With a reluctant sigh, she gave in and sat up. I started running the comb through her hair, untangling the knots. She didn’t react, just kept her eyes on the screen, her fingers wrapped around her Coke can, her lips pursed slightly—whether from the pain or the movie, I wasn’t sure.

For a long time, neither of us spoke.

I focused on the motion, on the feel of her hair slipping through my fingers, and how she used to ask me to do this before things got complicated.

As if the tension between us had reached its breaking point, Beverly let out a long, exasperated breath, her frustration finally bubbling to the surface. “You still suck, by the way.”

“I know.”

She didn’t let me off the hook so easily. “I mean it,” she huffed. “You ignored me for months, and I still don’t know why.”

I hesitated, fingers stilling in her hair for half a second before I kept going. “I just thought space was a good idea.”

“Yeah, great idea,” she shot back.

I winced at the sarcasm in her tone, my chest tightening as I watched her retreat into her anger. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, B,” I added softly, the words barely escaping my throat. It was the truth, but I didn’t even know if she could hear it anymore.

There was a fine line between hurting her and warning her off, and I could tell by her reaction I’d achieved the former.

“Well, you did,” she said quietly. “You really did.”

I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come.

I knew I wasn’t going to win this one. There was no excuse that would undo what had already been done. No matter how carefully I constructed my argument, no matter how many logical reasons I could give for why I thought pulling away was the right call—nothing was going to change the truth.

I had hurt her.

The problem wasn’t that I hadn’t thought through my actions. I had. In fact, I’d overthought them to the point of paralysis. I had convinced myself that the space I created was necessary—both for me and for her. That she would understand, eventually, that I wasn’t abandoning her, that I was giving us both time to breathe, to think.

But in doing so, I’d completely underestimated the effect my absence would have.

That’s where I went wrong.

I hadn’t thought about her. Not really.

My mind, always running through scenarios and solutions, had failed to account for something far more fundamental than logic. People weren’t equations. They weren’t variables to manipulate. The truth was, I had never given enough weight to the emotional toll of my silence. I hadn’t considered how my decision would make her feel, and that was the fatal flaw in my thinking.