I turn away from the mirror, flick off the light, and crawl under the covers, pulling them up to my chin like armor. The sheets are cool. The pillow smells like my shampoo. My body is exhausted—bone-deep and soul-deep—but my mind still buzzes like a hive.
I stare up at the dark ceiling and let myself admit the one thing I can’t say out loud to anyone—not to my mother, not to my friends, not even to him.
Tonight, I wanted him more than I wanted safety. I let myself imagine a future where I didn’t have to choose.
That thought is dangerous. So, I tuck it away carefully, like contraband, and stack all the reasons it can never see daylight on top of it.
I swallow hard, my voice barely more than a breath as I finally give shape to the fracture splitting me down the middle. “Tomorrow, I’ll pretend again,” I whisper into the dark. “But tonight… I’ll let myself feel what I’ll never choose.”
Journal Entry
Kyle
Dr. Shah keeps telling me to notice the moments when the line between pretend and real disappears. Tonight, there was no line.
I am supposed to be sleeping. The clock on my phone says it is way past reasonable, but my head is still in that ballroom, on that dance floor, in that car outside her building. My body is exhausted and wired at the same time, like I played three overtimes in a row and still have to lace up for one more period.
My hand still remembers the shape of hers. On the carpet, on the dance floor, in front of Bennett, her fingers locked with mine like it was the most natural thing in the world. That’s the part that won’t let me go. It didn’t even feel a little like pretending. It felt like something my body had been waiting for since the day she walked into the rink with that clipboard and those careful eyes.
Tonight, I got to hold her like I already belonged there. And then, in a hallway that smelled like hotel cleaner and money, I had to watch her walk away from it in real time.
I can still feel the exact second she started to pull back. One minute, my thumb was tracing lazy circles along the inside of her hand, every muscle in me finally unclenching after hours under the lights. The next, our fingers were sliding apart as if she was peeling herself away piece by piece.
I knew it was happening before she said a word. That is the worst part. My body felt the tiny shifts in her posture and how her breathing went thin while she said she was fine. I knew she was running before she turned it into words. I just didn’t know she was running from me.
I can still hear her voice in that hallway, begging me not to be kind to her because she wouldn’t survive it right now. As if my kindness is dangerous. I know she didn't mean it like that, but it landed right in the center of my chest. I have taken hits from defensemen twice my size that hurt less than hearing her say she would not survive me being good to her.
The thing is, tonight was the best version of me I know how to be. I didn’t pick a fightwith Bennett. I pushed back enough to make him feel small without blowing up her night. I let her lead when every part of me wanted to stand in front of her and block the shots. I held her hand and kept my temper on a leash. I danced with her and didn’t ask for anything more than the weight of her palm in mine. And at the end of all of that, she looked me in the face and told me it couldn’t mean anything.
My chest tightens just writing it down. My hand shakes a little. I did not know words could feel like someone reaching inside your ribcage and rearranging everything without anesthesia.
For some reason, I asked her if I misread tonight. I don’t know why, because my whole body already knew the answer. She told me I didn’t, that I was right, and what I felt was real, that she felt it, too. Then she cut the legs out from under it in the same breath.
None of it can matter.
How do you hold both of those things at once in your body? That it was real, but it’s not allowed to matter. That it meant something but that it has to be treated like it didn’t.
I keep replaying the way the city slid by outside while everything inside me was comingapart. The way she folded her hands in her lap so she would not reach for me. The way her voice shook when she kept insisting she had to walk away from this to protect her future.
I know she’s right about some of it. I’m not stupid. The double standard is real. The way people talk about women in her position is cruel and ugly. If anyone decides she chose a man over her career, they’ll crucify her for it. They’ll question every promotion, every decision, every success she has ever had. They will say she earned it in the worst possible ways.
They won’t say that about me. I’m passionate. I get carried away, care too much, and should rein it in. Then they’ll forgive me. They always do, but she’ll have to pay the price. But knowing that does not make any of this hurt less. She said she can’t afford to want something she can’t keep, not even me.
That one sits like a heavy stone in my stomach. Not because I doubt the truth of it, but because of how much I recognize myself in it. I grew up being told not to want things I hadn’t earned yet. Ice time. Autonomy. Breathing room. I learned early to swallow want before it goes you labeled as selfish. Listening to her choke on those same lessons in a different language broke something open in me that I don’t know how to close again.
Tonight, I watched her do the hardest thing I have ever seen her do. She walked away because she felt too much. That’s the part that keeps stabbing me repeatedly in the same spot.
If she had looked me in the eye and said, You misread it, I’d have believed her. I would have let her have that lie if it made this easier for her. I’d have swallowed my pride, my heart, my whatever this is, and told myself my body was wrong. Instead, she told me I was right, and then she said it doesn’t matter.
So now, I am sitting here, late as hell, staring at a blank page that isn’t blank anymore, wondering what the hell I am supposed to do with that.
Part of me wants to respect her boundary so hard that it feels like never touching her again. Never reaching for her hand. Never saying her name in that soft way that makes her eyes go wide. Never admitting that one night on a dance floor rerouted my entire nervous system.
Another part of me is already lacing up for the fight because when I told her in the car that this isn’t goodbye, I meant every word. I’m giving her space, but I am not done. The problem is that both parts of me live in the same body, and they are pulling in oppositedirections.
Respect her. Do not push. Do not let her run from this.
If Dr. Shah had me in the office right now, she would ask where I feel it. So here it is. In my throat, thick and hot, like everything I did not say is lodged there. In my ribs, tight, almost humming, like my heart is trying to punch its way out and chase her. In my hands, restless and useless, because they remember the weight of her waist and the shape of her jaw, and they are sitting here empty.
