I felt empty and full at the same time—as if every part of me had been both carved out and stuffed with the weight of him.

The memories. The maybes.

Grief, love, and guilt bloomed like bruises across my ribs. And for the first time, I let myself say it: my dad had been right.

We wouldn’t work. Not then. Not like that.

Blake was at one of the top colleges in the world. I was—this. A runaway hiding in a café storeroom with cinnamon in my hair and no idea who I was anymore.

I loved Blake like one would love the warmth of the sun on their face after a long winter. I loved him like one would love staring at their favorite book on a shelf. But love, as all-consuming as it can be, wasn’t always enough. Not when I was still bleeding. Not when we were broken in ways that didn’t match. Not when everything between us was sharp and jagged and desperate. Sometimes, you couldn’t drag the past into the future and expect it to survive. We were two broken halves trying to make a whole, and all we ever did was hurt each other.

If Blake was meant for me, if this thing between us was more than just timing and tragedy, we would find each other again. In another version of our lives. One where I was whole, and he was healed. Where we wouldn’t have to claw our way through the wreckage just to hold each other. So I stayed there, alone on the cold floor, my tears soaking the sleeves of Blake’s old sweatshirt, listening to the hum of the fridge and the whisper of the rain against the back window, and tried to believe in someday.

51

BLAKE, 2000

19 years old

“You’re quiet today,” Dr. Lemkin said. “That’s unlike you.”

“Maybe I’m just tired.”

She waited. That’s what she did best—let the silence stretch until I got uncomfortable enough to fill it.

“Alright,” she said, flipping her notebook shut as if she’d finally cracked the code of me. “How’s Stanford treating you?”

I shrugged, shifting in my seat. “It’s fine. A little overrated, though.”

“Overrated in what way?”

“In the way where everything costs five thousand dollars, professors don’t make eye contact, and the only decent food is whatever Jamal’s mom mails me in Tupperware.”

“You’re lucky to have that support system.”