Now, years later, I wonder if I believed that—or if I was just repeating something I wanted to be true.
Because loving Asher didn’t feel like breath.
It felt like drowning with my eyes open.
I shake myself out of it and scroll to Sasha’s name.
ME:I’m leaving.
She replies almost immediately.
SASHA:I know it hurts. But you did what you had to do. I’m proud of you. Get out while you still can.
She doesn’t try to stop me. She knows better than anyone what it costs to stay.
I pack slowly. Deliberately. No urgency. Just the ache of too much.
I leave the motel the next morning. Buy a burner phone. Take a bus as far as I can get before the adrenaline burns out.
I don’t choose where I end up. I will just stop running when it hurts less to sit still.
Two Months Later
My new apartment is smaller than the motel room, but it’s mine. I bought the furniture off Facebook Marketplace and dragged it up the stairs myself. There’s a dent in the secondhand coffee table from where I dropped a box of textbooks and didn’t bother fixing it.
I keep the lights dim. Shower with the door locked. Sleep in a twin bed because a queen feels too empty. My neighbors don’t know my name, and I like it that way.
The kitchen is tiny, yellow tile curling at the edges, and one pan I refuse to learn how to cook with. I live on toast and tea and instant noodles. I take comfort in the blandness. There’s no poison in simplicity.
I work online now—consulting, patent support, and mostly for Rowan University. Quiet work. Technical. Emotionless. I like typing things that have nothing to do with drugs or power or lies. I like that no one there knows who I used to be.
I use a fake last name. Pay everything in cash. Rent a P.O. box two towns over and check it once a week.
Ella’s thriving. Langport suits her. She texts every night without fail—photos of classes, new coffee spots, and a messy dorm room filled with too many books. I see her face and think,You were worth everything I did.
But I don’t tell her the truth. Not about the fire. Not about Asher. Not about me. I can’t bear the thought of her looking at me differently.
I want to be better before I let her really see me again.
Every Monday, I walk five blocks to the corner bakery that sells day-old bread for a dollar. I talk to no one. I read too much. I don’t answer unknown numbers.
I’ve started taking notes again. Not lab reports—just thoughts. Ideas. Molecule patterns that come to me in dreams. My mind still reaches for structure, even now.
Like trying to catalog grief under a microscope.
Measure the half-life of hope.
Calculate the fallout of loyalty.
I jot things on napkins, tape receipts into notebooks, and wonder if I’ll ever make something again that doesn’t destroy someone.
Some nights I convince myself this is peace. Other nights I know it’s just exile with prettier curtains.
Tonight, I decide to order takeout instead of eating ramen again.
There’s a small knock at the door.
I open it expecting Chinese food.
