“And you’re so grumpy,” she says, shooting me a grin over her shoulder. Her ponytail bobs when she moves, casual and effortless, like joy lives in her bones. “We all have our cross to bear.”
We aren’t supposed to be here, but that damn letter in the journal said they were going to come here. Even though I know they’re not going to come in, part of me just thinks they’ll call me and say this was one big joke.
Now it’s just Hazel and me.
“You know you’re allowed to laugh, right?” she asks with a smirk. “Even…now.”
I look at her—really look at her. Hazel isn’t Leyla—she doesn’t try to be. But they have that same light—a kind of relentless hope that refuses to dim no matter how dark it gets. It pisses me off and pulls me in all at once. Hazel is a mystery on top of everything else.
“You’re handling this awfully well,” I muttered.
She turns the stove off and crosses the room, barefoot in shorts that show way too much leg for my emotional stability. She flops onto the couch beside me, bumping her knee against mine. A subtle silence falls between us, a moment where I can tell our brains are quiet.
“I’m not handling it well,” she admits, softly. “I just refuse to drown in it.”
I turn toward her, ready to push back—but she’s already watching me. Her kind eyes look at me, a sudden darkness filling them and eliciting a pull toward her that I can’t act on.
“Zack, please.” Hazel’s voice is raspy, as if she’s asking permission for something I won’t allow myself to feel. But I feel it then—a slow heat crawling up from my chest, settling in my throat. I look away, emotions warring with themselves that I’m not ready to face.
“I’m too old for you.”
“You’re thirty-eight. Not eighty,” Hazel quips, her face indignant.
“I’m your dead best friend’s?—”
She cuts me off before I can finish, “So am I. That doesn’t mean we stop being alive.”
Hazel leans in just a little. I could smell her shampoo—jasmine and something citrusy. She’s too close. Her thigh just barely presses against mine, her breath warm near my cheek. I can feel her looking at me like she sees something worth the trouble. I’m not used to that. Not anymore. My heart died years ago—it’s been living in my chest for decades, shriveled up and broken.
“You should stop,” I said, my voice lower than I mean it to be—rough.
“Do you want me to stop?” she whispers.
I don’t answer—I can’t.
Because her hand is resting on my leg now, light at first, but not tentative. She knows exactly what she’s doing. And God help me, I let her.
She leans in closer, and I hold my breath. The moment feels like standing on a tightrope with no net—every muscle in my body is taut with resistance that isn’t entirely honest.
“We can be sad and still want things,” she says, her voice like liquid honey.
I close my eyes, a lump forming in my throat that I fight back.It isn’t supposed to be like this.
But grief is a strange bedfellow. It strips you down, leaves you raw. And sometimes, when someone touches you in the dark, it feels less like sin and survival. Her hand is still on my thigh. It’s not high—not indecent—but it’s to a point that’s dangerously close.
I force a breath through my nose, like that’s going to help. Like I didn’t already lose control the second she sat down and started looking at me like that—like I’m some challenge she’s going to enjoy winning.
“I think you like it when I make you uncomfortable,” she says, her voice light. Too light.
“Hazel…”
She tilts her head, pretending to be innocent. “What? I’m just sitting here.”
She’s not.
Her fingers start drumming these lazy little taps right above my knee. Innocent in the most technical sense. But every beat of her fingertip sends a jolt up my leg, tightening muscles I’m trying hard to keep relaxed.
My jaw locks, and a muscle tics.
