My dad is getting released today. Thirty days sober. Completed the program.
And I should be celebrating that. Should be focused on him.
But all I can think about is that today is also day thirty of not talking to Chloe.
Day thirty.
The contract is officially over at midnight. Thirty days of mandatory silence. Thirty days of torture.
I’ve written and deleted the same text message forty-seven times this morning.
The message keeps changing:
Brody
I’m sorry
(too simple)
Can we talk?
(too casual)
I miss you
(too weak)
I love you and I’m an idiot
(too desperate, also true)
My thumb hovers over the Send button for the forty-eighth time.
Then I delete it again.
Instead, I do what I’ve done every morning for the past month: open Instagram. Find Chloe’s personal profile. Stare at her latest post like it might give me answers.
I’m not following her anymore. I had to unfollow after the breakup, couldn’t handle seeing her face in my feed, smiling at events I wasn’t part of.
But I check her profile every day. Sometimes multiple times a day.
Like an addict.
Today’s post is from this morning. A photo of her sketchbook. A dragon with scales falling away, revealing something soft and vulnerable underneath. The caption:
@Chloe.D: Sometimes the armor has to come off.
I’ve stared at this post for twenty minutes. Tried to figure out if it means something. If she’s trying to tell me something.
Or if I’m just a desperate idiot, looking for signs that don’t exist.
The dragon. Just like the one in Barcelona. The day we met. When everything was possible and nothing was complicated.
Is she thinking about that night too?
Or has she moved on?
My phone buzzes.
