Zara nods.
“So that’s not the truth.” I scrunch my nose and look down. “Basically, this will sound stupid, but my nights have, uh, not been very dreamy.”
Yana tilts her head, and Zara furrows her eyebrows.
“I have an overthinking problem.”
Ley’s just ripped the bandaid shall we?
“ The moment I get into bed, weird thoughts come and steal my sleep. It kinda feels like someone is clawing at my lungs, and my brain turns against me.”
I laugh, but it’s sharp and hollow. “The problem is that I can’t get control over it, no matter how hard I try. I lie there, and every bad thing replays over and over again, and I feel like I’m stuck in the worst nightmare imaginable.”
Neither of them says a word.
The silence is soft, the kind that unravels at its own pace.
“Every mistake, every word I shouldn’t have said. It presses on me until I can’t breathe.”
I swallow hard, forcing the words out before I can take them back. “Most days, I’m fine. The lack of sleep affects me in a waythat I can’t explain. But when the lights go off, it’s just me and my thoughts. And it gets so loud I can’t think straight.”
Zara reaches for my hand, her fingers warming my cold ones, and Luca’s words come to my mind when I notice the bleeding cut on my arm.
I laugh weakly.
“I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. Because my nights are not poetic or romantic. They’re just me, curled up in the dark, crying so quietly it almost doesn’t count. Sometimes I panic before the sun even sets, because I know what will happen, and I’m–” I take a shaky breath and wipe my tears. “Terrified.”
Yana’s voice is barely a whisper. “Tilly…”
“I told Luca already,” I continue, feeling horrible about it. “I told him that I hate myself, and I hide her behind a character that basically describes me at this point, because I know her like she’s my own. I was scared everyone would leave when I told them. But he didn’t. He just looked at me like I wasn’t broken. Like I was still worth loving.”
Zara’s thumb brushes my hand. “You are worth loving.”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, feeling disgusted. “I’ve spent so long rationing my flaws, showing just enough. But I’m tired of pretending I’m fine when I’m not. I’m tired of haunting myself.”
The only sound is the quiet hum of the fairy lights and the soft hum of the waves.
Yana reaches over and hugs me. “You don’t have toeverfake anything in front of us, Tilly.Ever.”
I look at Zara through Yana’s shoulder, and she looks at me earnestly. “It’s true. We love you like family,y Tilly, and you don’t ever have to overthink how to act around us.”
“Humans aren’t perfect. There’s no such thing as theperfectamount of imperfections. Theperfectamount of flaws. You arewho you are, and if anyone ever judges you for that, you leave and don’t look back.”
I sit between them and continue spilling every jagged thought that has been haunting me for months, years, maybe.
They sit there listening and telling me exactly the opposite of what I think every night.
We end up lying there for hours as I let all my messed-up thoughts be untangled by them.
At some point, Yana falls asleep, her arm thrown over Zara’s stomach. Zara’s soft snores tell me she’s also asleep.
I stay awake, staring at the fairy lights until my eyes blur, each one creating yellow and pink lines.
But I don’t hate it.
The tears aren’t falling; they just sit there, and I let them dissolve.
It feels peaceful.
