I finally force myself to meet her gaze.
"It’s taken me eight months to figure out how to turn off the voice inside my head.”
Nora’s voice softens.“And now?”
“It’s still there, just not as loud as it used to be.”
Silence folds around us—not empty, just full.She’s still watching me, like she’s trying to see the parts I keep turned away from the light.
Then she speaks, quiet but certain.“You know Nate, for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve made it your responsibility to take the blame for everything.Even when it has nothing to do with you.Even when it hurts you.”Her brows draw together, not in judgment but in something achingly gentle.“When are you going to realise, you don’t have to do that with me.”
Her words land harder than anything I confessed.I swallow, and because she’s opened a door, I step through it.
So I take it as an opportunity to ask, "Truth or dare?"
"Truth," she says quietly.
“Were you happy?”
“Yes.At times sad too.Because there were times where really good things happened and the only person I wanted to call and tell,” She looks at me, “was you.”
She swallows, voice trembling.“Every win felt a little hollow because you weren’t there and every bad day felt heavier because I didn’t have you to talk to.”
I ask again, ignoring the rules of one for one.
“Truth or dare?”
Nora takes a deep breath and looks out, away from my eyes.“Truth.”
"How do you feel about me, now?"
The question is deep on a good day, let alone the path this conversation has taken.
"Truth?"another inhale, "I wish I hated you."
She keeps her eyes focused forward.
“Because it would make things easier.At least that’s what I tell myself.”She looks down at her feet and lets out a helpless little laugh.“But I can’t hate you because I understand you.Which leaves me in this limbo state, where I seem to lose either way.”
I focus on her face, on the pain I can see there that mirrors my own.
"I can't ask you to go backwards, Nora.That wouldn't be fair."
She looks up with a dull ache in her eyes.“I know.”
So here we are, once again existing in a state of maybe’s.And maybe that's what we both need right now—not the comfortable lies we tell ourselves, but the brutal honesty of what we've become.
It’s what I loved about her.
She was the one person in my life who never sugarcoated the truth to me.Not pretty lies to spare my feelings, not convenient lies to make things easier.Even when it would have been kinder to soften the edges, she gave me honesty.
And somehow, despite everything I'd put her through, she was still doing it.Still refusing to feed me comfortable bullshit when what I needed was the raw, unvarnished truth.
The craziest thing about time is that it somehow manages to move differently when you're with someone who matters.Minutes feel like hours, hours feel like minutes, and before I know it the sun is fully up and the magical pre-dawn atmosphere has shifted into something more ordinary.
“Tell me something interesting,” she says, interrupting my thoughts.“Like one of those random facts you always seem to have.”
I can’t help but laugh.
