I stood there like an idiot — chest heaving, mouth parted, hands still lifted like I was trying to hold on to something already long gone.
Her taillights burned into the night, two red smears bleeding into the dark as she shot down the driveway and disappeared around the bend.
I didn’t chase her.
God, every cell in my body wanted to.
I wanted to sprint after her, pound on her window, tell her she had it all wrong — that I’d choose her now, tomorrow, always, that I’d never make that mistake again.
But wanting wasn’t the same as deserving.
She’d trusted me with something raw and trembling and secret. And then I’d kissed her like every restrained thought in me had snapped.
She wasn’t running from me.
She was running from what it meant that she didn’t pull away.
I looked down at my hands — the same hands that had held her face, her waist, her heart for one impossible minute — and curled them into fists.
“If you think I won’t fight for you this time,” I whispered to the empty drive, “you don’t know me at all.”
The ache in my chest sharpened. It was the kind of pain that made me feel alive, the kind that existed because what I was fighting for mattered.
Shemattered.
I wouldn’t chase her now. She needed space. She needed safety. She needed breathing room.
But I could prove her wrong.
Her taillights were long gone, swallowed by the night, but I stayed there anyway — rooted to the driveway like leaving might undo the last ten minutes.
Hell, maybe I deserved to stand there and feel every ounce of what I’d been missing for years.
Because one thing was certain as the air finally settled around me:
She could run from the moment, from the intensity, from me.
But I would never run from her again.
And I didn’t care what I risked in the process.
Disappear
Ariana
Present
I stared at my hands — the weathered, textured skin of them and how my knuckles were white from gripping so tightly. I had them folded in my lap, and I looked at them as if it were the first time, as if they were something to discover, as if they held all the answers.
I didn’t know who I was anymore.
Those hands were once young, once smooth and pale and devoid of the fine lines that marked them now. They once held fast to a boy who loved me and made me feel safe. They once cared for my younger brother, holding him and bathing him and teaching him how to ride a bike. They once worked for me, writing grant applications and college essays. They once helped the community I cared about so much.
Now, they were cold and brittle. They trembled from fear. They ached with loss. They longed for a past so far out of reach I couldn’t even see it anymore.
Nathan came home the Sunday after Thanksgiving looking like a complete stranger. His eyes were red and underlined with a deep purple, like he hadn’t slept all week. He kissed me absentmindedly upon his arrival, immediately showering and then passing out until he had to work the next morning.
When he finally asked me what I did for Thanksgiving after not checking in evenonceon his trip, I told him the truth.
