing the pain of loneliness and heartache that is dancing over her aura.
“Peach, I wanted nothing but to call… but I always didn’t want to push.” Falling to my knees at the edge of her bed.
My hands press on the bed, inching towards hers. Her eyes met mine. Pain and desperation swimming in them.
She opens her mouth like she wants to tell me something, something sharp, something that tastes like regret, but she swallows it, her throat bobbing like the words scrape on the way down.
“Peach?” I whisper.
Her eyes flick away for a fraction of a second, just long enough for guilt to bloom across her face like a bruise.
