I don’t know if I can forget how I survived after he left. How I picked myself off the floor when my body ached from childbirth and grief at only 17 years old. How I whispered lullabies to a baby with his eyes, swearing I’d never let him feel forgotten.
My fingers tremble as I pull my phone from my purse. I scroll until I find Millie’s name and hit call. I know she’s the one who can help me through this. The one person who won’t judge me, who won’t ask me to decide anything before I’m ready.
The phone rings once, twice.
“Hey Kenna,” Millie says, her voice light, but with an undertone of curiosity. She knows something’s up by the way I’m calling.
“Mills, I am freaking out.” I take a deep breath, trying to calmmyself, but it doesn’t help. “Cole is out. Apparently, he’s back in town. I don’t know what to do.”
There. It’s out in the open. Saying it makes the air in my lungs feel thick. I let the words tumble out, each one more urgent than the last, like they’re going to spill out of me and drag everything with them.
“It’s been years, Millie. I thought it was over, but when I found out he was out, that he’s back in town. I feel like I’m a kid again. I’m just waiting for him to look at me and tell me everything will be okay. But I can’t forget him for how he left. How he walked away and never even sent a letter.”
I hear her sigh on the other end, a long, drawn-out sound, but she doesn’t interrupt. She’s letting me talk. Letting me work through all the complicated thoughts in my head.
“Okay, okay. Just breathe,” she says after a moment, her voice soft but steady. “I’m coming over to the salon. Just give me a few minutes. We’ll talk about it when I get there, alright?”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Mills.”
And when I hang up, I realize how close I was to crying. Not a dramatic cry, but the quiet kind. The kind that happens when everything is too heavy for your ribs.
The call ends, and I sit back in the worn leather chair, letting the hum of the salon wash over me. It’s the middle of the afternoon, the usual lull between appointments, but I can’t focus on anything. He consumes my thoughts.
His name spins in my head like a scratched vinyl record. Stuck on repeat. Worn around the edges. Despite it all, still playing.
I nod, even though she can’t see me. “Okay. Thank you.”
I hang up, collapsing into my favorite worn leather chair in the salon. The relentless hum of the dryers vibrated through my bones, a deafening echo of the emptiness inside. Like my past and future have collided, leaving me standing in the middle of the wreckage.
The photos on the wall blur in my vision—pictures of myclients, smiling after fresh cuts and color, little polaroids pinned like pieces of a life I built from nothing. A life I swore I was done explaining. But now all I can think about is how fragile it all feels. How easily it could unravel with a single conversation.
I close my eyes and try to remember who I was before Cole. Before Cohen. Before the heartbreak. But I can’t find her. I’m not even sure she exists.
What is he like now? Is he still that boy with the tender heart buried beneath all the sharp edges? Does he still laugh like the world isn’t heavy? Does he still think of me?
The doorbell chimes, pulling me from my thoughts. Millie walks in, her face tight with worry, her strawberry blonde curls bouncing as she heads straight for me. No small talk. No “are you okay?” She just sits beside me, her hand already reaching for mine.
“Alright,” she says. “Let’s talk.”
“Why now?” I ask, my voice wavering as I clutch the edge of my seat, my fingers digging into the upholstery. “Why does it feel like everything has changed, but I’m still stuck in this place, still stuck in the past?”
Millie leans forward, her gaze focused and serious. “Because you’ve never really let him go, Ken. Not completely. Not in a way that’s really been over. That’s why you’re freaking out right now. And it’s okay.”
She’s right. Every serious relationship I’ve had since Cole…I’ve sabotaged. Not on purpose, but like I was holding everyone up to some invisible bar only he could meet. And they all failed. Every single one.
Her words hit me harder than I expect. It’s the truth, isn’t it? Every time I’ve tried to move on from Cole—every time I’ve told myself I was over it—I’ve never really been free. Part of me has always wondered what would’ve happened if he hadn’t gone to prison. If things had been different.
The worst part? I don’t know if I would’ve had the strength to leave, even if I should have. I don’t
“I can’t forget, Millie,” I admit, the weight of the confessionheavy in my chest as I spoke. “I’ve tried, I have. But every time I think about him, it’s like…I can’t help it. I wanna know if he’s okay, if he’s different, or if he’s still the Cole who made me laugh and treated me like I was the only girl in the world. And I don’t know if I can forgive him for leaving. I don’t know if I can forgive him for breaking me like all those years ago.”
“I get it, Kenna. I do. But you have to ask yourself, what does forgiveness even mean here? Does it mean that you let him back into your life, or does it just mean that you’re permitting yourself to move on?”
I don’t answer right away. The idea of moving on feels like a betrayal. A betrayal of everything I felt about him. But she’s right. Maybe that’s exactly what I need to do.
Because love without boundaries isn’t love. It’s a sacrifice. And I’ve already given up too much of myself trying to protect something that may never exist again.
Millie sits across from me. A nervous energy about her, despite the one being in crisis, is me. I could feel something was coming, something important.
