kylie ❤︎⁠

You stay anchored to her, fingers laced together, but it’s obvious how easily Alysa slips into this version of herself. Her posture loosens, her smile comes quicker, brighter, her voice shifting as she responds in Mandarin, fluid, effortless, like she doesn’t have to think about it at all. People greet her all at once, hands on her shoulders, her arms, her cheeks, voices layered over each other as if they’ve been waiting specifically for her to walk through that door. And because she won’t let go of you, you’re brought along too, passed from person to person in a way that’s not overwhelming exactly… just disorienting. Faces blur together, smiles kind, welcoming, but conversations slip past you like water. You nod when it feels right, laugh when others do, hoping it lines up.

At some point, Alysa gets pulled a step too far ahead of you—still holding your hand, but just enough distance that you’re left standing half a beat behind her conversation. You catch maybe one word in ten, watching the way her expression shifts as she talks, how animated she gets, how her family mirrors it.

You don’t feel unwelcome. If anything, it’s the opposite because there’s warmth in every glance sent your way but it’s also like standing just outside a glass wall. You’re included, but not quite inside.

Then there’s a gentle tug at your sleeve. You turn to find Alysa’s grandma is right there, her hand wrapped lightly around your arm. Her face is soft, smiling in that patient, knowing way that older women have, like she really likes you without needing to say it. You brighten instantly, shoulders straightening a little as you reach out, removing your hand from Alysa’s to shake her hand with both of yours like you’ve seen people do before.

“Hi—hi, it’s so good to see you,” you say, slower than usual, like that might somehow make it easier to understand. You gesture vaguely between the two of you, nodding, your smile widening. “You look… amazing. Really, you do.”

You add a little thumbs up at the end without thinking, and immediately feel a tiny flicker of embarrassment, but she just nods along, smiling just as brightly, murmuring something back in Mandarin. You have no idea what she said, but you nod anyway, like you understood every word.

For a second, you both just stand there, smiling at each other, this silent agreement settling in that this is enough. It’s a little awkward, a little funny, but not uncomfortable, just truly limited.

Alysa appears at your side again because she noticed immediately when your hand left hers, her hand sliding back around yours without making a show of it. She leans down to greet her grandma properly, her voice softening, respectful in a way you’ve only seen in moments like this. Then she glances at you, her thumb brushing over your knuckles.

“She’s asking how you’ve been,” Alysa says, easy, natural. “And she said you look very pretty today.”

You let out a quiet laugh, shoulders relaxing. “Tell her she looks even better.”

Alysa huffs softly through her nose, translating, and her grandma laughs this time, patting your arm like she approves. It’s small, but it helps. Alysa stays close, translating here and there, filling gaps without making it obvious she’s doing it. It’s subtle, the way she includes you—never making you feel like you’re slowing anything down, never making it a big deal.

Eventually, you drift toward a quieter corner where her siblings are gathered, the noise dipping just enough that you can breathe again. Justin leans back against the wall, half-smirking as he watches the room, Julia and Jaylinn mid-conversation, Selina scrolling through her phone before glancing up.

“You made it,” Justin says, nodding at you like you’ve passed some kind of test.

“Yeah, just about,” you mutter, but there’s a small smile tugging at your mouth.

Alysa doesn’t let go of your hand even here, her arm brushing against yours as she slots into the group. The conversation shifts easily into English, and you feel yourself settle more, finally able to follow without guessing.

“I heard Maya’s bringing her new boyfriend,” Julia says, lowering her voice just enough to make it feel like gossip.

You blink, trying to place the name, your brows pulling together for a second, and before you can even ask, Alysa tilts her head toward you slightly.

“She’s the short one with red hair,” she murmurs.

Recognition clicks immediately, your mouth forms the shape of an O and you nod, remembering her from the last party Alysa invited you to. Alysa just nods, like it was obvious she’d fill that gap for you, her thumb still tracing along your hand.

It’s easy here with her and her siblings that you almost forget that feeling of being an outsider from earlier—almost. Until the front door opens again.

There’s a subtle shift in attention as people glance over, Julia straightening a little. “That’s her.”

You follow their gaze, watching as Maya steps in, bright and confident, and beside her is her boyfriend. You feel that flicker of relief immediately, something in your chest loosening. Because he just looks normal. Like really normal. Just an average white guy, mid-twenties, clean-cut. There's nothing about him that screams prepared for this. No cultural cues, no hint that he belongs here more than you do.

Okay. Good. Not just you.

He looks like someone who's about to go through the exact same thing you just did. He'll probably walk in with the smiling and nodding and try to piece things together as he goes. You almost feel a little bad for him, already bracing yourself to watch him fumble through the respectful, slightly awkward interactions.

He reaches Alysa’s grandma. You expect the same polite smiles, maybe a few gestures. A shared understanding that neither of you fully understands the other but you'll meet somewhere in the middle anyway. But then, he bows his head slightly and starts speaking...

In Mandarin.

It's fluent and smooth. There’s no trace of hesitation, it flows out of him like it belongs there, like he's done this before, like he fits in a way you just assumed he wouldn't. Alysa's grandma lights up instantly, her face opening with genuine excitement, responding just as quickly and suddenly, they're having a full conversation.

The reaction is immediate. You see the way a couple of the aunts and uncles glance at each other, impressed, eyebrows lifting. Justin lets out a quiet, surprised laugh under his breath. Even Alysa’s posture shifts a little beside you, her attention sharpening.

And you just… sit there. Still smiling but something in your chest tightens in a way that’s harder to ignore this time, annoyed.

Of course he speaks Mandarin. Of course the new guy walks in and just fits.

You look down for a second, your fingers curling slightly in Alysa’s hand, suddenly hyper-aware of how little you understand, how much you’ve been relying on her to fill in every gap, every silence. It hadn’t felt like a problem before because Alysa and her family never made it seem like one. But now it’s loud in your head because it's not about being new anymore. It's about you not trying.

Who are you, really, if you can’t even meet her family halfway? Who are you if you haven’t taken the time to understand something that’s such a big part of her?

It's not like anyone's ever made you feel bad about it. But rather, they've all done the opposite. They're patient, kind in ways that never once made you feel like you didn't belong. So pressure isn't coming from them but rather from you. It creeps in as a feeling you can't shake. It's like you've somehow slipped into a place you didn't fully earn, like you've been getting by on Alysa's presence alone, letting her carry you through every interaction. It feels like this is something temporary. Like you're replaceable so there’s no point in trying to learn.

You don’t say anything and you don’t pull away. When someone looks your way, you’re still smiling, still present. But there’s this quiet shift under it all, something unsettled. Your grip on Alysa’s hand tightens just slightly, and this time she notices. She glances at you, briefly, her expression softening in that subtle way she gets when she’s reading you without asking. You shake your head a little before she can say anything, offering a small, easy smile like nothing’s wrong. But as your eyes flick back toward the room, toward the conversation you still can't understand, toward the ease you can't replicate, that feeling gets deeper and more certain.

You don't want to be the person who just stands there and smiles anymore. For the first time, it's not just a passing thought.

It's something you know you're going to act on.

-------

It doesn’t happen all at once. It starts quiet and a little stubborn.

That night sticks with you longer than you expect. It lingers in the background, replaying in pieces. The sound of Alysa’s voice slipping so easily into Mandarin. Her grandma’s smile. The way you stood there, smiling, present but not really part of it. And then that moment of watching someone else step into that space so effortlessly, like it wasn’t even something to think twice about.

You don’t feel angry. You don’t even feel embarrassed anymore. You just feel… aware. And that awareness settles into something steady, something that doesn’t fade after a day or two. It turns into a decision.

This isn’t about proving anything to anyone in that room. It’s about Alysa. It’s about the way she didn’t let go of your hand once that entire night. The way she translated without asking, without ever making you feel like you were behind. It’s about the way her world opened up around you. You realized how much of it you were only skimming the surface of.

If you’re going to be here, like really here, long-term, years from now, holidays and birthdays and quiet family dinners, you don’t want to just exist in the corner of it. You want to fully belong in it.

You start small at first, like a copy of Chinese for Dummies and Duolingo, and then you don’t.

The first Mandarin class feels humbling in a way you weren’t fully prepared for. It’s not an app you can casually scroll through in bed. It’s structured and intentional. You chose to go to an actual classroom, see a professor who expects participation, pronunciation that matters. You sit there the first day, notebook open, pen hovering, listening as sounds are broken down into tones that feel almost impossible to control.

You repeat them anyway and you mess up. A lot.

Your voice feels awkward in your own mouth, unfamiliar shapes forming with every word. But you don’t stop. You write everything down, your notes messy at first, then more organized as weeks pass. You practice in your car, under your breath, in front of the mirror sometimes, watching how your mouth moves, correcting yourself over and over until it starts to feel a little less foreign.

And then there’s everything else too. Your apartment slowly fills with books and not just textbooks, but novels, memoirs, essays. Stories written by Chinese authors, about Chinese families, traditions, relationships, identity. You sit curled up on the couch at night, highlighter in hand, pausing every few pages to look something up, to understand context you don’t want to skim over.

It’s not just about language. It’s about truly understanding why certain things matter, why certain traditions are done a certain way. The small details that no one explains out loud because they’re just known.

You want to know them too. You don't want to rely on Alysa for the smallest interactions forever. You want to meet her more than halfway.

This takes time. A lot of time you don’t always have. Time you start making.

At first, it’s easy to hide. Alysa’s away for competitions for a few months, traveling, training, her schedule packed in a way that gives you space to build your own routine without raising questions. You tell her you’re catching up on work, that you’ve been busy, and it’s not even a lie. You are busy, just not in the way she thinks.

Your days start revolving around it. Classes, studying, reading, repeating, learning. You fall into a rhythm, one that feels productive, purposeful. There’s something satisfying about it too, watching yourself improve, even in small ways.

But then she comes back and that’s when it gets hard. Now it’s not just about commitment—it’s about choosing.

You miss her in a way that feels physical sometimes, like it sits in your chest and doesn’t quite go away. You want to be with her, to fall back into your usual routine of late nights, lazy mornings, the easy way you exist together without effort.

But you can’t do both, so you start by making excuses. They're small at first. “I’ve got something I need to finish tonight.” “I can’t make it, I already promised someone I’d help them with something.” You reschedule plans, push things back, cut time shorter than you normally would. And every time, it feels wrong. She doesn’t get upset—Alysa’s easygoing in that way, understanding even when she doesn’t fully get it. She’ll just nod, shrug a little, kiss your temple like it’s nothing.

“Okay. Tomorrow then?” she says one night, standing in your doorway, already halfway out because you told her you had something to do.

“Yeah,” you answer, forcing a small smile. “Tomorrow.”

But tomorrow turns into next week. Next week turns into “I’ll see you after this.” And it builds quietly, this distance that wasn’t there before.

You notice it in the little things. Like in the way she lingers a second longer when she hugs you goodbye. The way she looks at you sometimes, like she’s trying to figure something out but doesn’t ask. The way her texts come in a little more often—nothing overwhelming, just small check-ins.

u busy?

can I come over later?

miss you

And you sit there, phone in your hand, staring at the screen longer than you should before replying because you miss her too, so much. There are nights where you’re sitting at your desk, notes spread out in front of you, repeating phrases under your breath and all you can think about is how much easier it would be to just stop. To text her, tell her to come over, forget about all of this for a few hours.

But then you remember why you started. You remember that feeling of standing in that room, knowing you weren’t even halfway there. Knowing that if this is the person you’re choosing, if this is the life you’re stepping into, you don’t want to stay on the outside of it. This isn’t for a moment. It’s for everything that comes after, for years down the line, when it’s not just parties and introductions, but real relationships with the people that matter to her. You want to be someone her family doesn’t just welcome but someone they can know. And more than that you want to be someone Alysa doesn’t have to carry through those moments. So you keep going. Even when it’s hard and even when it means missing her.

You give yourself until Alysa's birthday which comes out to be ten months. Ten months of learning, of building something quietly that isn’t for show, isn’t for approval. Something that’s just yours and for her and for the life you’re trying to grow into with her.

And if it costs you a little distance now, you tell yourself it’ll be worth it later.

———

At first, Alysa doesn’t think anything of it.

That night at her mom’s birthday passes in her head the way most family parties do. She remembers keeping hold of your hand through most of it without really thinking about why, remembers translating here and there when she caught that look on your face—that polite little smile you got when you were trying hard to keep up even while clearly not understanding half of what was happening around you. But to Alysa, none of that reads as a problem. You looked okay. Maybe a little quieter, maybe a little clingier than usual, but still smiling, still laughing when it counted, still leaning into her side when you found those calmer moments with her siblings.

She doesn’t notice the small shift when Maya’s boyfriend starts speaking Mandarin. There was your hand tightening in hers but then you smiled when she checked your face, so there wasn't anything there that felt urgent enough to ask about. She lets it go. In her mind, the night lands where it always does—fine. Good, even. Another family thing you came to, another room you survived with that easy willingness of yours, another night where she got to bring you into her world and you handled it like you always did. She leaves thinking you did well.

Then competition season starts, and like always, life breaks into pieces.

Alysa leaves, and distance becomes normal in the way it has to when travel takes over everything. When she and you talk, she doesn’t overanalyze the fact that you seem a little split between her and something else. Your calls are still happening. Your texts are still sweet, still full of enough warmth that nothing feels off in any major way. You pick up when you can. You answer her messages. You tell her about your day, even if a little vaguely. Sometimes she hears papers shifting in the background or the click of your laptop keys while she’s talking, and maybe once or twice she jokes, “Are you even listening to me?” and you laugh and say, “I am, keep talking,” and she does. It’s not ideal, but it’s fine.

She tells herself that a hundred times because from far away, fine is easy to believe in. Especially when you still show up for the events you can like the domestic ones, the competitions close enough that your being there feels possible. She sees you in the crowd and the whole room settles. She gets that same stupid rush every time, that automatic softening in her chest just from spotting your face. So whatever slight distraction lives in your calls, whatever busyness fills your texts, she writes it off. You’re still there and that’s what matters.

It’s when she really comes home that it changes.

Not slowly, either. That’s the thing that gets under her skin the fastest. It feels immediate, like walking into a room expecting the furniture to be where it’s always been and realizing someone’s moved everything two inches to the left. Nothing is technically wrong, nothing is obviously broken, but the entire shape of things is off enough that she can’t stop noticing it. You’re suddenly hard to pin down in a way you’ve never been before. Plans become tentative, then flexible, then constantly changing.

You’re “so sorry” and “something came up” and “can we do later instead?” and at first she takes it the way she takes most things—with a shrug, with a quick yeah, okay, with the assumption that whatever’s going on has nothing to do with her. Because Alysa, by nature, is easy. She doesn’t like making things heavier than they need to be. She’s not someone who wants to trap you into explaining every schedule change or every canceled night.

The first month, she adjusts. That’s the word she’d use if anyone asked. If you can’t come over, fine, she’ll meet you somewhere. If you only have a few hours, fine, she’ll take the few hours. If the only way she gets time with you now is by waiting for you to fit her into your calendar, then she tells herself to stop being weird about it.

And when she does get you, it only confuses her more because nothing is wrong when you’re actually there. That’s what makes it hard for her to grab onto any one explanation. You still kiss her the same way when she opens the door. Still step into her space like you belong there. Still let your hand find the back of her neck when you’re talking, still laugh at the same things, still melt into the couch beside her like you always have. The conversations are normal. The touches are normal. She still gets that same warm, stupid, full-body ease whenever you show up, that same sense that everything in her settles the minute she has you in front of her again. It’s just that now those moments come with a clock attached.

There’s always somewhere else you have to be. Always a reason you can’t stay the night. Always a glance at the time eventually, followed by that apologetic look she’s starting to hate. And Alysa, who can usually let things roll right off her, starts feeling every goodbye harder than she should. You’ll be standing in her kitchen finishing a conversation like nothing’s wrong, and then suddenly you’re putting your shoes on and saying, “I have to go,” and she has to stand there pretending it doesn’t hit her in the chest every single time. She tells herself it’s temporary. She tells herself you mean it when you say you’re busy. She tells herself people go through phases.

By the start of the second month, all that understanding starts to wear thin around the edges because now she’s home. Fully home. Competition is over, her schedule is open, and all that time that used to have you in it is just empty.

She isn't good at stillness. During season, missing you has somewhere to go—it gets tucked into routines, into training and recovery and the constant forward motion of needing to be somewhere else. But home strips all that away. At home, missing you becomes so obvious.

She wakes up and there’s time. She gets through her day and there’s time. She’s in her apartment at six in the evening and there’s nothing pressing, nowhere urgent to be, and all of that space used to fill so naturally with you that she almost doesn’t know what to do with it now.

She finds herself reaching for her phone more. Opening your text thread just to stare at it. Thinking I should ask if she wants to come over, then stopping because she asked two days ago and you said you couldn’t. She misses the ordinary parts most like the way you used to just exist around her, not even doing anything special. It becomes this ache she can’t really name without sounding dramatic, so she doesn’t say it. But it’s there, constant, low and annoying at first, then sharper, more restless, until by the middle of the second month it starts putting her on edge.

