Someone cranks the music louder. Bodies press closer. A different girl drapes herself over my shoulder, laughing at something I didn’t say. I smell perfume and tequila and the sticky-sweet haze of a party in full swing.
It used to feel like winning. Now it just feels like work.
I extract myself and head upstairs.
The second floor is quieter—fewerpeople, lower volume. I slip into the bathroom, lock the door, and stare at my reflection.
Same face. Same jaw. Same eyes that makethings come easy.
I pull out my phone. Her last message is still there.
WREN
When I was seven
Before we moved to the US
I’ve read it a dozen times by now.
Not because I don’t understand it. Because it’s incomplete.
Seven.
Old enough to remember where you came from.
Old enough to know what you’re leaving.
I’d wondered about it all day—on the bus ride back from the rink, during warm-ups, between shifts. Not the details. Just the shape of it. The fact that she’d offeredthatand nothing else.
Moved.
The question presses at the back of my teeth.
From where?
I type it.
Delete it.
Not yet.
I don’t want to be another guy who treats her history like trivia.
I type something safer instead.
KIERAN
So you’ve been terrifying since elementary school
Good thing I wasn’t there to pull your pigtails
You would’ve knocked me out
Her reply takes a minute.
WREN
We’re not doing childhood hypotheticals
