Maybe that’s what love was. Not the big declarations or the grand sacrifices, but the quiet, unglamorous act of showing up again and again when no one else did. I was learning—slowly, painfully—that I deserved to show up formyself,too. I couldn’t keep being the girl who only knew how to live for other people.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t mean to ruin your life.”
Nova cupped my face, her touch gentle and firm all at once. “You didn’t. You gave me mine back.”
I started talking. About Dirks. About the ache in my chest I couldn’t ignore anymore. About how I didn’t cheat, but I also didn’t tell Will how deeply I missed beingme. How I wasn’t sure if I loved Dirks more than Will or just loved the version of myself I used to be when I was with him.
As she stood to make tea, I watched her from the couch, memorizing the quiet rhythm of her steps. The hum of the kettle. The warmth of this house that had never quite felt like mine, even when I’d called it home.
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying not to let the gratitude swallow me whole. Gratitude and regret. The silence between us wasn’t uncomfortable. It was sacred. The kind of silence that only existed between soulmates who knew when words just wouldn’t cut it.
She handed me a mug of tea, her hand brushing mine. I wanted to bottle that feeling. Safe. Grounded. Known. Underneath it all, the goodbye curled in my stomach like a storm.
When it was time to leave, I stood slowly, my limbs heavy with the weight of what I was walking away from. Nova pulled me into a hug, holding me so tightly I felt her heartbeat in my bones.
I leaned into it, pressed my face to her shoulder, and whispered, “Thank you, Nova.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
As the door closed behind me, a strange hush fell over the street. Like the world was holding its breath.
I walked back to my apartment with that echo in my chest, the quiet kind of ache that lets you know something is ending, but also that something is beginning. Because this wasn’t just about leaving. It wasn’t even just about Dirks.
This was about choosing myself for the first time in years. About chasing the girl I used to be. Before I told myself love hadto look like stability and silence and giving up little pieces of who I was, one by one.
Dirks was part of it. Of course he was. That man had haunted my dreams for years, but this wasn’t about running back to him. It was about running back tome.
I could only hope that Nova would somehow come, would choose me like I chose her—even that selfish part of me. The part that wasn’t strong or selfless or wise, but desperate. Desperate to not be the only one leaping into the unknown. I had followed her across oceans, picked up the pieces when her world fell apart, built a life around her healing without ever asking for anything in return.
For the first time, I was asking. Not with demands or ultimatums, but with the trembling, unspoken hope that she might see me unraveling and reach out her hand anyway. That she might feel, deep in her bones, the way I’d held space for her all those years and that it was my turn.
It made me selfish, and it was unfair to want her to rearrange her life for me, the way I’d once done for her. But there was something so tender, so raw about needing someone that much. About saying,I can’t do this without you and I don’t want to.Because it wasn’t just about logistics or moving boxes across the ocean. It was about being chosen in the quiet moments when it mattered most.
8
jeremy
My balls were sweating as I walked down the familiar, cornfield-lined, unpaved road that led to my dad’s farm—if you could still call him that.
After years of dragging his stubborn ass to appointments in Chicago—top-of-the-line oncologists, scans, second opinions, all the experimental shit we could afford—it only bought him a few more bitter, drawn-out years of pain. He died anyway and not peacefully or surrounded by family. He died while I sat in a sober living house in Missouri. He died alone, and I wasn’t there, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for that.
I moved in with Arthur when I was in elementary school, after too many homes and too many caseworkers whose names I stopped bothering to learn. He was some gruff older man the system kept sending kids to, probably because he lived out in the sticks and didn’t ask many questions. People said he had a weird vibe because he looked too long or cracked jokes that made your skin crawl a little, but he never laid a hand on me. Treated medecently, better than most. He was a little off, yeah, but for some reason, I got lucky. I got treated fairly. Was maybe even liked.
He was known for churning through foster kids like cattle, one after another, loud and pissed off, all shoved into bunk beds that groaned under too much weight and too many broken dreams. Not me. I stayed. All the way until I turned eighteen. I was the only one he let stick around long enough to call it home. Out of the dozen or more who passed through while I was there, I was one of only two who ever got their own room.
For whatever reason, he let me play hockey. Wouldn’t let anyone else do sports—said it was a waste of time, money, energy. I dragged home a broken stick from some yard sale and started slapping pebbles around the yard, and he didn’t stop me. Just grunted, smoked his cigarette, and eventually drove me to tryouts in his rusted-out truck without saying a word. Never told me “good job.” Never said he was proud, but he showed up for... me.
He was a dad in every way he knew how to be, and for some fucked-up reason, maybe because I never knew who my real parents were, he became mine. For better or worse, Arthur was the only father I ever had.
I walked up to the house, which looked like it was barely holding itself together—shingles missing, porch sagging, paint long forgotten.
The lawyer, a big guy in a suit that looked like it had never seen this much dust, stood from one of the creaking rocking chairs and gave me a wave.
I nodded back, not in the mood for small talk.
“Why’d you park way down there?” He pointed toward my truck parked near the start of the drive.
“Dunno. I wanted to walk the property.”
