She gives me that look—the one that says she knows better but won’t push.
The apartment’s dark when she unlocks the door. Small. Familiar. A small kitchen, a living room with a new couch Liam insisted he buy for her.
“I’m going to bed,” Mom says, setting her purse on the counter. She cups my face briefly, thumb brushing my cheek. “You’ll be alright, baby boy.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She kisses my forehead and disappears down the hall.
I stand there in the quiet, staring at the refrigerator covered in faded photos held up by magnets—Erin’s cellorecital, Liam’s draft day, me in my Iron Hounds jersey, grinning like I’d already won.
That kid doesn’t exist anymore.
I head to what used to be me and Liam’s room. Mom’s transformed it into her meditation space now—Tibetan tapestries where our Defenders posters used to hang, a Himalayan salt lamp casting soft pink light where Liam’s desk once sat. The familiar scent of sandalwood incense lingers in the air.
One bed remains, layered with meditation cushions in soothing shades of purple and blue. A “Breathe” pillow propped against the headboard.
I sit at the small desk Mom squeezed in by the window—the one she uses for journaling, she says. It wobbles when I lean on it.
I pull out the notebook I’ve been carrying all day—the one I use for engineering problems, sketches, half-formed ideas—and flip to a blank page.
I’m not planning to write to her. I know better. Coach said it. Liam said it. Leave her alone. Let her decide what comes next.
But my hand is already moving.
Wren,
I stop. Cross it out.
Rules,
Worse. I cross that out too.
There’s no opening that makes what I did less ugly. No phrasing that undoes the damage. But I need to say it, even if she never reads this, even if it stays buried in a notebook no one else ever sees.
I start again.
I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. You don’t owe me that. You don’t owe me anything.
But I owe you the truth.
My hand tightens around the pen.
The bet was real.
Isabelle dared me to pursue you at that party, to prove I mattered. When you turned me down in front of everyone, my ego couldn’t take it. So I kept going.
I didn’t see you as a person.
I saw you as a trophy.
Every coffee. Every “chance” encounter. Every excuse to be near you—I engineered it.
I used my access. My status. The fact that you needed the tutoring job and I was the one paying. I created conditions where saying no became harder each time.
That wasn’t romance. It was leverage.
I stop. The apartment is silent except for the refrigerator’s hum and my own breathing.