And that’s when her mind turns on her. If Alysa can’t find a reason, she starts looking for one in herself.

At first it’s just little thoughts, passing ones she doesn’t fully believe.

Did I miss something? Did I say something weird? Was it that night with my family?

But then the thoughts start linking together, building structure, and once that happens they get harder to shake.

You’ve never been this unavailable before. Never this slippery or this consistently almost-there. What else is she supposed to think? She starts replaying conversations in her head after they happen, combing through them for tone, for hesitation, for anything she might’ve missed. She thinks about every time you looked distracted on the phone while she was away, and suddenly those moments don’t feel harmless anymore. She thinks about how easily you say sorry now, how practiced it sounds. She starts wondering if you’re pulling away on purpose and if there’s something she did that hurt you and you’re waiting for her to be smart enough to figure it out on her own. That thought gets its claws in her fast, because it would almost be easier if she had done something wrong. Then at least there’d be an explanation, at least she could fix it. But the harder she looks, the less she finds, and that uncertainty turns into frustration, then anxiety, then a kind of quiet panic she keeps mostly to herself because she doesn’t even know how to make it sound reasonable.

When she finally asks, it doesn’t happen in some huge blowout. It’s too late in the day for that, and Alysa’s too thrown off to come in angry right away.

It’s one of those shortened evenings again. You’re at her apartment because you’ve stopped inviting her over, sitting on the edge of her bed while she stands across from you, pretending to tidy up when really she’s just trying to work up the nerve to say something without sounding needy. You’d been normal all night—sweet, affectionate, tucked under her arm on the couch like nothing in the world had changed.

And then, like always, you checked the time. Started gathering your things. Started leaving. That’s what finally does it so Alysa says your name before she can overthink it, and there’s something in her voice that makes you pause immediately. She’s not looking at you at first, which is rare for her when something actually matters. Her hands are busy with nothing—picking up a hoodie, dropping it again, jaw tight in a way she doesn’t know how to hide.

“Did I do something?” she asks finally, and the question comes out flatter than she means it to, less emotional, more careful. “Because it kind of feels like I did.”

You stare at her for a second like you genuinely don’t understand what she means, and somehow that throws her off more than if you’d immediately gotten defensive. “What?”

Alysa lifts a shoulder, but it’s tense, not casual. “You’ve been… I don’t know. Busy, I guess. A lot. Since I got back.” She glances at you then, finally, and there’s enough rawness in her expression that she hates it instantly. “And I’m trying not to be weird about it, but it feels like you’re avoiding me.”

The incredulous look on your face comes fast. “Alysa, no.” You step toward her right away, your brows pulled together, like the idea itself bothers you. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not mad at you, I promise.” And for a second, the tension in her eases just a little but then you keep going. “I’m just really busy right now. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you.” You say it sincerely, you sound honest. You sound apologetic, like someone who cares.

And still, nothing changes.

It starts souring something in Alysa by the end of the second month—not because she stops believing you care, but because your reassurance stops matching your actions.

She tries after that conversation to settle back down, to trust what you said, to stop making herself crazy over it. But the next week comes and goes and you’re still hard to reach. Still rescheduling and still finding time for her only in small, pre-measured pieces. “I’ll make it up to you” becomes one of those phrases that starts echoing in her head in a way she hates, because she keeps waiting for the making-up part and it never comes. And Alysa, who is usually the least dramatic person in the room, starts getting irritated in this quiet, simmering way that’s foreign to her. At some point “busy” stops feeling like an explanation and starts feeling like a wall.

She can’t tell if you’re hiding something, sparing her something, or just genuinely refusing to let her in but whatever it is, she can feel it now every time you leave too early, every time she checks her phone and sees another changed plan, every time she wants to ask what the hell is going on and stops herself because she already asked once and you gave her nothing she could actually hold onto.

So she ends up in this awful in-between state of feeling restless, on edge, trying not to push too hard while feeling more and more certain that if she doesn’t push, nothing will change. If you were angry, she could deal with that. If you were upset, if you needed space, if there was an actual reason—something clear, something solid—Alysa could work with it. She could apologize. She could adjust and try but you won’t tell her anything.

And she doesn’t know how to start a conversation with someone who keeps insisting everything is fine while slowly disappearing from the life you used to share so easily.

———

Alysa doesn’t go to her friends looking for answers. At least, that’s not how she frames it to herself.

She tells herself she just needs to get out of the apartment, just needs noise, something to fill the empty space that’s been sitting too loudly around her lately. So she meets them for something casual. They’re sitting across from her, half-eaten plates in front of them, drinks sweating against the table, and Alysa’s leaning back in her chair trying to act like everything’s normal. She listens to them talk for a while but she’s not really paying attention. She’s nodding at the right times, chiming in just enough to not seem completely checked out.

Eventually, one of them notices. “You’re quiet,” she says, narrowing her eyes slightly, not accusatory.

Alysa shrugs, reaching for her drink. “I’m fine.” She says it too quickly which they both catch immediately.

“What’s going on?” the other one asks, leaning forward a little now, elbows on the table. “Is everything good with you and—” she gestures vaguely, like she doesn’t even need to say your name.

Alysa hesitates.

That’s all it takes because once she pauses, even for a second, they know there’s something there.

“It’s nothing,” she says, but softer this time, less convincing even to her own ears. She exhales, running a hand through her hair, gaze dropping to the table. “She’s just… busy. Like really busy. Since I got back.”

“Busy how?” one of them presses.

Alysa shakes her head, trying to downplay it. “I don’t know, just… stuff. Work or whatever. She keeps having to reschedule, or she can only hang out for like a few hours and then she leaves.” She shrugs again, like it’s no big deal, like she hasn’t been thinking about it constantly. “It’s just different. She doesn’t even invite me over to her place and if we’re not in my apartment I’m having to go meet her somewhere instead of just driving together. She’s kinda always on her phone too when we are together.” There’s a pause. A look passes between them. It’s quick, subtle, but Alysa sees it and something in her stomach drops before either of them even says anything. “What?” she asks immediately, her voice sharper than she means it to be. “Why are you guys looking at each other like that?”

One of them hesitates, like she’s trying to decide how to say it without making it worse.

“Alysa…” she starts slowly, carefully, her tone shifting into something more cautious. “You don’t think…?”

Alysa frowns, confusion pulling at her expression. “What?”

But there’s something else under it too. Something tighter.

The other friend doesn’t hesitate. “It sounds like she’s cheating on you.”

It hits her like a drop, like that sudden, weightless feeling in her stomach, like everything just fell out from under her for a second. Alysa actually has to inhale sharply, like she forgot how to breathe for a second there, her hand tightening around her glass without her realizing it. She shakes her head immediately, too fast, like if she does it quick enough the idea won’t stick.

“No,” she says, almost instinctively. “No, that’s not—what are you talking about?” Her voice sounds off to her own ears. She doesn’t sound fully convinced even to herself but it’s also not fully dismissive either. “We’re fine when we’re together,” she adds quickly, like that proves something. “Like nothing’s different. She’s not weird, she’s not distant when she’s there. Wouldn’t—wouldn’t someone cheating be… different?” She frowns, trying to make it make sense. “Like tired? Or distracted or something?”

One of them tilts her head slightly. “Alysa, she is distracted. You literally just said she’s always doing something else when you guys talk.”

“That’s not the same thing,” Alysa pushes back, but it comes out weaker than she wants it to.

The other friend leans in a little more, her tone gentler but firmer. “You just said this is out of character for her. She’s never been this hard to get ahold of, right? She’s not letting you come over anymore. She’s always going to your apartment or you’re meeting her somewhere. That’s weird.”

Alysa opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. When it’s said like that, when it’s laid out in a straight line like this, it does sound weird.

“She could be living a whole separate life right now and you wouldn’t even know,” her friend adds, not harshly, just matter-of-fact.

“And people don’t always act different when you’re with them,” the other one chimes in, a little more blunt. “They pick up right where they left off like nothing happened. It’s like—psychotic behavior, honestly.”

Alysa lets out a short, hollow laugh at that, but it doesn’t reach anywhere real. Their voices are still there, still talking, but they feel further away now to Alysa, like someone turned the volume down just enough that she has to strain to catch the words. Her focus drops to the table again, her fingers pressing into the condensation on her glass, dragging through it without thinking.

Cheating.

The word sits wrong in her head. She tries to push it away instantly but it doesn’t go because now it’s attached itself to everything. Every rescheduled plan and every “I’m sorry, I’m busy.” Every time you left early with every distracted call. Every moment she brushed off because she trusted you.

Her chest tightens. Actually tightens—like something is physically pressing down on it, making it harder to take a full breath. She swallows, her throat suddenly dry, her eyes stinging in a way that catches her off guard. She blinks hard, once, twice, trying to clear it, but it doesn’t help at all because her brain won’t stop.

What if that’s why?

What if that’s what all of this is?

The thought makes her feel sick, not metaphorically but actually sick. Like her stomach flips, a wave of nausea rolling through her so suddenly she has to lean back in her chair just to steady herself. Her grip tightens again, knuckles going pale around the glass.

The idea of you—of you doing that, of you choosing someone else while still standing in her apartment, still kissing her like nothing changed—

It hurts. It hurts in a way that’s immediate and overwhelming, like it bypasses everything logical and goes straight to something painful. Her chest aches, sharp and deep, and she doesn’t even realize her vision’s blurring until she has to blink again and a tear actually slips free.

“Hey,” one of her friends says immediately, her tone softening as she reaches across the table. “Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay.”

Alysa inhales shakily, shaking her head like she can physically push the feeling away. “I’m not—” she starts, but her voice cracks halfway through and she has to stop.

The other friend leans back a little, her expression shifting—less certain now, more careful. “We don’t know that she is,” she says quickly, softer than before. “Okay? We’re just—guessing. It could be something else.”

Alysa doesn’t respond right away because now that the idea’s in her head, it’s not just a guess anymore.

It’s a possibility, which, in circumstances where you don’t have much to go off of, is enough to wreck something in you.

“Then what am I supposed to do?” she asks finally, her voice quieter now, rougher. She wipes at her face quickly, like she’s annoyed with herself for reacting this way. “I already asked her. She said nothing’s wrong.”

“Check her phone.”

Alysa looks up immediately, frowning. “What? No.”

“That’s the easiest way to know,” her friend says, like it’s obvious.

“That’s—” Alysa shakes her head again, more firmly this time. “That’s an invasion of privacy.”

One of them gives her a look. seriously?

“Alysa.”

She exhales, frustrated now, running a hand over her face. “I’m not doing that.”

But the idea’s already there. What if that’s the only way she finds out? What if she’s just… sitting here, being stupid, trusting something that’s already broken?

Her jaw tightens. She looks down at the table again, blinking hard once more before finally nodding—small, reluctant. “…Fine,” she mutters. “I’ll… think about it.”

They don’t push her further after that. The conversation shifts, softens, but Alysa doesn’t really come back into it. She stays quiet for the rest of the night, answering when she has to, but mostly just sitting there, the weight of that one idea pressing heavier with every passing minute.

By the time she gets home, it’s changed shape. The sadness is still there—but it’s not the only thing anymore. It twists and sharpens until it turns into something hotter. The more she thinks about it, the more it starts to make sense in a way she hates.

That’s why you’re busy.

That’s why you won’t let me come over.

That’s why you leave early.

Her chest tightens again, but this time there’s something under it—anger, low and simmering, building with every new thought that slots into place.

“How could she do that?” she mutters out loud to no one, pacing her apartment now, hands dragging through her hair. “How could she actually do that?” Her voice breaks at the end, but she pushes through it, because now her brain is moving too fast to stop.

After everything?

After bringing you into her family, into her life, letting everything blend together so easily—it feels like a betrayal just thinking about it. Like something sacred got handled carelessly. Like she opened something up for you and you decided it wasn’t enough.

if this is what you’re doing then she wants to know. She just can’t sit here wondering or dragging it out. She wants proof. Something real she can hold onto so she can stop guessing, stop spiraling, stop feeling like she’s losing her mind trying to piece this together.

Because if you’re going to break her, she’d rather you just do it all at once.

———

Alysa is already wound too tight by the time you come over. It’s not obvious at first but it’s there in the way she keeps glancing at you when she thinks you won’t notice, in the way her shoulders never fully relax even after you’ve settled onto her couch, even after your shoes are off and your body has leaned into the familiar shape of her apartment like you’ve done a hundred times before.

The room itself is normal, almost painfully so. The lamp in the corner casts that same warm low light over everything, there’s some half-finished show playing that neither of you is really paying attention to. And that normalcy is almost offensive to her now, because it makes her feel crazy. It makes her feel like the only one carrying this terrible, shifting thing inside her chest while you sit there beside her looking so entirely like yourself. You answer when she talks. You smile in the right places. You let your knee knock against hers. But every few minutes your attention slips back to your phone, your thumb moving over the screen, your expression going distant in that tiny way she’s learned to dread.

Normally Alysa would say something easy about it, steal the phone from your hands, throw herself across your lap until you laughed and paid attention to her instead. But she can’t do that now, because now every small distraction feels loaded. Now every glance at your screen feels like proof of something she hasn’t been able to catch up to.

She shifts closer once, trying to make it look natural, trying to see what has your attention without directly asking. But all she catches is a darkened blur. The privacy screen turns your phone into a flat black wall the second it isn’t being looked at head-on, and the sight of it sends this immediate, irrational heat through her. Not because the screen itself means anything. People get privacy protectors all the time and you’ve had this one on for a year now so It shouldn’t matter.

But her mind is no longer in a place where it accepts neutral explanations. It’s been too many weeks of canceled plans, too many cut-short evenings, too many distracted calls, too many apologies that never amount to anything changing. So instead of seeing an accessory, she sees concealment. Instead of brushing it off, she sits there feeling her stomach turn over again, feeling that awful quiet certainty pressing harder at the inside of her ribs.

You don’t notice her looking. Or maybe you do and you say nothing. Either way, you stay where you are for another few minutes before standing up and saying you’re going to use the bathroom. You leave your phone behind on the couch, plugged in and charging, like it’s nothing. Like there’s nothing in it to hide. And that almost makes it worse.

The second you disappear down the hall, the apartment changes. It’s still quiet, but it’s a different kind now—too clear, too open, the kind of silence that makes every thought sound louder.

Alysa stares at your phone where it rests against the cushion, its charging cable stretched toward the wall, and she doesn’t move at first. Her heart is already beating too fast in this ugly, physical way that makes her feel vaguely sick, like adrenaline without somewhere to go.

She knows this is wrong. She knows it before she even reaches for it. This is not who she is, not how the two of you have ever worked. Trust has never been something she had to force with you; it was always just there, easy and unspoken, something solid under everything else. But that trust has been getting scraped thinner for months now because you keep handing her pieces that don’t fit.

She tells herself she just needs to know. That’s the justification she reaches for as her hand finally closes around the phone. She just needs to know whether she’s losing her mind or whether her body’s been trying to tell her the truth before her brain caught up.

Her fingers are clumsy with nerves when she unlocks it, but the passcode still works immediately. And then your wallpaper lights up, and it’s a photo of her you took, she’s not even posed, she’s mid-laugh, head turned slightly away from the camera, the kind of picture that only exists because you were looking at her with affection and reached instinctively for your phone.

That detail hits so hard it almost stops her. Her chest tightens with this sudden painful sadness, because if you were really building something behind her back, why would your phone still open to her face?

But the question doesn’t save anything. It just makes the next part hurt more.

She starts with Instagram because it feels like the easiest place to confirm it, and for a few brief, miserable seconds she actually hopes it’ll be obvious. Some hidden account, some flirty thread, some stranger’s name appearing too often. Something clean and straightforward. But there’s nothing. You only have your normal account, the one she’s seen a million times with no secret profiles logged in. There aren’t any suspicious message requests with no weird conversations.

She moves faster after that, more tense instead of relieved, checking the places her friends had thrown out as possibilities.

Twitter is the same. Your regular account with retweets from Alysa fan pages, clips of her programs and your defensive replies under mean tweets from people who don’t know what they’re talking about, and likes about movies you’re excited about.

It’s so completely, embarrassingly loyal that it makes her stomach twist. It should reassure her. Instead it makes her feel worse, because now the phone feels split in two—one half still so clearly built around her, the other half maybe hiding something she hasn’t found yet.

The photos app is no better in giving her tangible proof. You have a bunch of work screenshots, notes. There’s random saved images and pictures of your fish she’s already seen because you always send them to her. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And at this point the pounding in her chest has become something almost unbearable, because if she’s wrong, then what is all this distance? What is all this pain she’s been carrying around? What is she supposed to do with the last two months if the answer isn’t sitting plainly in front of her?

That’s why she leaves iMessages for last. Not because it makes the most sense, but because some part of her is stalling. Some small, desperate part wants to hear the bathroom door open before she has to press it, wants to be interrupted, caught, forced to stop before she sees something that can’t be unseen.

