My jaw ached from how tightly I’d been clenching it. I forced it to loosen. My breath came out slow and controlled, but my lungs still felt like they weren’t getting enough air. There was a faint buzzing under my skin, a restless agitation that made me want to move and freeze at the same time.
I’d watched Elliot move through grief before. I’d seen anger. Withdrawal. Collapse. Numbness. But last night wasn’t any of those. Last night felt like surrender.
That realization made my stomach turn.
It wasn’t dramatic or loud. It was quiet. Heavy. The kind of giving up that happens when someone runs out of internal resistance. When they stop pushing against the weight of the world and simply let it press them flat.
The image of him on the sand replayed with brutal clarity.
His body folded inward like it had forgotten how to take up space. Tears streaking pale tracks through the grit on his cheeks. Blood dried on his hands. The faint blue tinge to his lips when he tried to speak and couldn’t.
The memory made my throat tighten until swallowing hurt. My fingers curled slowly into fists against my thighs and then loosened again, over and over, like my body was trying to decide whether it needed to fight or flee.
“Fuck,” I muttered. The word felt too small.
I reached for my cigarettes before I could stop myself. I’d tried to quit. Tried to cut back. Tried to be better. But everything in me felt too raw lately to give anything up. Like I was already stripped down to the bone and someone was asking me to shed more.
The cherry flared bright in the dim light as I inhaled. The smoke burned my lungs and I welcomed it. It felt appropriate. And not enough at the same time.
The pain grounded me. Gave my body something simple and immediate to respond to. Something physical instead of this endless internal ache that didn’t have a location.
The sky was beginning to bloom with color now—pale orange bleeding into pink—and the sight of it made something in my chest tighten painfully. It reminded me too much of blood in water. Of the way his wrist had looked when I’d first seen it. Of how fragile he’d felt in my arms.
The sickening truth I couldn’t escape was this:
I was the common thread through most of his recent pain. Not because I meant to hurt him. Not because I wanted to. But because I didn’t know how to love him without damaging him.
That realization sat heavy in my gut, like something spoiled I couldn’t digest.
The way I wanted him scared me. Not in a simple way. Not in a way that felt clean or straightforward. I wanted him in a way that felt gravitational. Like being pulled toward something you know you shouldn’t touch because you’re not sure you’ll survive the contact.
It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t fantasy. It was this deep, unbearable awareness of him. Of his presence. His vulnerability. The way my attention locked onto him and didn’t let go.
I loved him like something precious I didn’t trust myself to hold. It terrified me. Because I couldn’t walk away from it. I could walk away from desire. But I couldn’t walk away from care.
I’d lost people before.
I learned early what it felt like to be unwanted. To be corrected instead of accepted. To be tolerated instead of chosen. That kind of rejection hardens you. It teaches you to expect loss.
But Elliot didn’t reject me. He leaned toward me. He trusted me. He needed me. And that felt heavier than any abandonment ever had.
David’s friendship with expectations attached.
For a long time I didn’t understand that. When we were younger, I thought it was just loyalty. Friendship. The way men showed care for one another without saying it out loud. But looking back now, with distance and damage between us, I could see it clearly for what it was.
Everything with David came with a price.
He wanted me to be loud. Visible. Devoted. He wanted me to take up space for him—to cheer him on, to stand behind him, to be the person who made him feel important. My support wasn’t optional; it was assumed. And any time I faltered, any time I needed something instead of giving it, the air between us would tighten.
There was always an unspoken ledger. What have you done for me lately?
I felt it when I hesitated. When I was tired. When my own life grew heavy. His disappointment wasn’t explosive—it was worse than that. It was quiet. Withdrawal disguised as maturity. Distance framed as understanding. I bent myself around it for years. Because I thought that was what love looked like.
Natalie was the opposite of that.
She never asked me to perform for her. Never asked me to be less or more than I was. She let me be uncertain. Broken. Quiet. Angry. She never made me feel like my worth was tied to what I gave her.
She gave first. She gave freely. She gave without expecting repayment. That was the kind of friendship I understood. That was the kind of friendship that felt safe. That was why I confused what we had for love. It was the first time anyone accepted me just as I was.
