The wipers moved in a slow, metronomic rhythm. Back and forth. Back and forth. Like breathing for me when I forgot how.
I lasted maybe five minutes before the dam cracked. “I didn’t plan to go there,” I said, staring at my hands. They were shaking again with the small, constant tremors I’d learned to live with. “I just… couldn’t stay in that house after he left.”
Mia nodded once, eyes on the road. She didn’t interrupt. Just kept one hand on the wheel, the other twirled her now purple hair around her fingers.
The last few weeks fell out of me like a confession. I told her about how Dad showed up yesterday out of nowhere. About the way his grief had curdled into something sharp and poisonous.How every sentence felt designed to peel me apart layer by layer—how he’d said he only ever loved me because my mom wanted him to. How looking at me made him sick. How he wished I’d died instead of her.
My throat closed around the words as I said them, my chest tightening like it had forgotten how to expand fully.
“And then Anthony left,” I whispered. “Not because he wanted to. Because he had to.”
Mia’s breathing changed. Shallow. Uneven. She felt things like weather—took them into her body whether she wanted to or not.
“I followed him,” I continued. “I kissed him like it might be the last time. And he still let me go. Not because he didn’t love me, but because he does.”
Her hand reached across the console and found mine, squeezing hard enough to ground me. “That’s not abandonment,” she said thickly. “That’s restraint.”
“I know,” I said. “But it still hurts.”
“That it does,” she agreed. “But just think about how far you’ve both come from that day we met on the beach?”
“Yeah,” I said sullenly. “Things have changed so much but I feel like we’re right back at the start again.”
“But it's not the same story, Elliot." She smiled at me then, bubblegum pink lips wide. “This one will have a happy ending.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I feel it in here.” She laced her palm over her chest with a certainty I wish I felt. “The way that mountain man looked at you when you left him today told me everything I needed to know.”
“What do you mean?”
“He looked at you like you hung the moon and every star in the sky. He looked at you like he’d take on the world just to be in your presence.”
A hollow laugh came from somewhere inside me. “I think you’re good at making one plus one equal happiness.”
She snorted. “I might only be a few years older than you El, but I’ve seen the best and worst humanity has to offer.” She squeezed my hand again and shot me a wink before flicking the blinkers on. “Plus, I have a very reliable gut.”
“Oh sure, let's go with your gut then.”
She hummed to herself for a second then continued. “It’s in your eyes, you know.”
I looked over at her confused. “What is?”
“That you love him that much too. That’s why you’re here with me right now isn't it?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t explain what you meant.”
“True,” she tutted and huffed out a breath. “You have hazel eyes right?”
“Yeah, so?”
She smiled like she knew something I didn’t. “Have you ever noticed how they change like the weather?”
“No?”
“Oh, they do. They show your true emotions. They are beautiful and so expressive. They darken, turning almost brown when you’re hurting. They take on a sea-glass quality when you’re happy. But that day we found you comatose in bed… they were black. Blank. Just empty pools of agony. But right now they’re shining bright like you know you’ve got something worth fighting for.”
I let that thought sit with me as she drove. The silence between us wasn’t suffocating, it was contemplative. Did Anthony see what she did? Did he know I believed that we might really have a chance this time?