She sits there with her thumb hovering for a beat too long, breathing shallowly, every muscle in her body tight. Then she taps it anyway. The text message list opens. Her own contact is pinned right at the top, and that almost makes her laugh from how cruel it feels. Of course she is after all this, after everything unraveling under her hands, your phone still arranges itself like she’s the center of your life. Beneath it are the names she expects—friends, family, spam, appointment reminders. Again, so normal that for one suspended second she thinks maybe this whole thing is about to collapse in on itself, maybe she really is just a paranoid mess who let two friends and too much silence rot her brain.

And then she sees it.

A contact she doesn’t know. Not a family member, not one of your usual friends, not anyone Alysa’s ever heard you mention.

P. Lucas.

Her entire body reacts before she has a thought coherent enough to name what she’s feeling. Her stomach drops so hard it’s almost disorienting, like she missed a stair that wasn’t there. Her mouth floods with that awful metallic saliva that comes right before throwing up. She opens the thread.

The messages are not dramatic. If anything, they’re worse for how ordinary they look.

Voice memos stacked one after another. A few short texts.

Can I call you? I’ll see you tomorrow. Great session today.

The words rearrange themselves instantly into the shape her fear has been waiting for. Her mind doesn’t pause to consider alternatives because she already built the framework weeks ago. It’s all been leading here.

Now there’s a name attached to it, and suddenly every piece slots in so neatly it makes her feel sick. Actually, physically sick. Her stomach turns so violently she thinks for a second she might genuinely throw up onto the floor. Her vision goes strange around the edges. Her chest feels like something inside it is caving in under pressure with this real, ugly pain that makes it hard to get a full breath.

And through all of it, one thought keeps battering into her from every angle: you lied to me. Not just once, not just tonight, but for weeks. You stood in her kitchen, sat on her couch, kissed her goodbye with this hidden thing tucked somewhere, and she had still been trying to understand you gently.

Then your voice breaks across the room and the whole moment jerks violently back into motion.

You’re standing there just inside the living room now, fresh from the bathroom, your expression changing the second you register what she’s holding.

“What’s going on?” you ask, and your voice is not defensive yet, it’s just earnestly confused, thrown off, cautious.

Alysa can’t look at you. That’s the first thing she realizes. She physically cannot make herself turn her head. She keeps staring at the thread like if she looks away, she’ll lose her nerve and let you explain it into something survivable.

You cross the room quickly, and she feels rather than sees you take the phone from her hands. There’s no fight in it, no scrambling. You just take it, look at the screen, and sigh.

That sigh destroys whatever was left of her ability to doubt herself. Because to Alysa, already deep inside this hurt, that isn’t the sound of someone confused by a misunderstanding. It’s the sound of someone caught.

You slide the phone into your pocket, shoulders dropping in this tired, defeated way, and say, “Alysa, can we talk?”

That’s the last click in the lock. If it were innocent, you’d say the innocent thing immediately. If there were nothing to hide, you’d laugh in disbelief, correct her, show her, explain it in one breath. But instead you sound guilty. You sound resigned and you sound like someone trying to manage fallout.

So when she tells you to get out, she's not bluffing. It isn’t an opening for you to convince her. It comes out of her with the force of two months of confusion finally finding a target.

“Get out.” The words sound sharper than anything she’s ever said to you, and even she feels the violence of them as they leave her mouth.

You blink at her, stunned. “What?” You look genuinely lost, and under any other circumstances that expression would undo her instantly.

But her mind is made up now. It has been making itself up for weeks, collecting evidence, bracing for impact, preparing her body for this exact kind of break.

“Get out,” she says again, louder, each word trembling with the effort it takes not to collapse. “Now. I don’t want you here.”

You take a step toward her, and she can hear the panic entering your voice now, hear the urgency in the way you say her name, in the way you ask what she’s talking about.

Right now, to her, even your confusion folds into the story she’s already accepted. You’re denying it, it’s expected and you’re trying to slow this down. So she throws Lucas at you like a weapon because she needs you to know she saw it, needs you to understand that whatever lie you had prepared no longer has room to work.

“Go have another session with Lucas or whatever that means.” Saying it makes her mouth water again with nausea. The words taste toxic but she gets them out anyway.

You’re staring at her now with this open, horrified look, and you say no immediately, too quickly, hands lifting slightly like you can still stop this.

“Alysa, what? No. This isn’t what you think it is. I promise. Please. I can explain.” But explain to her now sounds like stall. Explain sounds like twist it, soften it, make her doubt what she saw long enough for you to leave with your dignity intact. Alysa has nothing left for that since the hurt is too huge, too physical, too all-consuming. It feels lodged beneath her sternum like shattered glass.

“No,” she says, and her voice breaks with the force of it. “Get out. Now.”

When she moves, it’s to get away from you before the crying starts. Before her body betrays how destroyed she really is. But you reach for her wrist on instinct, maybe to stop her, maybe just to make her stay long enough to listen—and she jerks away so violently it shocks you both. The motion is harsh, almost wild, born from pure reflex and raw panic, and for a second the entire room freezes around it. Alysa turns back toward you with a look you’ve never seen directed at you before, her face drawn tight with fury and heartbreak so tangled together they’re almost indistinguishable. Her eyes are wet now, shining, furious, wounded. Her breathing is uneven. Every inch of her looks like she’s holding herself together by force alone.

“Don’t touch me,” she says, and it comes out low and shaking and deadly serious.

You physically shrink, enough that Alysa notices, enough that something inside her almost buckles. Your shoulders draw in, your face changes. The fight in you goes quiet. You grab your jacket without another argument, and she hates that too—hates that you’re leaving, hates that you’re listening, hates that some terrible traitorous part of her still wants to stop you even now. But she doesn’t. She just stands there rigid and trembling while you walk out of the apartment you’ve moved through so easily for so long, and the second the door closes behind you, all that anger burns off and leaves only the wreckage underneath

She breaks immediately. One second she’s standing there, jaw locked, chest heaving, and the next her body just gives up the performance entirely. A sound tears out of her—small at first, then broken open—and she folds in on herself like she’s been hit somewhere vital. Her hand flies to her mouth as if she can physically hold the grief in, but it’s useless. Tears spill fast enough to blur everything. Her knees weaken and she stumbles backward until the couch catches her, and then she’s sinking onto it, curling over herself, one hand gripping her shirt right over her chest like maybe pressure there will dull the pain. It doesn’t, nothing does. Her heart hurts in this brutal, humiliatingly real way, like an injury instead of an emotion. Her stomach is still turning and her throat burns. Breathing feels uneven and wrong. Under all of it is this enormous, unbearable grief because you are not some casual person she can hate cleanly.

You are built into her life, into her routines, her body memory, her sense of comfort. You’re in her apartment and in her phone and in the way she reaches automatically for someone at the end of the day. You matter in all the soft places. So the idea that you would do this—that you could look her in the eye for weeks while belonging partly somewhere else—doesn’t just upset her. It makes the whole world feel rearranged into something colder and uglier than it was an hour ago.

———

The door closing behind you doesn’t feel real at first. It’s just a sound—sharp, final—but your body doesn’t catch up to it right away. You stand there in the hallway for a second longer than you should, your hand still loosely wrapped around your jacket like you forgot what you were doing mid-motion. The quiet outside her apartment feels wrong, like you stepped into a different version of the world where everything is slightly off.

Just minutes ago, you were inside. Sitting next to her, leaning into her, existing in that same space that’s always felt like yours too.

And now you’re not allowed there.

The shift is so abrupt it leaves you disoriented. You walk out of the building on autopilot, barely registering the cold air when it hits your face, barely noticing the way your steps feel uneven beneath you. Your mind is stuck on a loop, replaying the last few minutes over and over again, but it keeps getting stuck on one thing…

That look on her face.

You’ve never seen Alysa look at you like that before. Not once. You’ve seen her annoyed, playful, even frustrated—but never that. Never something so sharp, so full of anger that it almost didn’t look like her. It wasn’t just anger either. There was hurt under it. Deep, unmistakable hurt. The kind that doesn’t come from a small misunderstanding. The kind that comes from feeling betrayed.

Your chest tightens at the memory of it, your stomach twisting uncomfortably as you unlock your car and slide into the driver’s seat. You don’t start it right away, sitting there with your hands resting on the wheel, staring straight ahead at nothing.

You know what she thinks but you didn’t fix it.

You had the chance to fix it. When she told you to leave, when she looked at you like you’d broken something that couldn’t be put back together—you could’ve just told her. You could’ve explained everything right then. You could’ve told her it’s all for you.

But you didn’t because in that moment, it didn’t feel like it would land the way it was supposed to. She was too upset, too far gone in whatever she was feeling. You saw it in her face, in the way her voice was shaking, in the way she couldn’t even look at you for more than a second at a time. If you had tried to explain it then, it would’ve sounded ridiculous. Like an excuse or like something you made up on the spot to cover whatever she thought she found. You couldn’t risk that, not after everything you’ve been doing. So you let her believe it for now.

The thought makes your chest ache in a completely different way, something heavier, quieter, harder to sit with. You know how much that hurt her. You saw it and you felt it in the way she pulled away from you, in the way she told you not to touch her like your hands suddenly meant something else.

And you still walked out.

You exhale slowly, finally starting the car, the engine breaking the silence just enough to pull you back into the present. The drive home is a blur. Your mind just keeps drifting back, filling in all the moments you should’ve said something and didn’t. By the time you make it to your apartment, the weight of it has settled deeper.

You drop your keys on the counter, shrug off your jacket, and for a second you just stand there in the middle of the room like you don’t know what to do with yourself. You were supposed to be somewhere else tonight. You were supposed to be at her place, spend the night and then wake up and give her birthday kisses. You’re supposed to go to her dad’s house together tomorrow for her birthday party and finally show off what you’ve been working on for months. The entire night and day after had already been planned in your head without you even realizing it.

And now, none of that is happening.

You swallow, your throat tight as you move toward your bedroom, your body feeling heavier with each step. When you sit down on the edge of your bed, the emptiness hits harder. It’s not just that you’re alone—you’ve been alone plenty of nights over the past few months. It’s that you shouldn’t be.

You lean back slowly, staring up at the ceiling, your phone resting on your chest as if you’re waiting for it to light up but it doesn’t. You don’t text her either because you don’t even know what you’d say that wouldn’t make things worse right now.

You close your eyes as your mind drifts to the image of her face, clearer now in the dark. The glare she gave you which wasn’t just anger but it was also something that looked like it hurt her to even look at you. You shift slightly, trying to get comfortable, but there’s nowhere for that feeling to go.

These past few months have been hard in a way you didn’t fully let yourself acknowledge. You filled every gap with purpose—classes, studying, reading, pushing yourself through something that felt worth it because it had her at the end of it. Every late night, every canceled plan, every moment you chose this over being with her, you told yourself it was temporary. That it would mean something when it was done. That it would bring you closer, not push you apart.

And now, you’re lying here, alone, and she thinks you betrayed her.

Your chest aches at the thought, your hand unconsciously curling slightly against your shirt as if you can hold that feeling in place. You miss her. Not in some passing way, but in this constant, physical sense of something missing where it’s supposed to be. You miss her voice, her presence, the way she fills a room without trying. You miss how easy it used to feel to just be with her. And tonight, more than anything, you miss what this night was supposed to be. You let out a slow breath, your eyes opening again as you stare at the ceiling, unmoving.

Tomorrow.

That’s all you have to hold onto now.

Tomorrow was supposed to be the moment everything paid off anyway. It was going to be the reveal and proof that all of this time, all of this distance, had a reason. That you weren’t just drifting away, you were building something.

You just have to make it there, just have to get through tonight.

But the night doesn’t move. It stretches and every time you close your eyes, that look comes back. Every time you start to drift, your mind snaps back awake, like it won’t let you rest while things are unresolved. So you stare into the dark, holding onto tomorrow like it’s the only thing keeping everything from falling apart.

———

Alysa wakes up slowly at first, still half inside sleep, her body reaching for something before her mind has caught up enough to know what it’s doing. One arm slides across the sheets beside her, searching for warmth on instinct, for the shape of you curled somewhere in the bed the way you were supposed to be, the way you said you would be. For one soft, stupid second there’s even disappointment before there’s pain—just that dull little feeling of where is she—and then everything from last night comes crashing back all at once, hard enough that it almost feels physical.

Alysa opens her eyes fully to an empty room that suddenly feels too bright, too still, too honest. The bed is only half slept in. The other pillow is untouched except for where it had been fluffed for you before everything went wrong. She stares at it for a long moment, throat tightening so fast it burns.

There’s no anger in that first minute but grief. Heavy, immediate grief, the kind that makes her feel like she’s mourning something that was still alive yesterday. Because in her head, that’s what this is now. It’s over. The best thing that’s happened to her in years—easily, undeniably—has been taken out from under her, and worse, it’s been taken out from under her by you. Her face twists before she can stop it, and tears come hot and fast, slipping sideways into the pillow while she lies there staring at the spot where you should have been.

Normally she’d be irritated with herself by now, annoyed at crying first thing in the morning, annoyed at how dramatic it feels, how weak. But today she just lets it happen. It’s her birthday after all. She doesn’t have the energy to police her own grief. So she presses her face harder into the pillow and cries quietly into the emptiness you left behind, her chest aching with every shaky breath, every thought returning to the same impossible point—that you were meant to wake up beside her today, and instead she’s alone in a bed that still looks like it was expecting you.

The whole day moves like that after. Each hour seeming longer than it should be, as if time itself has become aware that it no longer has anything good to deliver her. She gets up because staying in bed would only make it worse, but getting up doesn’t make anything feel better either.

The apartment is too quiet. Even the ordinary things feel hostile in some small way. The hoodie of yours still looped over the back of a chair, the half-finished conversation sitting dead in her texts like something abandoned mid-sentence.

This was supposed to be a day already shaped out in her mind before it arrived. You were supposed to be here. You were supposed to tease her awake, steal the first birthday kiss, make some comment about how you technically deserved credit for getting her into another year of life. You were supposed to get ready together, crowding each other in the bathroom while one of you complained about the lighting and the other pretended not to care. It was supposed to be easy and familiar.

Instead everything has this stripped-down, wrong feeling to it. At some point she calls her dad to cancel the party because the thought of smiling through it, of standing in a room full of people while this sits like a fresh wound under her ribs, feels impossible. But her dad, in that steady way he has, gently refuses to let her hide. He reminds her how much family is coming, how rarely everyone’s all in one place, how people are excited to see her. He tells her she doesn’t have to stay all night, just come by, make an appearance, let herself be loved a little. Alysa nearly says no again, but there’s something tired in her by then, something too worn down to keep fighting every small thing. So she agrees, though she doesn’t want to. She gets dressed without much care, pulling things on more than choosing them, and stares at herself in the mirror long enough to know she looks off like someone turned the brightness down on her from the inside.

She arrives alone, and that in itself says too much immediately. The house is already alive with voices and movement, the front rooms warm with the smell of food and that particular hum family gatherings always have when people are circulating and reconnecting at once. Under other circumstances, Alysa would have loved it. Today it feels like walking into a stage play she forgot she was cast in.

Her siblings realize the situation before she even makes it through the first round of greetings. Justin notices first because he’s Justin and because he’s already looking for you the second he sees Alysa by herself. Julia and Jaylinn catch it half a beat later, Selina’s expression changes more subtly but just as quickly. None of them say anything in front of everyone else. They just guide her with those quiet sibling instincts that don’t need much explaining, until they’ve tucked her into a back room away from the noise.

The second the door shuts, Justin asks where you are, and Alysa, already raw, already tired, has to say it out loud. Not every detail at first, just enough for the room to go still. Enough for all four of them to understand this is not some late arrival, not some scheduling issue. Her voice stays remarkably steady while she explains what she saw, what happened, how you left. Her sisters look devastated for her in a way that almost makes it harder. Justin looks immediately furious, jaw set, arms crossed so tightly it’s obvious he’s already decided what he thinks of you. Alysa tells them not to tell anyone else, not because she wants to protect you but because she cannot handle the room turning toward her in collective sympathy. She doesn’t want whispers or pity. So they promise or close enough to one. The mood that settles over the room is quiet and ugly, all of them feeling the same thing in different directions. They only know the story from Alysa’s side, and from that angle there’s not much room left for nuance. By the time they leave that room, it’s more or less understood between the siblings that they hate you now too.

She moves through the party on muscle memory, smiling where she has to, hugging the relatives she doesn’t see often enough, thanking people for gifts, for coming. It is astonishing how well the body can imitate normalcy when the mind is somewhere else entirely. People talk to her and she answers. People laugh and sometimes she even manages a version of it back. But under it all she feels hollowed out, like every interaction is happening one room away from where she actually is.

It gets worse every time someone casually asks where you are. There's the assumption that of course you’d be here and since you're not, everyone is now curious but each question lands like a bruise.

“Where’s your girl?” one aunt asks with a smile.

“Is she coming later?” another cousin says.

An older family friend looks around and says, “I thought she’d be glued to your side today.”

Alysa keeps deflecting without technically lying. “She couldn’t make it on time.” “She’s busy.” “Not here yet.”

