“Baby girl.”
“I’ve moved on… I’m already past it. We mean nothing to each other.”
Jack was just the man who had made me feel seen and then proved I was invisible.
The coward who couldn’t claim me in front of his friends? “He’s just someone I used to know.”
My grandmother’s eyes said she wasn’t fooled for a second.
She reached for my hand again, “You know what I’ve learned in seventy-eight years of living?”
“What?”
“Grudges are heavy. And I’m too old and too tired to watch you carry one that’s breaking your back.” She squeezed my fingers. “Whatever happened, it’s still eating at you. I can see it. I’ve seen it for years, every time his name comes up, you change the subject. You can keep running, or you can turn around and face it. But you can’t do both forever.”
I said nothing, and she let me. Soon we deflected to other topics about the latest reality TV show she was watching on the hospital television channel. Nothing heavy.
I stayed until visiting hours ended, and a nurse came in to check her vitals. Giving me that gentle but firm look that meant ‘time’s up’. I kissed my grandmother’s forehead, promised to come back tomorrow, and walked out of the hospital with the weight of her words pressing against my chest.
The next morning I went for a run.
Not because I wanted to—I’d never been one of those people who craved exercise, who felt incomplete without their daily endorphin fix—but because I needed to think, and my apartment walls were starting to feel like they were closing in.
I needed air. Movement. Somewhere that wasn’t filled with memories of repair bills and blue eyes and the smell of hospital antiseptic.
California in the early morning was something else entirely.
I ran through streets that were just waking up, past coffee shops with their doors propped open and the smell of fresh espresso drifting out onto the sidewalk. Past dog walkers and joggers and a man doing tai chi in the park with such serene concentration that I felt calmer just looking at him. The sun wasgentle at this hour—golden and forgiving, and the palm trees cast long shadows across the pavement.
I had forgotten how beautiful this city could be when you weren’t bracing yourself against it.
My route took me along the waterfront, where the ocean stretched out flat and silver under the morning light. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying their harsh, lonely cries. A group of surfers bobbed in the water, waiting for waves that hadn’t arrived yet, patient and unhurried. I slowed to a walk, breathing hard, and let myself just… look.
This was why people loved California. This right here. The way the light hit the water. The smell of salt and possibility. The sense that you could be anyone here, do anything, start over as many times as you needed.
I had run from this place after graduation, convinced it held nothing but pain.
Maybe I had been wrong about that.
I walked the rest of the way home, letting California work its magic on my battered heart.
Back at my building, I was fishing my keys out of my pocket when I heard it.
The jingle of a collar. The click of nails on concrete.
I looked up.
Meatball was standing on Candy’s porch, tail wagging with enthusiasm, enormous gray body quivering with barely contained excitement. He looked at me like I was the highlight of his entire day. As if we were old friends reuniting after years apart.
Hell no.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, keeping my voice even and my body very, very still. “You stay right there, okay? Right there on the porch. Good boy. Good… giant, terrifying boy.”
Meatball’s tail wagged harder. He took a step toward the porch stairs.
My heart rate, which had just started to calm down from my run, shot right back up.
Over the past few weeks, Candy had figured out my situation. I hadn’t told her everything—hadn’t explained about Mrs. Ford’s German Shepherd or the cracked tooth —but she had noticed the way I tensed up whenever Meatball appeared, the way I kept my distance.
