Eddie’s Prologue
One day, without warning, you’ll stop mid-step and wonder: how did I become this version of myself?
How did I get to this point?
We look back not just to remember, but to make sense of what the fuck we’re doing here.To trace the cracks.To find the reason we keep reaching for more—clarity, purpose, maybe even love.
No, not maybe.We’re all definitely seeking love.
That aching, unbearable hunger for something bigger than your own body.When it strikes, sleep deserts me—too soon, too late—or worse, it’s stolen outright by that thought that slips in at 2:17 a.m.It presses beneath my ribs, whispering names I forgot to say.
The bodies I should have stayed inside.
The hands I should have gripped tighter.
The mouths I should’ve kissed one more time.
The doors I should’ve never closed, or maybe I should’ve lingered at, just a moment longer.
The dreams I should’ve chased instead of burying alive.
A marrow-deep craving for love that doesn’t just warm but burns.Consumes—ripping through everything in its path.
You convince yourself you’ve outgrown the ache to touch what you can’t keep.That you’ve built a life so structured, so brilliantly untouchable, that nothing can undo it—not even him, not even her.
But the body doesn’t forget.
The hunger doesn’t forgive.
It waits.
It waits until the man who once stripped you down to your smallest truths—who carried your breath in his lungs, your pulse in his hands, your name like it was a secret worth keeping—steps back into your orbit.His look isn’t just recognition.It’s possession.A demand.A reminder that there was a time when you were his and he was yours—and you mistook that belonging for invincibility, convinced that the press of his body could keep the world from breaking you apart.
The fire.
The silence.
The promise you never said aloud but still somehow made.
He watches you like he still remembers the taste of your surrender, as if the years were nothing more than an intermission, and you still belong to each other in secret ways you’d never dare to confess out loud—because wanting him and wanting her was the secret you both kept like contraband.
You could never risk speaking it aloud when belonging like this is the one truth.
Until the girl who once shared your spotlight but never claimed it walks back in—and she’s not the same.She doesn’t talk like she used to.Doesn’t smile the same either.There’s this quiet around her now, not just silence but self-erasure, like the world trained her to shrink, take up less space, and stop expecting too much.
She sometimes avoids your eyes, as if she knows that one look might reveal her—that if you see her too clearly, you’ll uncover all the things she’s tried to hide.And when she does meet your gaze, it’s like she’s asking a question she’s too tired—or afraid—to speak aloud.
You don’t know where she went or what broke her while she was gone, but something in her feels fractured.You sense it even before she speaks.It’s in the way her presence flickers at the edges, here but not fully present, like she’s haunting her own life.You can’t stop wondering if she returned hoping to be put back together—or if she only came back because there was nowhere else to go.
You tell yourself it’s nothing.
You promise yourself you can handle it.
That this won’t spiral the way it did before.
That you’re more experienced, more thoughtful, more careful.
That you’ll hold yourself at the edge and never step too far in.