The words feel brittle in her mouth. She can’t bring herself to say more, but she also can’t stomach inventing some clean excuse. So she lets the questions slide off as best she can and eventually retreats to sit near her sisters, letting them buffer her from the room a little. They do it naturally.

As she sits there, half removed from the center of her own birthday, Alysa can’t stop thinking the worst part isn’t even the anger. The anger is real, yes, hot and humiliating and still ready to rise any time she thinks too directly about last night. But underneath it is longing so deep it makes her feel weak. She misses you. God, she misses you. She misses you even while believing you hurt her. She misses the version of today that should have existed. She misses the idea of getting one more uncomplicated day before all of this, one more day to be with you before her brain attached betrayal to your face. She wants to hate you cleanly, but she can’t. What she really wants, in the most useless and painful way possible, is for it all to go back to before the suspicion, before the phone, before the look on your face and the one she threw back. Her sisters can tell. They can tell that this isn’t just anger, not just wounded pride, but something much softer and more devastating. They look at her with that protective sadness younger siblings get when the older one they rely on suddenly seems breakable.

———-

Outside, the air is cooler than it should be for a summer evening. The house glows from within, light spilling through windows, silhouettes moving back and forth behind glass, laughter occasionally escaping whenever the front door opens and closes. You stand at the edge of the driveway for a moment before walking up it, your body tighter with nerves the closer you get, your hands colder than they should be.

Every version of today that ran through your head last night ended with you finally getting to explain everything, finally watching that awful misunderstanding collapse under the weight of the truth. That hope is the only thing that got you through the night before, the only thing that kept you from showing up at her door again at some unreasonable hour and begging her to listen. Instead, you came here, to the party where this was always meant to end anyway—not with heartbreak, but with the reveal, with your months of effort landing exactly where they were meant to.

You’re so close to the porch when Justin spots you. He had been out there with one of Alysa’s cousins, talking quietly, both of them half-turned toward the driveway, taking a break from the noise inside. The second he registers it’s you, his whole body changes. He straightens immediately, all ease leaving him at once, and folds his arms across his chest with a look so openly hostile that you almost stop walking. His cousin glances between the two of you and wisely says nothing. You don’t have the energy for subtlety, not today.

“Justin,” you say, the plea already in your voice before you can flatten it out. “Please. Let me go in. I need to talk to Alysa.”

He lets out a humorless sound and shakes his head once, slow, incredulous. “Jesus. You can’t even let her enjoy her birthday?” The accusation lands hard because part of you understands exactly how this looks.

“I’m not here to ruin anything,” you say quickly, stepping closer despite the tension rolling off him. “I just need to explain this. It’s one big misunderstanding and I need her to hear me.”

But Justin has already made up his mind from the version of the story he got, and in that version you don’t get the benefit of the doubt.

He scoffs, looks you up and down like he can’t believe you had the nerve to show up, and tells you to get lost. Tells you, flatly, that he’s not letting you in to make her birthday worse than it already is. For one dangerous second your frustration spikes high enough that you have to physically swallow it back down. You want to argue so terribly bad, but because he’s her brother, because he loves her, because from where he’s standing this reaction makes sense, you don't. You just take a long breath through your nose and force yourself still.

“I’m not leaving,” you say at last, quieter now but no less firm. “I’ll wait out here for her.”

Justin looks at you like you’re being dramatic, like there’s no way you actually mean it. He probably assumes you’ll get tired, embarrassed, cold. That eventually you’ll give up and go home and save him the trouble of throwing you off the property himself. So he just shrugs in that dismissive, irritated way and turns back toward the house, the cousin trailing in after him. The door shuts and you are left outside with the sound of the party muted behind it, the warm light unreachable now except through windows.

You walk slowly back down toward the curb and sit on it beside Alysa’s car, close enough that the metal of it catches the house lights in dull reflections. The curb is colder than you expected. You draw your knees up and rest your chin against them, staring at the cobblestone stretch of driveway in front of you like answers might rise from it if you look long enough.

You go over it all again in your head because you need to say it right. You need the explanation to be clear enough that nothing about it feels flimsy or opportunistic. You’ll tell her you started because you wanted more than a surface relationship with a big part of who she is. You’ll tell her about the classes, the professor, the notebooks full of tones and grammar and phrases you kept practicing even when your brain felt wrung out. You’ll tell her about the books too, the fiction and memoirs and essays, all the ways you’ve been trying to understand more than just vocabulary. You’ll tell her you kept it secret because you didn’t want it to feel performative. You wanted this to be real. You wanted to surprise her by showing her that you meant it—that you were in this for the long run, for years from now, for family gatherings where you could finally hold your own without her translating every second of it.

After a while the words stop sounding abstract in your head and start needing somewhere to go, so you whisper them instead. At first it’s just little fragments under your breath, your voice almost swallowed by the night. Then it becomes practice. Mandarin phrases repeated softly again and again, careful with pronunciation even through the ache sitting in your throat. You correct yourself, repeat, try again. Some of it is practical—greetings, short explanations, respectful phrases you know you’ll need if she lets you get inside. But the one you come back to most is simpler. Smaller.

The one thing you can’t stop wanting to say directly to her even now.

I love you.

You keep repeating it, low and quiet, trying to get the tones right despite how unsteady you feel. There’s something devastating about sitting outside her family home on her birthday while she thinks the worst of you, practicing how to tell her you love her in a language you learned for her in the first place.

You are so sad you almost feel numb around the edges of it. But under it there’s still certainty. Not blind optimism, not some easy confidence that this will magically be fine, but a hard little core of belief that this work did not happen for nothing. That eventually Alysa will hear you. That eventually this awful, ruined night and this miserable morning will make sense to her. You just need time to catch up to you. And you can’t wait anymore.

So you stay on the curb beside her car, chin on your knees, whispering I love you into the dark like a promise, like practice, like the only thing holding you together until she finally comes out.

———

By the third hour of being there, Alysa feels like she’s been holding herself upright by sheer politeness alone.

The party has only grown louder around her as the evening’s gone on. Under any other circumstance, Alysa would be fine here. She’d be drifting between rooms, getting pulled into conversations, stealing bites from plates she wasn’t supposed to touch yet, circling back to you every few minutes just because it would feel automatic to do that. But today the house feels like a place she’s performing inside of, and the performance is wearing her down.

Her face hurts from smiling on cue. Her body feels too hot, too tired, too aware of itself. Her sisters have been hovering in that quiet, protective way and she loves them for it, but even that has started to make her feel trapped.

If she tells her dad she wants to leave, she already knows what he’ll say—stay for the cake, at least, stay for another hour, people came all this way. And maybe on any other day she would. But tonight every minute feels like five, and the thought of staying until cake, of standing there while people sing at her when her insides still feel torn open from last night, makes something in her want to bolt.

So she waits for the right opening, slips away from her sisters when they’re distracted by an aunt who wants photos, avoids the hallway Justin just disappeared down, and finally makes it outside with the guilty, relieved feeling of someone sneaking out of their own life.

The driveway stretches long and dim in front of the house, the cobblestones washed in low porch light and the softer spill from inside the windows. Her car is parked all the way at the end just how she wanted it—unblocked, easy to get to, already angled like escape was something she’d subconsciously planned for hours ago.

She starts toward it with her head down, one hand already reaching into her pocket for her keys, her mind half on the relief of finally being alone and half on the shame of leaving her own birthday party early like she can’t even handle one bad day properly. Then something catches her attention. It’s soft enough at first that she almost mistakes it for the wind moving through leaves or voices carrying from farther down the street. But when she stops and listens, she realizes it’s neither. It’s murmuring, whispering, almost. The sound is coming from somewhere beside her car, low and steady, so quiet it keeps getting lost in the distance between them. Alysa stills completely.

There’s something strange about the sound—not just that someone is out here, but the shape of the words themselves. At first she can only make out fragments. A phrase in Mandarin, then another, spoken in an accent that is very obviously not native and yet somehow careful enough that she understands it almost immediately. The pronunciation isn’t perfect in that seamless way family speech is perfect, but it’s good. Shockingly good.

She hears words like sorry. Hears miss you. Hears love. Her brows pull together before she can stop them, and now curiosity outweighs the tiredness enough that she starts walking again, slower this time, cautious without really knowing why. As she rounds the front of her car, the source of the voice comes into view all at once.

It’s you.

You’re sitting on the curb with your knees drawn up, your body folded in around itself like you’ve been there long enough to settle into the discomfort of it. One hand is rolling a pebble back and forth between your fingers with absent concentration, your head tipped away as you mumble to yourself, too deep in it to notice her right away.

Up close, Alysa can hear you more clearly, and the clarity only makes the scene stranger. You’re not just repeating isolated phrases. You’re speaking in sequence, practicing like someone working through a lesson. Telling the time. Mentioning when you woke up. Saying what you ate. Stumbling once, correcting yourself softly, then continuing. It is not random or like you googled translations. It sounds lived in, the kind of speech that only comes from repetition and effort and time.

And for one suspended second Alysa doesn’t know what to do with what she’s seeing. Her chest tightens, but not in the clean, familiar way it has all day. This is different—sharper, more disorienting, almost like her body has recognized something before her mind can place it.

She clears her throat, mostly because she has to break the moment somehow, and your head snaps up so fast it’s almost violent. Your eyes find hers instantly. Then you’re scrambling to your feet, stumbling a little as circulation fights its way back into your legs, one hand flying out to catch your balance on the side of her car.

For a second neither of you says anything. You just look at each other under the weak wash of driveway light, and Alysa is struck by how terrible you look. Okay maybe not terrible, maybe she still hates you, but you look tired. Eyes blown wide with nerves and hope and fear all crowding into one expression, your face drawn with too little sleep, your whole body leaning toward her like it’s been waiting hours for this exact second.

“What are you doing here?” Alysa asks, and her voice comes out flatter than she means it to, worn thin by the day and by everything that’s happened since last night.

“I need to talk to you,” you say immediately. There’s no hesitation in it, it’s just pure urgency.

Alysa exhales through her nose, the sound edged with exhaustion more than anger, though the anger is still there. It resurfaces the second she remembers why she’s out here alone in the first place, why she woke up to an empty bed, why her whole birthday has felt empty. Her hand tightens around her keys and she starts to move past you toward the driver’s side door, because leaving would be easier, safer. But you step in front of it before she can reach it. And because you’re this close now, because she hasn’t really looked at you since last night, she does it now. Your eyes are huge, glassy in the low light, your expression open in a way that makes it impossible to mistake what’s there. You look pleading, scared. Hopeful in a way that almost hurts to witness. There’s no slickness to you, no confidence, no practiced excuse waiting smugly behind your teeth. You just look terribly earnest. Alysa should still say no. She knows she should. Every instinct built from the last twenty-four hours tells her to protect herself, to get in the car, to leave before you can talk your way back into all the places she just barely managed to start sealing off. But she has never, not once, been good at denying you when you ask softly enough. And when you add a quiet, strained “please,” it lands exactly where it always does. She closes her eyes for half a beat, then opens them again and says nothing, but doesn’t move. For you, that’s enough.

You start talking too fast at first, the words crowding each other like you’ve been holding them in so long they don’t know how to come out carefully anymore. “I’m sorry,” you say immediately, and then again, stronger this time, like the first one didn’t cover enough. “I’m so sorry, Alysa. This got so big and messy for no reason, and I should’ve told you everything last night. I should’ve explained the second I realized what you thought you saw.” You stop just long enough to drag in a breath, your eyes searching her face like you’re trying to figure out if she’s still listening, if she’s already shutting down again. “I just— I froze. You were so upset, and I’ve never… I’ve never had you look at me like that before. I was scared,” you admit, your voice dropping a little. “And I didn’t know how to explain any of it without making you more upset, and then you wanted me gone and I just…” You shake your head, frustrated with yourself, jaw tight. “I handled it wrong. I know I did.”

Alysa says nothing. She just stands there, shoulders tense, keys pressing into her palm, and lets you keep going because now that the dam is broken you clearly can’t stop if you wanted to. Then you say the name. P. Lucas. And the second you do, Alysa’s stomach tightens again, but now with anticipation instead of sickness. “It’s not some guy,” you say quickly, seeing the shift in her face. “It means Professor Lucas. He’s my Mandarin teacher.” There’s a flicker of confusion in Alysa then—small, enough that it passes visibly across her features before she can smooth it out. You see it and keep going, more steady now that you’ve begun telling the actual truth. “I’ve been taking lessons for like… ten-ish months,” you say. “Not even Duolingo, I mean yeah I started there but I realized it wasn't working so then it turned into like actual lessons, in person, with a professor, every day for an hour and a half whenever I could make it work.” You swallow, glance down for half a second, then force yourself to meet her eyes again. “And I’ve been reading too. Books, essays, memoirs, fiction, history—anything I could find that would help me understand more. I’ve been watching movies and interviews and lectures and taking notes like a psycho.” There’s a small, humorless exhale at that, not quite a laugh, gone as quickly as it appeared.

And as you talk, Alysa feels that unbearable tightness in her chest building again, but now it’s changing shape faster than she can keep up with. You take a breath, slower this time, and when you speak again your voice changes. It gets quieter and less frantic. Like you’ve reached the part that matters most and now you need her to hear every word exactly as you mean it. “It wasn’t just because of that party,” you say. “Or—okay, no, that’s not true. That party stayed with me, and Maya’s boyfriend showing up and just… fitting like that. Watching him talk to your family so easily. Sure, it bothered me.” Your eyes flick away for a second, toward the lit windows of the house behind her, then back to her face. “But it wasn’t just me feeling embarrassed or left out. It was more than that. I realized I didn’t want to keep standing on the outside of your world.”

But that wasn’t the whole thing. The whole thing, you say, was, “If I’m really in this, if I’m really in your life, then I don’t want to only exist in translation when it comes to the people and the culture that matter this much to you. I don’t want to just smile and nod and follow you around and depend on you to bridge every gap forever. I want to hold my own years from now without needing you to translate every second of it for me.”

Your voice gets quieter; the words matter more than how fast they come. “I kept it secret because I didn’t want it to feel fake,” you say. “I didn’t want you thinking I was doing it for praise, or because I wanted everyone to think I was this amazing girlfriend who cares so much.” You wince faintly at yourself, then keep going. “I wanted it to be real. I wanted to surprise you with something that actually meant something. I wanted to show you that I meant it—that I’m in this for real, for the long run.” Your face softens then, sadness pulling at it openly now. “I was literally imagining today as the payoff. Showing up here with you and understanding what people were saying. Trying to answer back but probably messing it up and making you laugh and then getting it right eventually.” The smallest, saddest smile tugs at your mouth and disappears again. “I thought if I could just get to your birthday, if I could just finish it the way I imagined, it would all be worth it.”

Alysa’s chest hurts.

There’s no better way to describe it. It just hurts. Tight and full and raw all at once, because she can hear the shape of your intentions now, can see how long you’ve been carrying this, how badly you wanted this reveal to go right. And at the same time, she can’t unknow the way the last two months felt. The loneliness of it. The confusion. The nights she missed you so much it made her restless in her own apartment. The resentment that started taking root when “busy” stopped feeling temporary and started feeling personal.

Maybe you see some of that flicker across her face, because your own expression crumples a little with guilt. “I know I pushed you away,” you say, voice rough now. “I know I did, and I’m sorry. I was wrong.” There is something almost unbearable in your sincerity, in the way every word seems dragged out of a place that has nothing to do with self-protection and everything to do with wanting her back. Wanting this back. Still, there’s something pressing behind it all.

“But why did you push me away so much?” she says, and the words come out smaller than she intended, not accusing now so much as wounded. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in so long. Haven’t been with you in so long.”

You look stricken at that, like this is the part you knew was coming and dreaded anyway. You let out a breath, glance down at the driveway for a second, then back at her. You admit it—you were excessive. More than excessive. A little obsessive, probably. You got fixated on making it all happen before her birthday, on making the surprise complete, on reaching some invisible finish line you set for yourself without realizing you were sacrificing the very thing you were supposed to be protecting. “I got too wrapped up in it.” Your eyes shine a little now, not fully crying but close enough that Alysa notices. “I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have prioritized some future moment over actually being there with you in the present. I know that now. I know I hurt you, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”. Your voice is quieter by the end, stripped down, almost fragile with honesty. “I want to make it up to you now. Like actually this time.”

By the time you switch into Mandarin, Alysa is barely holding herself in the same emotional shape she started in. The words are deliberate, each one placed with concentration and respect, and the accent is still yours—still undeniably you—but now she can hear how much time sits underneath it. How many repetitions. How many corrections. How many nights and mornings and stolen hours. You look a little embarrassed speaking it in front of her, a little exposed, but you do it anyway.

You say you’re sorry. You say you’ve missed her. You say you love her.

Hearing it in that language, in her family language—spoken by you, for her, with months of private effort sitting underneath each syllable—does something to Alysa so abruptly she almost has to brace herself against the car.

