I stay exactly where I am because wanting her doesn’t give me the right to hurt her again.Loving her doesn’t mean she owes me forgiveness.
So I sit in the dark, staring at the light she hasn’t turned off yet, and let the ache settle into my bones.
I finally push myself to get up and move because staying still feels dangerous.
When I get home, the house is dead quiet.My father is either already asleep or passed out on the couch.
I head straight to my room, grab my backpack from the corner and flip it upside down, everything spills out in a mess of crumpled papers, pens, and a half-crushed protein bar I forgot was in there.
And then the assignment lands last.That stupid, messed-up assignment we were supposed to be working on.The one we ditched for bathroom make-outs, my mouth on hers and deadlines forgotten.
I stare at the stack for a moment too long.Then I spread it across my bed.Pages crinkle under my hands, some still marked up in her handwriting.Her notes curl into the corners, little arrows, underlines, and the occasional sarcastic comment written in the margins that made me smirk the first time.
There’s one sheet—our rough outline—where her writing becomes sloppy halfway through. I remember that night clearly.She sat cross-legged next to me, biting her lip, twirling the pen between her fingers, distracted.I kept bumping her knee on purpose, and she kept leaning in.The closer we got, the worse her handwriting became.
I take a breath, sit on the edge of the bed, and pick up my pen.
And I work.
Not because I give a shit about the grade.But because she does.
So I write.
Hard.
Fast.
Focused.
I fill in every gap, organize each bullet point, and clean up her sections without changing her voice.I review our references, cross-check every source, and tighten each sentence.
But I don’t stop.I refuse to.
I work until the sky begins to bleed into morning and the first stubborn birds start making noise as if they’ve got something worth singing about.There’s ink on my fingers, a dull ache in my back, and a burning sensation behind my eyes that won’t go away.
But I finish it.The whole fucking thing.
Every word.Every carefully stitched-together sentence we planned when we still couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
I make sure it’s clean and polished.Better than anything we could have put together in class and what she expected from me because this is for her.
For us.
Even if there’s no us anymore.Even if she never talks to me again.
I open the email draft, attach the document, type her name in the recipient box, and stare at the blinking cursor for a minute.My fingers hover over the keyboard, eager to type something else—something more.
But there’s nothing left to say that she hasn’t already ignored.Nothing I could write that would make this right.
So I hit send.
And then I just sit there.
Staring at the screen long after it disappears from view, long after the little whoosh tells me it’s gone.I sit in silence, amid everything we were, hoping that maybe this one thing will matter.
That she’ll see it.
That she’ll know I still give a fuck.
