She pulls her hood up, ties it under her chin like a little kid. I want to tell her she looks ridiculous, but all I can see is how brave she is, to stand there with me, to let me go.
The bus hisses up to the curb. She hugs me, brief and tight, face buried in my jacket.
Before she pulls away, she whispers, “Go figure yourself out, D. You deserve to know who you are.”
I hold on a half-second longer, then let her go.
She boards without looking back.
I stand in the rain, soaked to the skin, and I feel lighter and heavier at the same time, lighter because the lie is gone, heavier because I just lost the best woman I've ever known, and both of those things are true at once.
———
I walk home alone, hands jammed deep in my pockets, the city flattening out around me in layers of wet asphalt and neon and noise.
Every block is a memory, that’s the bodega where Nia and I bought ramen at two a.m. during finals, that’s the corner where I got into my first and last fight outside a club, that’s the crosswalk where Ash crashed his bike and called me a “fucking cyborg” for not even wincing at the blood.
All of it looks different now, not better, just… real.
The Space Needle hovers in the distance, a UFO bleeding blue light into the cloud lid. When I was a kid, I thought it was a spaceship waiting for the right moment to take off.
Right now, it looks like it might just fuck off to the moon and leave the rest of us behind.
The rain doesn’t let up. My shoes squelch with every step, and the hem of my jeans is soaked through by the time I reach my building.
The elevator smells like Lysol and fake citrus, the hallway carpet is so ugly it should be a crime. I unlock the door, and the silence inside hits like a punch.
It’s not that the apartment is empty, Nia barely stayed over since last year, but it feels emptier, like the walls are mourning the version of me that’s gone.
I drop my wet jacket on the tile, peel off my hoodie, and stand in the center of the living room, not sure what to do next.
The city view is the only thing I ever liked about this place, the floor-to-ceiling windows, the way the light leaks in, the feeling that you’re standing on the edge of a world that won’t notice if you jump.
I watch the rain trace crooked paths down the glass, the city lights smeared into a wash of orange and blue.
I want to call someone, want to text Ash and say, “Hey, I’m an emotional disaster, come laugh at me,” but I don’t.
Instead, I just stand there, watching my own ghost in the reflection.
My phone buzzes, and I ignore it. It buzzes again, and this time I look.
It’s the team group chat, guys talking shit about tomorrow’s practice, someone posting a meme about the “wettest city in America.” O’Doul makes a joke about “moist goalies,” and Raz chimes in with a GIF of a cat getting blasted by a garden hose.
I could reply. I should reply.
But all I can think about is Ash, and how he’ll be at the gym at 5:04 on the dot, and how I need to see him more than I need to breathe.
I rehearse a thousand conversations in my head.
“We should talk.”
“I broke up with Nia.”
“I think I’m?—”
None of it is right. None of it gets to the point.
The point is, I don’t want to hide anymore.