That tightness in her chest finally resolves into something she can name, and the name is not one emotion but too many at once. Hurt, still, because the last twenty-four hours happened and she cannot unfeel them just because there’s an explanation now. Relief, immense and dizzying, because the explanation exists at all and it is not cheating, not betrayal, not the ugly end she had been forcing herself to mourn all day. Love, most of all, rising through everything else so strongly that it almost feels like grief in reverse.

Because of course it comes back to love.

The anger came from love. The aching all day, the empty bed, the way she could barely make it through her own birthday party—all of it was love twisted into pain by what she thought she’d lost. And now this too is love. Love is ten months of Mandarin lessons. Love is notebooks and books and films and voice memos and time carved violently out of your own life just to learn how to stand a little closer to hers. Love is you sitting on the curb outside her family home whispering apologies and practice phrases into the dark because you couldn’t bear not fixing this tonight. The feeling that climbs into Alysa’s throat is so overwhelming it almost scares her. She could actually cry.

Alysa stands there breathing through the last of the adrenaline, the last of the fear, and logic finally starts returning in pieces. This is not an easy thing to fake. Not this level of detail, not the Mandarin, not the way your face has gone soft with genuine regret instead of defensiveness. Later, she knows, she can look through the messages with Professor Lucas, can listen to the voice memos and hear that they’re about pronunciation and phrasing, can come to your apartment and see the mountains of books and the notes and all the evidence of this life you built in secret. Though, she already believes you before any of that. But only because this explanation fits in a way the other one only forced itself to fit through pain. And the second she lets herself accept that, truly accept it, something in her gives way completely. She doesn’t say yes in words. She doesn’t make some neat declaration about forgiveness. She just steps forward with a breath that sounds almost like a break and collapses into you.

You catch her immediately, like you were ready for exactly that, like some part of you has been holding your whole body in place waiting for permission to do this. Her face buries itself in the side of your neck, and the second she’s there, the whole last day finally starts draining out of her. Your hand comes up to cradle the back of her head, fingers sliding gently into her hair, while your other hand settles firm and warm against the middle of her back. Alysa’s arms wrap tight around your waist, tighter than she means them to, but you don’t react except to hold her closer. She can feel how real you are then—your breathing, the weight of your body, the warmth of your skin under the collar of your shirt—and the relief of it is so intense it almost hurts as much as the grief did.

Being held by you after spending all day believing she’d lost you feels like stepping out of freezing water. Neither of you moves for a while. The driveway is quiet except for distant party noise spilling faintly from the house, some car passing far away at the street. But here, tucked against each other in the half-dark, everything has narrowed down to breathing and contact and the stunned, exhausted knowledge that this is over now. That the worst of it has finally loosened its hands from both your throats. When you speak, it’s into her hair, your voice low and a little wrecked still.

You murmur happy birthday, my sweet in Mandarin, careful with each word even now, and Alysa lets out a breath against your neck that might be the beginning of a laugh, might be a sob, might be both. Her grip tightens once more before easing, and she stays there a little longer, because after all that distance, after all that hurt, she is not ready to let go of you yet.

———

For a little while after Alysa folds into you, neither of you seems capable of doing. The misunderstanding has burned itself out and left only the two of you standing in the driveway breathing against each other like you’ve both just survived something uglier than either of you expected. Alysa’s face stays buried against your neck long enough that your shirt grows warm from her breath, and your hand never leaves the back of her head, fingers spread there carefully, like you’re afraid she’ll slip away if you loosen your grip too soon. Her arms are still locked around your waist with that same desperate tightness, and you let her hold on as hard as she needs to because you get it. You feel the ache of the last few months, the shock of last night, the loneliness of not being able to fix it fast enough—it’s all still in both of you, but now it’s softened by relief, by the steady realization that you’re here and she’s here and neither of you lost the other after all.

When Alysa finally lifts her head, it happens slowly, almost reluctantly, like she has to physically force herself to leave the shelter of your neck. Her cheeks are a little flushed, her eyes still glossy from everything she’s been carrying around all day, and for a second she just looks at you from too close, taking you in with the kind of focus that makes it obvious she’s still grounding herself in the sight of you.

Then she kisses you.

It isn’t hesitant. It's not even particularly gentle at first. It’s the kind of kiss that happens when both people have been starved of each other long enough that the second permission exists, restraint goes with it. Alysa’s hand comes up to the side of your face as she leans in, and you kiss her back instantly. The relief of it is almost physical. It really does feel like coming up for air after being underwater too long—like the first full breath after a long panic, like your ribs finally unlocking.

The kiss deepens quickly because too much has built up. Too many nights cut short, too many missed mornings, too many almosts and not-enoughs. Alysa lets out the faintest sound against your mouth when your hands settle at her waist and pull her in harder, and for a few seconds neither of you is thinking about the house ten yards away. There’s only the fact that she’s kissing you again, that you get to kiss her back, that all day she thought this was gone and now it isn’t.

When you finally break apart, it’s only by inches, lips still brushing, both of you breathing a little too fast. Alysa’s forehead nearly knocks into yours when she chases one more kiss, shorter this time, softer, and then she mumbles, still so close that the words warm your mouth as they leave her. “I missed you so much.” It comes out half-breathed, almost embarrassed by how honest it is. You answer before there’s even room for thought.

“I missed you too. So much.” And then you’re kissing again, not because either of you planned to but because apparently this is what missing each other for months does once it finally has somewhere to go.

The tone between you has shifted now, lighter in some ways but no less intense. The panic is gone and what’s left is all that pent-up affection and need rushing to fill the cleared space. Your hands start roaming without much thought, the way they used to when privacy wasn’t an issue and time wasn’t always running out. One slides from Alysa’s waist to the small of her back, then upward, fingertips slipping under the hem of her shirt to find warm skin. Alysa shivers at the contact, just enough that you feel it under your palms, and her mouth parts against yours in a way that immediately goes to your head. You are very clearly in the mode of wanting to make up for everything at once. For the distance, for the confusion, for the fact that she woke up without you this morning, for every time she looked at the clock and you were already leaving. So when your hand moves higher under her shirt you don’t even think about where you are. You only think about how badly you’ve missed touching her like this, how familiar and unbearable it feels all at once to have her body fitting against yours again.

Alysa, for her part, is hardly less affected. Her hands are on your neck, then sliding down your shoulders, then back up again like she can’t settle on one place because she wants all of it at once. But unlike you, she does remember where you are, and eventually some sliver of situational awareness cuts through the haze enough for her to pull back with a breathless little laugh that sounds half dazed, half disbelieving.

“Okay,” she murmurs, catching your wrist lightly before your hand can get too far. “Okay—wait.” You blink at her, clearly prepared to pretend not to understand the problem. Alysa has to bite back a smile because even now, even like this, you look so earnest in your desperation it’s hard to take seriously. “You should come inside,” she says, still close enough that your mouths brush when she talks. “Everyone’s been asking about you.”

You look at her for a second, trying to gather yourself enough to process the sentence, then your brows pull together. “I thought you were leaving.”

Alysa lets out a soft exhale through her nose, one shoulder lifting as her hand smooths once over your side, grounding both of you. “I was,” she admits. “It was unbearable without you. But I can go back if you go with me.”

You stop trying to pull her closer for a second and just hold her instead, your arms winding fully around her as if the answer is already yes and your body has moved on before your mouth does.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “Okay. I’ll go with you.” The decision settles between you with surprising ease after everything.

You both take a second to straighten up after that, partly because you need to and partly because if you don’t, you’re probably going to end up right back against her car doing something neither of you can defend to the rest of her family. Alysa smooths a hand over the front of her shirt, glances at you, then laughs under her breath at the state of your face—tired eyes, hair a little wind-shifted from sitting on the curb and being immediately kissed senseless the second she forgave you. But you’re dressed fine. Better than fine, actually. You had come expecting to walk into a birthday party, not a breakup aftermath, so your clothes fit the room you’re about to enter even if your expression gives away the long night that came before it. Alysa reaches for your hand without hesitation, threading your fingers together with a possessiveness that feels earned now, and the two of you start back toward the house side by side.

Walking in hand in hand changes the room almost instantly. The second the front door opens and you step inside with Alysa beside you, the energy nearest the entrance shifts first in surprise, then in visible relief from the people who had spent the last few hours asking where you were. Her family brightens almost immediately, several of them greeting you before you’ve even made it two steps in. And this time you’re not shrinking from it. You’re still a little flustered, still carrying the emotional wreckage of the last twenty-four hours in your eyes, but you’re eager now, too eager in a way that seems to override your nerves.

You squeeze Alysa’s hand once and follow her further in, and she, suddenly back in her element now that the central wrongness of the night has been corrected, gets a little cute about the whole thing. She’s introducing you again to people who already know you, except now her voice has that barely contained edge to it that says she’s sitting on a piece of information she enjoys very much.

“She’s been taking Mandarin lessons,” Alysa says to one of her aunts, unable to stop the pride that sneaks into her tone.

The aunt blinks, looks from Alysa to you, and then, naturally, tests it. She says something in Mandarin and Alysa watches the split second where you process it, your lips parting just slightly while you sort through the words. Then you answer. It isn't perfect like family who grew up inside the language, but clear enough, correct enough, warm enough that the aunt’s face lights up in delight.

The response from the room is instant. People gush; someone laughs in surprise. Another aunt calls somebody else over to hear you say something again. You smile, visibly embarrassed by the sudden attention but also happy in a way that makes the embarrassment worth it. There’s color rising in your cheeks, and your eyes flick toward Alysa once like help me, but there’s affection under it rather than panic. And Alysa, watching you stand there in the middle of her family trying so sincerely, feels that ache in her chest return in its way better form—the one made of pride and relief and love rather than fear.

The further into the party you go, the closer you get to the real test of whether the night has truly turned. Her siblings are gathered near the living room, exactly where Alysa left them, and they notice the two of you immediately. Julia and Jaylinn both make near-identical faces the second they register your joined hands. Selina’s brows go up but Justin reacts the fastest.

He’s halfway to standing before Alysa and you have fully reached them, his expression somewhere between disbelief and protective outrage. “Alysa,” he starts, already exasperated, “what are you doing?”

Alysa doesn’t even let him build momentum. She squeezes your hand, steps slightly forward, and says, with a patience she probably would not have had an hour ago, “Please, guys. I appreciate everything you did for me. I really do. But it’s okay now.”

Justin looks deeply unconvinced. “Okay now?” he repeats flatly. “That’s what we’re calling this?”

You stand there taking it because, honestly, you’ve earned a little bit of hostility from them even if it came from the wrong story. There’s something sheepish about the way you say hello to her siblings from behind Alysa—small, careful, not trying to force ease where there clearly isn’t any. It is painfully awkward. Alysa can feel you trying not to make it worse just by existing there.

So she turns more fully to her siblings and lowers her voice enough that the conversation becomes a contained bubble rather than a scene. “It’s not what I told you,” she says. “I was wrong.”

That gets their attention if only because they know how difficult that sentence can be for anybody in the immediate aftermath of heartbreak. Then Alysa explains in a hurried, quiet version—the Mandarin lessons, Professor Lucas, the entire surprise gone horribly sideways.

Her sisters’ expressions change first, skepticism warring with reluctant intrigue. Justin remains harder to win over, arms folded, mouth set, until Jaylinn—because she wants proof and because she’s enjoying your discomfort just a little—tilts her head and says, “Okay then. Say something.”

You look briefly horrified by being put on the spot, which only encourages them.

“Anything,” Julia adds, crossing her arms but smiling now despite herself. “Go on.”

You glance at Alysa and she only raises her brows, amused now too. You clear your throat and, after one second of visible mental scrambling, start talking in Mandarin about your fish. It’s oddly specific how you say you have alarms set to wake you up in order to feed your fish. That she likes one food but not the other one you bought. The siblings listen, and though none of them understand enough Mandarin to assess the grammar properly, the evidence is embarrassingly clear in your pronunciation, in the fact that you didn’t freeze and fake it, in the confidence that arrived sentence by sentence once you got going.

They glance at each other in that murmured, grudging way of people being forced to revise an opinion they had already committed to. Jaylinn mutters something about you being a nerd. Julia snorts. Justin’s expression loosens last and least.

He looks at you for a long second, then away, then finally says, with all the magnanimity of someone pretending he was never worried at all, “You should’ve just said that outside.”

You have the grace not to point out that he wouldn’t have let you. Gradually, the tension begins to diminish. The siblings drift back into you in pieces, the way people do when love is still the underlying structure even after irritation. Jaylinn and Julia eventually pull you into some gossip you missed, talking over each other while you try to catch up. Selina asks a quieter question about your lessons and actually seems impressed when you answer. Justin, after an appropriate period of continued younger-brother glare, eventually mutters something about whether you’re still free for the hangout the two of you had planned before all this mess, and that’s basically his way of saying fine, you’re not dead to him.

From there the night begins to feel like it belongs to both of you again. The lost months don’t disappear, but now every touch has permission behind it again, and both of you are embarrassingly unwilling to waste that.

You and Alysa stay hand in hand for most of the rest of the party. Alysa’s hand brushes your arm when she passes behind you. Your palm settles low on her back as you guide her around clusters of relatives. More than once one of you leans in for what should clearly be a simple peck and it almost derails into something more—the kiss deepening too fast, one of you smiling into it because seriously? here? before forcing the other to pull back. There is a clinginess to both of you that nobody who knows the context would dare make fun of. Too much had been held back. Too much had almost been lost. So now the smallest contact feels necessary.

When you come across Alysa’s grandma again, the moment matters more than either of you expected it to. The older woman brightens the second she sees you, reaching for your hand the way she did the first time, and this time when she speaks to you in Mandarin you actually understand enough to answer. You do have to pause and search for a word here and there, but you get it now. Enough that her face changes with real pleasure, she laughs softly and squeezes your hand and responds again with the kind of warm patience that makes trying easier rather than harder. Alysa still has to step in every so often to supply a word you’re missing, and each time you glance at her with that quick, grateful look before continuing, but it doesn’t feel like being rescued now. It feels like being a part of something, like finally stepping into the world you had spent months trying to reach. And for Alysa, standing there watching you with her grandmother, the rightness of it is almost overwhelming.

Eventually it’s cake time, and the house shifts accordingly, people being called in from the kitchen and the porch and wherever else they’ve wandered. The lights in the living room are dimmed one by one until the room goes soft and warm around the edges, and voices start corralling into one place.

You disappear briefly into the kitchen and reemerge carrying the cake with the candles already lit, their glow catching along your tired face and turning it softer. The room starts singing almost immediately—family loud and off-key and affectionate in exactly the way birthday songs always are—but for Alysa the room narrows the second she sees you walking toward her through the dim light holding that cake.

She is vaguely aware of everyone else, but none of it lands the way you do. You look at her over the candles with so much open love on your face that it steadies something deep in her.

And she knows, right then, that this is the moment that you were working so hard for. It’s not perfect, the day didn’t go anything like planned, but it went wrong in the worst possible way and still ended here. With the two of you looking at each other across candlelight and noise and family and all the complications that come with loving someone fully. The misunderstanding, the distance, the hurt, the relief—it all points to the same thing. Your relationship has weight to it. It held through months of miscommunication and a day that should have wrecked it. It held because underneath everything else there is love, real and persistent enough to survive both your mistakes.

Alysa feels it when the song finishes and everyone starts cheering, feels it when you set the cake down and immediately reach for her hand again, feels it in the way both of you break into the same private smile at the exact same time. This is not some fragile thing that only works when everything is easy. This is something sturdier. Something that will keep asking things of both of you and keep being worth it anyway.

---------

first post back???? i wouldve split this up into two parts but i wanted to use those three pics LOL like theyre perfect for this story. Also... anyone at all get the very small wicked reference,,,,, hold out my....

----------

tag list :P

----------

She never acted famous.

Never brought up medals.

Never mentioned she’d been the youngest U.S. women’s champion in history or that she’d competed at the Olympics at sixteen.

You found out weeks later after someone recognized her while you were out getting boba.

You remembered blinking at the stranger asking for a photo before turning to Alysa and going:

“Wait… you were in the Olympics?”

She’d laughed so hard she nearly choked.

That was the version of Alysa you fell in love with.

Relaxed. Funny. Free.

For the first time in her life, skating wasn’t controlling her anymore.

And for a while, everything felt easy.

Then in 2024, she returned to competitive skating.

At first it wasn’t bad.

She was happier this time around — lighter somehow. She talked constantly about how different it felt now that she was skating because she wanted to instead of because she felt trapped by it.

You supported her through every early practice, every jet-lagged airport pickup, every competition livestream.

Then came the comeback season.

Then the 2025 World Championship gold medal.

Then the 2026 Olympics.

And suddenly, Alysa Liu belonged to the entire world again.

—

The hotel room felt suffocatingly small.

You stood near the dresser while Alysa Liu paced barefoot across the carpet, still wearing half her Team USA warmups.

“You’re not even hearing me,” you said quietly.

“I am hearing you.”

“No, you’re listening long enough to argue back. That’s different.”

Alysa exhaled sharply, frustrated. “Can we not do this tonight?”

You laughed once, bitterly.

“Right. Because there’s never a good time anymore.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

Her jaw tightened.

