LOLA
The apartment smells like coffee I forgot to throw out yesterday and the faint, stubborn trace of Nantucket salt still clinging to my hair, even after two showers. I’m curled on the couch in the same leggings I wore on the ferry back, knees to chest, staring at the wall like it can save me. I’m back in the loud buzz of the city—horns and sirens going off, and someone yelling about a bike lane—but in my apartment, the hum of the fridge and my own heartbeat sound almost as loud.
I left him sleeping. The slow rise and fall of his chest, and the way his hand had been resting open on the sheet like he was reaching for me—that’s what keeps replaying in my head. I’d stood there in the half-light for longer than I should have, memorizing him and trying to permanently snapshot our night together in my brain. Then I’d slipped out, door clicking shut behind me like a period at the end of a declarative sentence, one I never wanted to write. I wanted to live in the ellipses with Tully forever. With those, you could alwayspick back up where you left off. Things might be left hanging, but those dots only meant there were things left to the reader’s imagination…and things beyond the page.
I wanted to live untold imaginations with Tully.
It was excruciating. I knew it would be. I’d known the second I saw him, and again, when we danced, and even more so, when I let him pull me into that cottage. But I went willingly, knowing that walking away again would carve something new out of me—something rawer than the first time. Being with him again—talking and laughing and making love—it was worth it. It was worth every second of the ache now, but I knew firsthand that there would be a price to pay. This kind of hurt would leave scars.
My phone buzzes on the cushion beside me. Isla’s name lights the screen. I almost don’t answer—my voice feels like it’s buried under gravel—but she’ll keep calling until I do.
“Hey,” I manage.
“Lola.” Her voice is soft and careful. “You okay?”
I swallow. “Yeah. I made it back.”
I can picture her in her kitchen, leaning against the counter, brow furrowed. “I thought you were staying longer in Nantucket. Are you really okay? Did things not go well with Tull?—?”
“Yeah, everything went well,” I cut in, sharper than I meant to. Then softer: “I couldn’t stay.”
“Why not?”
Because if I stayed one more hour, I would have stayed forever. Because the second I woke up next to him, I felt all the grief and shame creep back in—it had never really left, but if anything, since seeing him again, it had magnified. Because Daniel’s voice is still in my head after all these years. Because the life Tully built without me is big and bright and beautiful. And I’m still the girl who ran away.
I can’t tell my sister any of that.
“I just needed to come back,” I say. “Work was waiting.”
She doesn’t buy it. “Bullshit. You sound like you’re bleeding out over there.”
I laugh, but it cracks in the middle. “I’m fine.”
“I was afraid it’d be like this. You’re not fine. You left in such a hurry. And now you’re back in that shoebox apartment acting like someone died.”
Someone did, I want to say.The version of us that got one more night.
I press my forehead to my knees. “It was one night, Isla. That’s all it was ever going to be.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.” The word tastes like ash. “And it was perfect. But he’s got his life. I’ve got mine. We’re not the same people we were.”
She’s quiet for a beat. “If it was still perfect after all this time, I’m not so sure about that. Sounds like you still love each other.”
My throat closes. I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
“Lola,” she says gently. “You don’t have to do this alone. Come back, or I’ll come there. We can drink too much wine and trash-talk exes and pretend the world isn’t ending.”
I almost smile. “I’m okay. Really. I just need…time.”
“You’ve had years.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “And it still hurts like the first day.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Call me if you need me. Day or night. I mean it.”
“I know. I will.”