Ever since Worlds, and especially after the Olympics, everything had changed.

More interviews.

More appearances.

More cameras.

More pressure.

You knew she hated parts of it. Knew fame exhausted her sometimes.

But lately, it felt like there was nothing left for you.

“I barely see you anymore,” you admitted.

“You see me all the time.”

“Alysa, sitting next to you while you answer media emails for three hours isn’t quality time.”

Her face hardened slightly.

“I can’t just ignore my responsibilities.”

“And I’m not asking you to.”

“Then what are you asking?”

You swallowed hard.

“For you to notice me again.”

Silence.

That hurt worse than yelling somehow.

“You forgot our anniversary,” you continued softly. “You cancelled dinner twice this month. Last week you fell asleep during the movie because you’d been doing interviews all day and when I tried talking to you about it, you apologized and immediately checked your phone again.”

“I’m trying my best.”

“I know,” you whispered. “But your best still makes me feel alone.”

For a second, Alysa looked guilty.

Then defensive.

And you knew immediately the conversation was about to go badly.

“You knew skating was part of my life.”

“Yes. But when we met, you were retired.”

Her expression flickered.

“You were happy,” you said. “You actually had time to live.”

“I’m still happy.”

“Are you?”

That landed harder than you intended.

Alysa looked away first.

And suddenly all the exhaustion she’d been carrying seemed to crack open at once.

“You don’t understand how much pressure I’m under right now.”

“Then let me help.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Clearly you do!”

The words echoed through the room.

Alysa stared at you.

Then she said the thing she’d regret almost immediately.

“Maybe you only liked me better when I wasn’t successful.”

The silence afterward was horrifying.

The second the words left her mouth, her face changed.

Regret.

Immediate and awful.

But your chest already felt like it had caved in.

“Alysa…”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You think I care about medals?” Your voice cracked. “I didn’t even know who you were when we met.”

“I know, I just—”

“No, because if you knew that, you wouldn’t have said it.”

She stepped toward you. “Baby—”

“Don’t.”

That stopped her cold.

Your eyes burned painfully.

“I stayed when skating made you miserable. I stayed through the comeback because I knew it made you happy again.” Your voice shook. “But somewhere along the way, I stopped being part of your life and started feeling like an interruption to it.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then why do I feel like I have to compete with the entire world just to get your attention?”

Alysa opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Nothing came out.

And that silence told you everything.

You grabbed your jacket before you could cry in front of her.

Then finally whispered:

“I think we should break up.”

Her face completely fell apart.

“No.”

Your throat tightened painfully.

“Alysa—”

“No, don’t do that. Don’t say that like it’s already decided.”

Tears blurred your vision.

You still loved her.

That was the worst part.

“I can’t keep begging to be noticed,” you whispered.

Alysa looked devastated now, panic finally replacing anger.

But it was too late.

You walked toward the door anyway.

“Aren’t you even gonna fight for us?” she asked weakly.

You stopped with your hand on the doorknob.

“I think I’ve been the only one fighting for us for a while.”

Then you left.

—

Your vision blurred as you hurried down the hallway.

You wiped furiously at your eyes and turned the corner too quickly—

straight into someone else.

“Oh my god, sorry—”

A familiar voice interrupted gently.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay.”

You looked up to find Amber Glenn balancing a takeout bag in one hand while steadying you with the other.

Then her expression shifted as she noticed your tears.

“Oh…”

Humiliation flooded you instantly.

Behind the hotel room door, muffled movement sounded inside.

You stepped back quickly. “Sorry. I should go.”

Amber glanced toward the room and immediately seemed to understand.

“Did something happen?”

You laughed shakily.

“We broke up.”

Her face softened immediately.

“Oh, honey…”

You shook your head.

“I’m sorry you have to walk into that right now,” you muttered quietly. “You really don’t deserve to deal with our disaster.”

Amber looked genuinely concerned now.

“Are you okay?”

No.

Not even close.

But you forced a small nod anyway.

“I’ll survive.”

And before she could stop you, you walked away down the hallway.

A few seconds later, you heard the hotel room door open behind you.

Then Alysa’s voice — cracked and devastated.

“Amber…”

You kept walking.

But guilt still twisted painfully in your chest.

Because now Amber Glenn had to walk into the aftermath.

it all happened so quickly — you promised yourself you wouldn't rush into things like this.

yet here you were, on a rooftop with a girl you'd only known for a month, limbs tangled, lips connecting as gently as possible, too much care poured into them for it to be passed off as two friends experimenting.

you knew alysa was a rising star, that every day she gained more and more recognition, and as somebody she was often seen with, you'd be mistaken to think that you wouldn't be caught up in the spotlight.

but when you felt her soft fingertips brush over your cheek, her teeth graze your skin, or her breath mingle with yours, the fear of the public's opinion was the last thing on your mind.

the day alysa asked you to be your girlfriend felt like something out of a dream.

the same rooftop lit by scented candles, your favourite flowers scattered around, alysa dressed in the outfit you complimented the week before.

you could tell she was nervous. this time, she couldn't keep up the confident facade.

you weren't used to the meek side of her, the one where you could tell she was trying to make sure all the words came out perfectly, but they still came out in a quieter, more hesitant tone than she'd usually use.

alysa hesitated for many reasons, but one of them was the hectic life she'd been leading after her success at the 2026 olympics.

did she have the energy, time and will to commit?

would the media go easy on you two?

she had convinced herself she could handle it all — the training, the competitions, the tours, the newfound stardom, everything while still maintaining a social life and avoiding another burnout.

you were scared too — terrified, of what everybody might think, say and do.

then again, you’d be fools to refuse trying.

so she asked you out, on a real, official date.

and you accepted.

you decided it was best to keep this secret. just between you two, in a soft space in your hearts where nobody could reach and interfere with what you've built.

at first, it took some time getting used to.

dropping her hand when you were no longer in an empty, dark, arguably sketchy alleyway.

trying to figure out what proximity between you two would make people think that you're two affectionate, clingy friends, and not give out the fact that you were two stupidly-in-love idiots trying to navigate a relationship that nobody knew of.

alysa was serious about hiding it.

you? not so much.

obviously you still respected her wishes and didn't tell your friends…

but it was getting a little frustrating seeing a thirst edit of her everytime you opened tiktok. to see everybody in the comments fawning over her.

it was even more frustrating to be well aware of the fact you couldn't do anything about it.

it started with normal edits.

just clips of her skating, smiling, getting ready..

normal, tame videos.

then it moved on to videos captioned with..

“i need dat”

“she's my wife”

“i need her so bad”

“the things i’d do to her”

the comment sections were filled with comments of the same nature.

everybody thirsting over your girlfriend.

everybody pretending that alysa was anybody but yours.

you were tired of keeping secret, you wanted everyone to know who alysa belonged to.

there wasn't much you could do. you couldn't post something that might give you out.

so you went on your other account — only followed by alysa and your mutual friends.

shortly after, you went on a rampage, trying to get people to quit whatever they thought they were doing.

when somebody would comment “wife me up alysa”, you'd respond with: “i think she has a gf”

when somebody would comment “🔥🔥🔥”, you wouldn't hesitate to respond with: “🧯🧯🧯 “

when somebody would comment “thats OUR wife”, you'd reply with: “you mean my wife..?”

each comment you left got more and more obvious.

alysa had mentioned that she rarely saw any edits of herself, which eased your worries when it came to her seeing your display of jealousy.

however, you forgot a person you were mutuals with who unfortunately had a habit of checking the comment section of every tiktok she found interesting: amber glenn.

while getting her fix of daily midnight doom scrolling, she opened the comment section of an alysa edit — seeing your reply under the top comment.

username

why'd you post such a long video of OUR wife?

⤷ yourusername

you mean my wife…?

amber chuckled, taking a screenshot.

she wasn't in on this whole secret relationship thing — none of your friends were, but she had her suspicions.

around close friends, you were a little more comfortable with smaller displays of affection like longer hugs and leaning your head on her shoulder.

amber had seen how alysa looked at you when you weren't looking. how her eyes looked ready to get lost in every detail of your appearance, no matter how small.

she saw how you clung to her. she saw how you were eachothers safe space.

she never said anything out of respect — maybe you two were just really affectionate friends. she wasn't entitled to knowing the details of it all.

she opened instagram, staring at alysa's profile.

she hesitated for a minute, but caved in.

sent the screenshot.

she texted: “looks like someone's got a wedding to plan 👀” and went to bed.

⋆⋆⋆

alysa was sprawled out on her couch, lazing around on her phone.

when her phone buzzed in her hand, amber's name displaying on the screen, alysa didn't think much of it. she thought amber sent her some silly reel or another picture she took of alysa that could be used as blackmail material.

she clicked on the notification, only to be greeted with the screenshot amber had taken earlier, accompanied by a cheeky little “looks like someone's got a wedding to plan 👀”.

her initial reaction was to laugh.

the reply was from your secret account, one fans didn't know about, so she dodged all worries of somebody finding out.

she wouldn't admit it, but alysa secretly liked you acting that way. she liked seeing you possessive, she liked seeing the frustration in your eyes every time somebody tried to hit on her. she was obsessed with the thought of you wanting her that bad, completely oblivious to the effects it would have on you.

“haha, maybe” she texted back, quickly downloading the photo and sending it to you before turning off her phone, glancing at the clock, taking the late hour as her sign to go to bed.

⋆⋆⋆

alysa didn't realize that she'd struck a chord deep within you.

so when she woke up to several messages from you that were not the usual “GOODMORNING!!! HOW DID YOU SLEEP?? You slept right???”, she was taken off guard.

instead of getting interrogated about her sleep first thing in the morning with a text that had an unnecessary amount of question marks, she was greeted by a:

“i’m sorry lysa

i hate seeing them act like youre theirs

i promise i’ll stop

please don't be mad at me”

alysa couldn't understand why she was seeing a string of panicked text instead of the playful clapbacks she'd grown fond of.

when the realization that you weren't joking around washed over her, her fingers rushed to the keyboard.

“wait wait wait

why are you apologizing?

we need to talk

meet me at the rooftop 10pm”

as soon as she hit the send button, the guilt started gnawing at her heart.

maybe you weren't being playful with her fans.

maybe your reactions came out of a place of possessiveness rooted in fear and insecurity instead.

before she had time to fully spiral, her phone started vibrating in her hand, accompanied by her screen displaying a notification that somebody was calling her.

her manager.

her thumb reluctantly moved to accept the call.

each word that came out of her manager's mouth felt like an announcement of her death sentence

her day was packed with photoshoots and interviews, and she wouldn't have a chance to speak to you or see you during the day.

so there she was, alone in her room, feeling like the worst girlfriend in the world for her obliviousness in regards to your feelings.

alysa went through her day with a foggy mind and an ache that her chest undeniably caused by the guilt and anxiety rushing through her blood.

⋆⋆⋆

when all the media obligations were over with, she unlocked her car, plopping down in her seat with a shaky exhale.

to her side, was the hoodie she stole from your closet before going abroad for her competitions as something to ground her, a piece of you that kept an illusion that you were there with her.

without thinking twice, she unzipped her jacket and put on the hoodie, taking in the scent that still lingered weeks after you'd last put it on.

alysa checked the time.

9 pm. she had some time left until she had to meet you at the rooftop.

her head made a soft thump against the car's window as she leaned on it, her eyes drifting to the stars illuminating the night sky.

her mind wandered to all the different scenarios, all the ways she could make it up to you, apologize for her ignorance in more ways than a lousy “sorry”..

her eye caught on a particularly bright star, an idea sparking in her mind..

stargazing date.

she could stargaze with you on the rooftop.

the stars were unusually bright that night, considering she was located in a city with such high rates of light pollution.

she decided to take up on the opportunity, starting her car.

she set the radio to her favourite station, the song only background noise while she planned out the date.

when she arrived at her favourite flower show, she parked her car nearby and greeted the girl working there for the night.

the worker helped her assemble the perfect bouquet — flowers you had mentioned you thought were beautiful, assorted in a mesmerizing gradient.

the drive to the rooftop was agonizingly long, the air around her becoming thick with her anxiety.

her hands reached to turn on the radio, but the music did nothing to distract her from how apprehensive she was.

she rushed to the rooftop with only 20 minutes left, setting up blankets, drinks, a shaky sigh escaping her mouth.

the stars illuminate in the otherwise pitch black sky, catching alysa's gaze.

she hasn't felt this anxious in years — she didn't expect to become familiar with this ache in her chest so soon.

she feared what would happen if she worded her apology weirdly, if you stopped trusting her (did you ever trust her at all?), if you shut down.. the endless possibilities made her heart race and brain fog up until she was reduced to a paralyzed, scared mess.

when the realization that you'd be here in around five minutes hit her, she felt as if her heart had been lodged in her throat, still, she tried to keep a nonchalant expression, putting on her usual smile.

she glanced at her phone — 9:59PM. she heard footsteps. ones that sounded identical to yours.

⋆⋆⋆

10:00PM.

moment of truth.

you walked to the spot you and alysa always met up at whenever you needed some fresh air and space away from all the noise the real world produced.

alysa seemed to be holding something — a bouquet? she was nervous. you could tell from the exhale when you made eye contact. she tried to mask it with a slight smile, though you could tell her heart might as well burst out of her chest any second now.

as your body moved closer, you held out your arms, inviting her in an embrace.

the silence for the first few moments was suffocating — you held each other with a rib-crushing grip, neither of you showing signs of letting go any time soon.

your nose was buried in the top of the shorter girl's head, savoring her scent. it'd only been a day since you last saw each other, a day too long.. still, you clung to her like never before.

you were the first to pull away, hands coming up from her waist to cup her face, gently pinching her cheek, eliciting a soft giggle from her.

alysa stepped back, enough to properly hand you the bouquet, a shy smile on her face.

“lys-”

speaking was pointless, she was already leaning in to place the softest kiss on your lips, pouring all her affection in it.

as soon as you both pull away, you murmur: “you really didn't have to.”

her eyes dart up and down your outfit and back to the flowers.

“they match your outfit.”

you chuckle, holding onto the bouquet as if it was a lifeline.

“they really do.”

alysa's fingers came to intertwine with yours, leading you to your usual spot..the one where you'd written your initials with a marker, drawing a heart around them, the one where you'd placed a love locket on the rails, where you put a pot of flowers in the corner, coming back every now and then to check on them.

that familiar, comforting warmth in the air had returned, replacing the earlier tension.

everything felt just right. it was just the two of you, next to each other. nothing else mattered.

she had brought her camera, taking a plethora of pictures of the both of you, of the sky, one with you holding up the flowers to your face so that only your eyes were visible, the stars glimmering in the background…

you pretended not to notice how her gaze lingered on you a few seconds too long, how she took more pictures than she usually did, how her touch lingered…

how she would speak about the constellations above, mapping them out with such passion, telling you about the meaning behind their names…

she would point out a star and say “this one reminds me of you.”

she would feel the texture on your face, grazing it with her fingertips, whispering “your face reminds me of the sky. beautiful constellations covering it.. how beautiful.”

every now and then, she'd press soft kisses on your face, her breath mingling with yours when she'd press her cheek on yours.

she was yours, and she made sure you knew it.

⋆⋆⋆

rooftop dates had become your thing.

every night, 10pm, stargazing, tangled limbs, scented candles…

it was the perfect way to wind down after a long day.

alysa's fame kept increasing, there were less and less places she could go to without being recognized, and the rooftop was one of the only private places she had left where she could take a breather, where she could have uninterrupted quality time with you without someone staring from afar, taking photos and invading her space.

or so she thought.

because unbeknownst to the both of you, every night you left your apartment, in each other's clothes whether it would be hoodies or alysa's iconic nike sweatpants, fingers intertwined, no makeup, in silly slippers if the weather had allowed.. somebody noticed.

noticed her striped hair, the sweatpants, the matching hoodies.

noticed how she clung onto you as if you were the only thing that mattered in the whole world.

they weren't the only one who noticed alysa being absolutely smitten with you..

somebody else had seen you filming her during stars on ice practice session, occasionally blowing kisses whenever she would land something, blatantly showing off all the abilities she'd spent years working on.

people noticed that she was always doing something, whether it be holding doors open for you, holding and carrying your bags, wrapping her arm around your shoulder, trying (and failing) to look casual, giggling a little too much at everything you said..

she wasn't aware of how obvious she was. in her mind, she was just showing her love in the small ways she knew how.

she didn't realize that this was the 21st century where everybody had phones.

where everybody knew who alysa liu, the golden girl with dyed stripes was.

where everybody could..and did film her.

so when amber sent her a short video montage on tiktok consisting of clips where you two had been extremely affectionate, she was thoroughly surprised.

“BUSTEDDD” amber texted.

alysa never told amber about the relationship, but it had been made clear to her that denying was no longer of any use.

the whole world knew, all that was left was for her to confirm what everybody was already seeing.

the door clicked open, revealing you in her baggy shirt and a pair of shorts you'd dug out from your closet, having just come out of the shower.

“what, why do you look like you just saw a ghost?” you asked, confused at the expression on her face, unable to make out what it was.

“look.” she muttered, holding her phone out for you to take.

the montage played.

some cute, romantic song.

clips of alysa holding your hand.

wearing your hoodie.

pictures of you on top of a rooftop.

hugging you a second too long for it to be “friendly”.

“oh my god,” you murmured. “they caught on.”

“they did.”

“well…what do we do now?” you questioned, laying down next to her.

“well we can't deny it.” alysa answered matter of factly, setting her phone down. her fingers roamed to your hair, tangling in it while she massaged your scalp. “we can tease them.”

“..huh?”

“we can be super obvious about it. im talking finally go on those fancy dates, kiss each other's cheek, hold hands everywhere, match outfits, post together...full package.”

“you're not real.” your eyes shot up to hers, trying to gauge if she was being serious..and to your surprise, she was.

“i'm serious!”

“you're serious?”

“please?” she insisted, putting on her best puppy eyes to plead with yours.

“fine, but only cuz you looked at me like a dumb puppy.” you said, caving in, rolling your eyes.

“nahh, you just want an excuse to kiss me more.” she teased between kisses.

“shut up.”

⋆⋆⋆

you did exactly as alysa said — she would add your matching keychains to her photodumps, not tagging you, instead letting her fans figure out who it is. she would make sure you were in the background of her posts at all times. she would hold your waist, kiss you, play with your hair without a care in the world, the thought of having an audience never crossing her mind.

you practically preened, indulging and encouraging her behaviour, sitting in her lap, whispering into her ear, making sure someone's watching just to see the look on their faces when alysa's face would turn a crimson red.

you knew that in a matter of hours clips of you two would pop up on your fyp.

seeing everyone figure out and affirm that alysa was yours satisfied you in every way possible.

alysa enjoyed being viewed as yours.

she loved when somebody would comment on how she's practically attached to your hip, how they've never seen you two apart..

your relationship status had never been confirmed. not explicitly, at least.

neither you or alysa posted something stating that you two are dating, and alysa avoided the topic of her love life during interviews, which left some room for speculation.

people were starting to hit on alysa again. even more seriously this time. walking up to her, asking for her number… as if your arm hadn't been wrapped around your waist, signaling to everybody that she's yours and yours only.

alysa had noticed how you began to hold her a little tighter, how you glared at strangers and paparazzi who dared lay eyes on her.

she noticed that jealousy fire up again, and she knew that this time, you would snap harder.

she increased pda even further.

as much as she enjoyed watching you scare off people trying to get close to her, she did not enjoy the thought of anyone but you looking at her how you did. she did not enjoy the thought of somebody else touching her like you did, speaking to her like you did…

so on a tuesday night, tipsy on some cheap alcohol, she leaned in to plant kisses all over your neck, her red lip tint making its presence known all over your neck.

she didn't hesitate leaving a few hickeys, something she avoided doing altogether.

“let me take a picture. please.” she managed to gasp out.

you were panting, desperately trying to catch your breath.

“what for?”

“i want to post them, show them that we're official. that we're serious. please.”

“do it.”

alysa obliged, taking a handful of blurry pictures, the warm lighting helping the camera capture the intimacy of the moment.

she didn't waste any more time. she opened instagram, selecting a picture for her story, tagging you and adding the 💋 emoji next to your tag, not bothering to add a caption.

the marks spoke for themselves.

“Focus,” her coach called from rinkside as Alysa barely saved the landing.

“Yeah, yeah,” Alysa muttered, skating another lap to hide the embarrassment burning across her face.

But then she looked up again.

And there you were.

A few rows up in the stands bundled in a dark winter coat, your gloves wrapped around a paper cup probably filled with hot chocolate. Your younger brother sat beside you practically vibrating with excitement, pointing toward the ice every five seconds while talking your ear off.

You listened to him anyway.

That was what Alysa noticed most.

Not just that you were pretty—though you absolutely were—but the way you laughed every time your brother got too excited and nearly spilled popcorn everywhere. The way you fixed his hat when it slipped over his eyes. The way you looked genuinely happy to be there with him.

It was soft.

Warm.

Normal.

And somehow that felt more distracting than the thousands of cameras following Alysa around every day.

“You know staring is creepy, right?”

Alysa nearly jumped at the voice beside her.

Alex snorted from where he leaned against the boards. “You’ve been looking at the same girl for like ten minutes.”

“I have not.”

“You literally almost busted your ankle because of her.”

“That was one time.”

“In the last five minutes.”

Alysa rolled her eyes, but her cheeks betrayed her immediately by turning bright pink.

Alex looked up toward the stands before grinning. “Okay, fair. She’s cute.”

Alysa groaned dramatically. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re agreeing with me.”

“So you admit you think she’s cute.”

“I hate you.”

Alex laughed loudly enough that Alysa shoved his shoulder.

Unfortunately, that made you glance down toward the rink.

For one horrifying second, your eyes met Alysa’s.

Then you smiled politely.

Politely.

Not flirtatiously.

Not knowingly.

Just enough to make Alysa completely lose all remaining common sense.

“Oh my God,” Alex said slowly. “You’re doomed.”

“I need her number.”

Alex blinked. “You don’t even know her name.”

“I can learn names later.”

“That’s genuinely the worst thing you’ve ever said.”

Alysa ignored him, still staring toward the stands where you were now helping your younger brother unwrap a pretzel without dropping it everywhere.

“She’s probably visiting,” Alex pointed out.

“I know.”

“So you’ll never see her again after the Olympics.”

“I know.”

“And your solution is…?”

Alysa turned toward him with complete seriousness.

“Get her number for me.”

Alex barked out a laugh so sudden a nearby volunteer looked concerned.

“You cannot be serious.”

“I’m completely serious.”

“Alysa—”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“You’re my best friend.”

“That’s exactly why I’m saying no.”

Alysa grabbed his sleeve dramatically. “Alex, if you don’t help me, I will literally think about this girl for the rest of my life.”

“You met her ten minutes ago.”

“And yet here we are.”

Alex pinched the bridge of his nose while Alysa continued staring at him with the most desperate expression she could manage.

“You’re unbelievable,” he muttered.

“That’s not a no.”

“It should be.”

“But it isn’t.”

He sighed heavily. “Fine. Fine. I’ll ask.”

Alysa’s face lit up instantly. “Really?”

“You owe me for this.”

“I owe you my firstborn child.”

“That’s horrifying. Don’t say that.”

But Alysa barely heard him because Alex was already walking toward the seating area.

Toward you.

Suddenly Alysa regretted every decision she’d ever made.

“What if she says no?” she blurted.

Alex looked back once with pure amusement. “Then you survive the tragedy and move on with your life.”

Easy for him to say.

He wasn’t the one currently having a minor heart attack watching the prettiest girl he’d ever seen smile up at his best friend.

From across the rink, Alysa could see you looking confused at first when Alex approached. Then polite. Then surprised.

Your younger brother said something excitedly while pointing toward the ice.

Toward Alysa.

Oh God.

Was he telling you who she was?

Alysa panicked instantly and spun around, pretending to intensely focus on literally anything else.

Her skate guards.

The ice.

The ceiling.

A random camera operator.

Anything except the possibility of rejection happening thirty feet away.

A minute later, Alex returned casually.

Too casually.

“Well?” Alysa demanded immediately.

Alex held up his phone.

Alysa stared at the new contact information on the screen like it was the meaning of life itself.

“You got it?”

“She gave it to me.”

“Oh my God.”

Alex smirked. “You’re welcome.”

“What did you say?”

“That I thought you seemed cool and wanted your number.”

Alysa froze.

“You what?”

“What?”

“You said you wanted her number?”

“Well, yeah. That’s usually how asking works.”

“But did you say it was for me?”

Alex blinked.

Then his expression slowly shifted.

“Oh,” he said.

Alysa’s eyes widened in horror. “Alex.”

“I may have forgotten that part.”

“You forgot the entire important part!”

“It slipped my mind!”

Alysa looked absolutely devastated. “So now she thinks you asked for her number because you like her?”

“…Probably.”

“Oh my God.”

Alex started laughing immediately while Alysa buried her face in her hands.

“This is not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

“She thinks you’re cute!”

“Well, I am cute.”

Alysa groaned loudly enough that two nearby skaters turned to look at her.

This was a disaster.

A complete disaster.

And somehow it got even worse when she accidentally looked back toward the stands one more time—

the sound of your alarm blared across your bedroom, the noise abruptly waking you up, already fucking your day up. 

the hangover was not helping. you felt your head throb and spin, your vision blurry and body so sore that every movement feels like something that comes with a painful cost. 

you do your best to roll across your bed, sloppily grabbing your phone to turn off the alarm. as you rub your eyes to get them to focus so you can better see the icons on the screen, a notification pops up. 

2:47 AM | alysa: 

im sorry

i really am

can we talk

you used what little strength you had left in you to shut your phone and set it down on the nightstand a little harder than intended to, a small scoff coming out of you.

you moved to bury your head in your pillow, trying to ignore the burning sensation in your chest as tears formed in your eyes, your pride refusing to let a single tear escape.

the promise you made to yourself last night echoed in your head. “i’ll never waste an ounce of my energy on her ever again.”

the blanket felt so comfortable, the mattress practically swallowing you, like it was begging you to stay.

so you stayed. 

you tossed and turned until you finally shut your eyes, trying to get the notification out of your head.

but no matter how much you shifted around, how much you swore you didn't care anymore and that you were entering your “nonchalant” era, you still couldn't help but wish the girl with striped hair would come over, hand you an edible and lull you to sleep, the memory of her soft lips on your neck haunting you. 

the sunlight that managed to filter through your half closed blinds was too bright, too demanding. a groan came out of you when you finally stood up, going to close the blinds all the way through. 

now your room is pitch black, hitting your chest with the melancholy you became familiar with years ago. 

you slumped over to your bed, closing your eyes, hoping to escape your misery at least in sleep.

the dream was heartwrenching — it was you and alysa, holding each other in the middle of a field, surrounded by flowers and a sunset with a gorgeous orange-pink gradient. 

the dream itself wasn't so bad. the heart wrenching part was waking up and coming to the realization that this really was just a dream. 

that alysa hadn't come back to you, and you haven't gone back to pressing lazy kisses against the top of her head.  

your room was still pitch black, you didn't even know what time it was, the blinds wouldn't let you see. 

tears were now streaming down your face, your hands moving up to wipe your nose then your tears, wetting your sleeve.

there was no hope for you, the feeling of emptiness had already begun to swallow you whole. you decided there was nothing better to do, so you went back to sleep. this time, your mind had some mercy on you, so you had a dreamless slumber.

it was now nearing midnight, and the sound of your phone ringing awoke you, causing a whine to come out of you. 

you reached for the phone on the nightstand. a number you hadn't saved nor recognized.

                                    ⋆⋆⋆

alysa had spent the entire night crying until she fell asleep at 4 in the morning. 

her dreams were filled with your caresses, the times you'd kiss her cheek, how you were patient with her when she was figuring her feelings out, how gentle you'd been..she never realized that she couldn't live without it until she lost it. 

the sunlight crept through the curtains, waking her from the dreams she wished would translate to real life. 

alysa looked around — trying to understand where she was. everything around her seemed unfamiliar. the mattress was softer than she'd been used to, the view different from the one she would enjoy every time she went out for a smoke. 

once it finally clicked to her that she was at her friend's place, the memories from last night immediately began flooding in, like water rushing through a broken dam. the familiar ache in her chest returned, accompanied by the feeling of emptiness in her stomach.

alysa was stumped. she sat up, looking through the window. she knew she had to leave eventually.

the first thing she did was grab her phone, checking to see if you texted back. 

read.

she covered her face with her hands, groaning while she muttered a “god, this is so embarrassinggg.” to herself. “i cant believe i drunk texted my..ex.” 

what were you, really? exes? you never dated. that might've been the worst part of it all.

all this pain from a couple that never even dated.

her mascara was ruined, makeup smeared all over her face, eyebags so big they looked like black eyes at first glance.. the whole ”rough night” package.

she put her phone in her pocket, taking a quick trip to the bathroom.

the hallways were closing in on her — the shame, guilt, remorse, all of the emotions from last night coming back in full force. 

she tried to put up a front, pretending it wasn't eating her alive. but as soon as she locked the bathroom door, it was over for her.

tears came streaming down her face as she curled up against the door, hugging her knees, no longer trying to contain the emotions that had been bubbling up under the surface for months now.

she thought she had more time, she really did. she thought she had more time left until she had to confront her feelings about you, about herself, to confront her problems. she never thought it would be in a friend's bathroom after a college party. 

the knock on the bathroom door was what finally got her to snap out of it — her body jolting at the sound and sudden vibration. 

“alysa, you in there? let me come in!” her friend insisted, her tone making it clear she wasn't taking no for an answer.

with you gone, her friend was the only real connection she had outside of her family. the only one who gave her reality checks, stayed by her side, showed her the good and the bad. 

alysa knew she needed the comfort and the advice. it wasn't like she had much of a choice anyway, the pain was ready to swallow her whole if somebody didn't come to help her stay on the surface. 

she stood up, her hand going to reach the door handle. 

her friend's eyes widened, not accustomed to this side of the usually composed alysa. she sighed, sitting down next to her, wrapping her arm around her as she spoke, her voice scolding, but alysa felt lingering softness.

“lysa. dude. you're still crying?”

“i miss her so bad.”

“im sure she misses you too.”

“do you think she'll come back to me...”

“maybe. but you need to work on this whole trust and commitment issues thing you got going on. not every girl is out to get you, y'know? and she definitely cared and wanted you. i don't know how everybody but you saw how she looked at you.”

“i just…i was scared to..i..”

her friend didn't respond, just waited for alysa to calm down the turmoil inside her, tracing soft patterns on alysa's shoulder.

“i trusted a girl once. i thought she'd be the one. we spent the entire 7th grade together. always texting, calling, never spent more than a few hours apart. and then i finally worked up the courage to ask her out..and from then on we started dating. we only lasted a few weeks until she told me i was too much. told me i was too intense, that i..” alysa muttered in between sobs and sniffles, no longer having the strength to continue. 

she let her friend's arms wrap around her. she pretended it was you holding her. she let herself melt into the embrace, her sobs eventually coming to a stop.

“lysa you cant let a doomed relationship from 7th grade ruin your ability to love freely in college. it's like letting a bad grade you got once determine the grades you get for the rest of your life, because you don't believe in yourself and your ability to learn from your mistakes and do better.”

“i would say i know,” alysa murmured sheepishly. “but i didnt. i needed to hear this.”

“i know you did.” her friend spoke, tracing little patterns on alysa's shoulder. “did you text her?”

“i texted her last night.” 

“let me see.”

alysa groans, reluctantly handing her the phone. alysa was never one to beg, or sincerely apologize. the tough front she was putting up wouldn't let her. having her friend see her text somebody like this felt humiliating.

“ouch. read?”

“dont even mention it.”

her friend sighs, handing her her phone back. 

“maybe she needs some time to think about it.”

“whatever dude..it's over. obviously..” she said. 

alysa's head was resting on her knees which were hugged to her chest. her eyes were getting watery, staring off into blank space. she felt pathetic, vulnerable, uncomfortable. she looked like a kicked puppy. 

“alysa, give it a few days.”

she didn't respond, she just closed her eyes and took a few shaky breaths before finally standing up to wash her face.

“see, i told you. they're all the same. they all leave.” 

alysa's tone was oddly monotone, a stark contrast to the hopeless, shaky voice heard earlier. 

“no! this was your fault. you did this to yourself. you pushed her away.” her friend scolded.

“she could've tried to stay!” she retorted, her frustration bubbling under the surface.

“she did! she can't fight for you to keep her forever you know.”

“whatever.”

alysa fixed her hair and went back to the guest bedroom to get her bag. she tried to avoid conversation, because she knew what it would all be about.

“thanks for letting me stay..sorry for last night.”

her friend let out an exasperated sigh and pulled her in for a quick hug.

“don't worry about it…just.. take care of yourself yeah? lay off on the parties for the next few days while you're recovering.”

alysa rolled her eyes, a small smile growing on her face.

“yeah yeah, okay mom. take care.”

her friend snickered, shut the door and with that, alysa was once again, left alone. 

she was sobered up by now, at least enough to walk home. 

the entire walk was spent with her mind on autopilot, her body having taken this route many times, no longer requiring much thought from alysa. 

alysa used this to her advantage, using the time to think about you. she wondered where exactly it all went wrong. tried to gauge if it was worth it to even try to change if you wouldn't be there to enjoy the “new and improved alysa liu”.

she thought about giving up, about letting you go. she knew you deserved better, and she was stuck between being this better that she wanted to give you, or letting somebody else take her place. 

of course, it would be easier to let someone take her place. she wouldn't have to worry so much about changing, wouldn't have to put in the effort. then she thought about how it'd be like seeing you with a new girl. she thought about how she was willing to give everything up to be that girl. 

she didn't notice it, but her legs started moving a little faster, getting her to her apartment sooner.

she took her key out of her bag and unlocked the door. 

her cats rushed to greet her, causing a soft smile to form on alysa's face. 

immediately after looking up from her cats, she noticed how empty the apartment felt. how your soft voice wasn't there to warm her heart like how it used to every time she came back from work or school. she noticed your hoodie hung on her chair — the only trace of you left remaining.

the blinds were half closed, not letting much light seep in. 

there were clothes, cups, random items and dishes scattered around the apartment.

they were right when they said your room (or apartment) was a reflection of your mind. 

alysa was lost, she was messy, how could she expect someone to handle her if she can't handle herself? 

she picked her cat up, carried her to the cat tree, and then began cleaning up. 

she wanted to impress you, to show you that she was finally improving, that it wasn't empty words.

she imagined how you'd praise her the next time you came over, how you'd stare in disbelief, tell her you're proud of her..

she didn't realize it, but she was smiling like an idiot, humming some song while cleaning up. 

she cleaned up her cat's litter, threw the trash out, picked up and threw the clothing in the laundry, neatly folded her clothes, opened the blinds, now letting the sun illuminate the room. 

she changed her bedsheets, put on a happy yet calm song, and sat on her desk to do the homework that was long overdue. 

she stared at the problems on the question sheet, completely dumbfounded. math was never her strong point, but she didn't expect to be this lost.

that was when she realized just how much she needed you. 

every time she struggled with schoolwork, she'd call you, and you'd come over to help. you kept her grades afloat — it was thanks to you she got her first B+ in college. 

now, she didn't have her favourite nerd to call up. 

the inability to solve the questions wasn't what hurt her, it was your absence and all the small ways it was noticeable that did.

alysa knew that it was the 21st century and she could've just looked up a video explaining how to solve the problems, but she didn't want some stranger, she wanted you. she was well aware you were the last thing she deserved.

still, she tried her hardest to get her homework done, and do it decently at that. she wanted to hand in the homework in front of you, to prove that she was getting her life together.

you had always scolded her for being careless with her grades, now she wanted to give you a reason to be proud of her.

she spent the rest of the day trying to be “productive”, remembering all the things you'd told her, all the advice you'd given until your mouth started foaming up.

when the day came to a close and the sun hid behind the horizon, she put her headphones on and went to see what you were listening to. She went to your profile, choosing to listen to whatever you were listening to. “Break It Off” by PinkPantheress started playing. 

“noone ever saw me cry, until i left the party the other night..do you remember all the things that you said to me?”

she promised to herself — no more crying, no more wallowing. 

but then the memory of you leaving, nose stuffy, eyes red and puffy from crying and makeup smeared all over your face came back, and for a minute, she was in your shoes.

guilt and shame practically swallowed her.

she couldn't get the image of your puffy eyes out of her head.

her weekend was spent wallowing, wolfing down tubs of icecream, ignoring everyone but her sibling’s calls and messages.

sunday night came around.

her hands reached to take off her headphones, placing them on the nightstand. she set an alarm for 8AM, so she'd have time to make it to her 10AM class. she grabbed the plushie you bought for her a few weeks ago, holding it tightly in a pathetic attempt to soothe herself by pretending it was you she was holding.

eventually, she let herself close her eyes, falling into a somewhat peaceful slumber.

                                 ⋆⋆⋆

the next day, she walked in class, her eyes darting around, trying to find yours. 

however it seemed she was out of luck that day, as her classmate informed her you weren't coming to class that day.

“why?” alysa questioned, a hint of concern in her voice.

“apparently she's got the flu.”

“what? is she okay?”

“i mean, i’m sure she is.. it is just the flu after all.” her friend answered, clearly unwilling to entertain the conversation any longer.

“yeah. you're right.” 

alysa finally sat down, a small pout on her face — looking like a kicked puppy yet again.

when it was time to turn in her homework, she took one last look around the classroom one last time before handing it to the professor.

she spent the rest of her day looking like a kicked puppy. she was hoping to sneak a few glances at you throughout the day, and maybe have some small talk if she couldn't get a meaningful conversation out of you.

but yet again, you weren't there.

                                     ⋆⋆⋆

the next few days were a blur. 

alysa was just going through the motions — wake up, go to the bathroom, shower, get dressed, pack your books, go to class, come home, eat, feed her cats, do homework, clean up, wait for you to respond to her text…

she was getting tired of it.

your absence was eating her up. 

she vowed she'd listen to her friend and lay off on the parties while she was recovering from everything that was happening, but the void in her heart was catching up to her, and she thought it wouldn't be long until she became part of it.

she tried to distract herself, to reassure herself that everything will be okay, but it was getting clear she was starting to crack.

when she realized nothing was working, she chose escapism and went back to what had always worked as a distraction — alcohol, drugs, parties.

friday came around, and somebody forwarded her a party invite. 

she couldn't resist.

she spent an entire weekend searching for a sign you still cared about her existence, let alone a sign you'd come back.

but nothing showed up.

“fuck it,” she muttered to herself. “im going. she won't care anyway..and i just need the drugs and alc.” 

she knew it was a terrible idea from the get go, yet she still let herself slip into the version of herself she spent the whole week condemning.

                                     ⋆⋆⋆

when she came to the party, she didn't have anything but getting high and drunk on her mind. usually she'd hoe around, but this time it didn't even cross her mind.

you took up all the space in her brain, and she hated it. she ran to parties as a distraction. 

she popped any pill offered to her, taking any concoction of a drink her peers thought up. 

the effects came rushing in not long after. her vision was becoming blurry, her speech slurring, and she couldn't tell faces and voices apart. everybody and everything looked the same to her, and she retracted to a couch tucked away in a corner. 

a group of girls noticed her, immediately rushing towards her. 

each girl started making their advances.

one asked for her number. another tried to make small talk in that flirty voice alysa loathed to hear when it came from anybody from you. some would touch her, running their hands up her thigh or waist. 

alysa was overwhelmed. 

she was clearly intoxicated, begging everybody to leave her alone. there were tears prickling at the corner of her eyes, sweat dripping down her forehead as she got more and more panicked. 

when a girl leaned in to kiss her, alysa almost froze. she pushed her off of her, and went to run to the nearest unoccupied room. 

that was when her eyes caught on the phones held up by her friends, clearly recording. 

betrayal flashed her eyes. its not like her friends were ever good ones..always pressuring her to go out, introducing her to new ways she can ruin her life, always leaving when the topic wasn't gossip or getting wasted.

but she didn't expect this from them. 

her only real friend saw her, and followed her to the bathroom.

“alysa, god, are you okay?”

“i want my girl back.” alysa begged between sobs. 

“lets calm you down first, and we'll call her, okay?”

“i want her now.”

her friend didn't bother negotiating, she just pulled out her phone and dialed your number. 

the phone rang for a bit until you picked up.

“hello?” you said.

alysa's friend handed the phone to her.

“um, y/n? can you..please come pick me up? i got really wasted..and everybody was all over me..and my friends didnt help..just recorded me..im so sorry..i know im an asshole..can you drive me to my place atleast?”

you'd never heard alysa beg like this before..you could tell she was crying. she wasn't even trying to hide it, you could hear her hiccups, sobs and sniffles through the phone, clear as day.

you sighed, panic setting in.

“send me your location.”

alysa did as you told her, sending you her location. 

“ill be there in 15.”

you were wearing a pair of oversized sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair tousled from laying in bed the entire day, but all you did was fix your hair before rushing to your car.

you couldn't tell what you were feeling. some of it was anger for sure. but you weren't sure who exactly you were angry at. you were angry at her for continuing the partygirl lifestyle she knew she couldn't keep up. you were angry at her friends for being bystanders instead of trying to help. you were angry at yourself for not responding to her text. you were angry at the universe for putting you in this situation.

but you were also worried.

worried that she got alcohol poisoning or overdosed on whatever she took. 

worried that something worse might've happened if she didn't have enough strength to get away from those people, whoever they were.

worried that you might've never gotten the call, and something worse could happen to her.

so you sped all the way through, frantically looking for a parking spot as close as possible to the host's house.

when you finally arrived, your eyebrows were furrowed, and you were seething with rage.

everybody had quiet down, trying to process what just happened. 

you burst in, taking in the sight of her friends and everybody else just standing there, with alysa nowhere to be seen.

“seriously. what is wrong with all of you?” your voice crackled through the otherwise silent room.

“you useless fucks just sat there and recorded alysa while she was struggling? you're telling me, nobody thought of helping her get out of whatever she was in? she could've  been raped or some shit! and what were you thinking, making advances on somebody obviously too intoxicated to even think for themselves?” 

the anger in your voice was evident. 

nobody said anything. they didn't dare to make a peep. 

you sighed, realizing nothing would come out of this.

“where is she.”

alysa's friend came out of the bathroom, hearing the commotion, already knowing what it was about.

“in the bathroom.” she said.

“thank you.” you answered, making your way to the bathroom where alysa was hiding. 

once you got there, you didn't even bother knocking, just came straight in. 

alysa was curled up, leaning against the bathtub, her eyes shooting open when she saw who was standing in front of her.

“you came!” she said, her voice a little too hopeful than she'd like to sound.

“you called.” you replied, kneeling down to get on her level, bringing her in a warm embrace.

“y/n, i-”

“save it. i dont wanna hear it now.”

you pulled away, cupping her cheek.

“we're going to my place, and you're staying until you've sobered up, you hear me?”

“y-yeah.” alysa murmured, like she hadn't been begging to be near you for a whole week now.

you pick her up, carrying her to your car. 

everybody stared. its all they knew how to do. you paid no attention to them — they didn't deserve a morsel of your energy. 

you just focused on bringing alysa to the car as quickly as you possibly can, strapping her in the passenger seat and rushing to your own.

a soft, drunken smile appeared on alysa's face as her eyes caught on the “y/n’s passenger princess :)” she scribbled a few weeks ago, paired with a few hics as the tears kept streaming down her face.

you didn't notice, just got in and began driving back to your place.

“you scared me.” you mutter.

“im sorry.” alysa mutters back between sniffles.

“you'll be okay.” you tried to sound believable, you really did it. but you'd be lying if you said you didn't feel hopeless for her and your relationship.

the rest of the ride was quiet save for the soft sobs and sniffles coming out of alysa, making her entire body tremble.

she never looked so fragile. 

                                    ⋆⋆⋆

you carried her back to your apartment. 

alysa had become shamelessly clingy — burying her head in the crook of your neck, trying to memorize your scent while her arms clung to you like you'd disappear if her grip loosened a bit.

you pretended it didn't affect you. but the familiar ache in your stomach returned, and you tried to hold back the tears that were daring to escape.

you set her down on your bed. she didn't let you get up, immediately climbing into your lap, sobbing her heart out, gasping for air. 

by now the emotions she'd been suppressing the last few weeks had come back in full force, showing her no mercy. 

the sobs wrecked her body, having her shaking, holding onto you like a lifeline while you desperately tried to calm her down, playing with her hair.

“i-im so sorry hic i promise i tried! i really did, i- hic i cleaned my room every day, like you told me to! i did my homework, i stayed sober, i waited..and i dont kn-know why i gave in like that, i dont know why i went to the party.”

her voice was trembling, her eyes pleading with yours for understanding.

“lys-” you tried to calm her down, but she cut you off.

“i thought you'd never come back, so i thought if she's not here..what's the point? so i gave up..i'm so sorry..”

“lysa, baby, im sure you tried, and im proud of you, yeah? but you need to change for yourself and not others.”

“you're the only thing about me i like.”

your heart breaks at that, the defeated tone tugging at your heartstrings. her speech is still slurred, and you refuse to believe she's serious about this, but you play along in hopes she'll calm down. 

for a moment, you hesitate whether you should hold her, if you can show that side of yourself again without getting hurt, but she cuts off your train of thought and buries her head in the crook of your neck, her hands wrapping around you.

that's where you give in, and hug her tighter, burying your nose in her hair, her scent overflowing your senses. 

“alysa, promise me you'll stop. regardless of if i'm here or not. you know you can't keep this lifestyle, it's destroying you on the inside out.”

“but i want you to be here.”

“okay, lysa. come on, you want me to run you a bath?”

“no..” she answered petulantly.

“why not?”

“i just wanna stay close to you.” 

she tightened her grip on you, burying her face deeper in your skin, taking in your scent, eliciting a sigh from you as you spoke

“five more minutes, then you have to take a bath.”

“okay.”

her nose nuzzled your neck, the rest of her body pressing flush against yours, not allowing a centimeter of distance. 

“dont fall asleep on me.”

“no promises.”

her response gets a small laugh out of you.

“alright.”

she fell asleep. never took a bath.

when you realized, you carefully untangled yourself from her arms, walking to your closet to find her a comfy pair of PJs. 

you put them on her, careful not to wake her.

once she was comfortably dressed and covered with her favourite blanket (that you made sure was always clean, just in case she needed to sleep over), you laid next to her, letting yourself really take in her features.

she looked so soft while she was sleeping — it was hard to believe that alysa, the girl who mumbles things like “stay” and “so cozyy..” in her sleep while simultaneously pulling you impossibly closer, is the same girl who can party for days on end and sleep around with people like she's taught herself how to detach from the people inside the body, and somehow, she perfected being able to see everybody as just another body she'd entertain herself with for the night.

you could never understand it, because she was the sweetest girl when she tried. she held onto every piece of you — hair ties, polaroids, old hoodies, ripped tights, anything you'd give her.

the thought of it brought you to tears. you'd done so much for her to just keep you around, and somehow, it was never enough for you to be the only one, for her thoughts to never stray away from you, even when the alcohol slurred her speech, when the drugs enhanced her senses, when she was left alone with her thoughts. 

you were well aware that she slept around, that she never settled down. 

at first you thought you could handle it, that you wouldn't get attached, and it would be just another college fling.

you were left disappointed in yourself when you caught yourself frowning when she wouldnt return your “i love you’s”, the goodmorning-goodnight texts, or when she wouldn't call you back with the excited tone you felt like you had to work for.

and ‘work’ is just another word for sex, because it seemed like that was all she ever cared about.

like forming attachments was just something she couldn't find it in herself to care about.

normally you'd pump yourself up and convince yourself that you were special, that she cared about you at least a little bit more than she cared about her other girls, but this time, your bubble burst for good, no longer trying to justify or glorify the treatment you received. 

there was no point in it. 

she would wake up, you'd make her breakfast and she would be sober enough to walk home. 

and after that, you would never speak again. 

you'd change your courses, stop going to parties, cut off your mutual friends, throw away every photo, letter, gift, hoodie, every thing that reminded you of her, and alysa would become a distant memory you'd laugh at in a few years. 

just as you cut out your ‘flawless’ plan to move on from her, alysa's hands tightened around your neck, reminding you of your earlier conversation, where she wrapped herself just like that, and you held her the same way you did whenever she would have a nightmare or you would be making up after an argument. you held her with the amount of love and care reserved for when she needed reassurance, for when she showed you that she needed you. 

your chest ached at the thought that you would have to leave her tomorrow, knowing what she would do to herself. guilt and fear mixed up in your chest, blending together and creating a sense of protectiveness towards her. you wanted to protect her from what was about to come, to hold her and talk her through it all, but how could you protect her from your absence, knowing it's the only thing that protected you?

at the end of the day, if alysa really tried, she could replace you, but you could never replace her.

you were mistaken when you thought you could be just like her and detach yourself from everything. you cared far too much for this to stay a friday night stress reliever call. 

the sky changed into the lighter purple-blueish shade it always did when the sun was preparing to rise above the horizon. 

the clock on the nightstand confirmed your fears — there wasn't much time left until alysa would wake up, and you two would be forced to address the recent events. 

alysa’s grip remained tight, leaving you trying to decide if you wanted to act nonchalant and pretend you hadn't been craving this, or allow yourself to — no, acknowledge that you were already melting in her embrace and that you were far gone.

everything you thought you had understood up until this point started to seem absurd. 

you told yourself she didn't care. that you were nothing special.

yet here she was, clinging to you like a lifeline, begging for you to stay and actually seeming sincere.

part of you said she cared, that you mattered a little more than the other girls.

but then you would be discarded as soon as things got hard. 

the bar was low, really. she wasn't a good person in general.. but still, being engulfed by flames seems comforting to those who have spent their entire lives buried in snow. 

another thirty minutes of trying to make sense of it all passed until you noticed how heavy your eyelids had gotten. 

there was no point in staying up. the moment of truth was tomorrow, and no amount of overthinking could prepare you for whatever outcome the universe created for you, so you let yourself bury your nose in alysa's hair for what was most likely the last time, and let sleep take you.

                                    ⋆⋆⋆

alysa tried to untangle herself from your embrace, each limb taking a decent amount of effort to free.

just as she managed to fully untangle herself, your eyes fluttered open, vision a little blurry.

as soon as you processed what was happening, a long, embarrassing whine came out of you in an attempt to make it known that you were unapproving of whatever was happening. 

you didn't have enough energy to form a sentence — your brains were scrambled, and you were reduced to a whining mess.

alysa sat on the edge of the bed, scooting only a few inches closer to you in a feeble attempt to cease your whining.

“where are you going?” you asked, your tone a little higher pitched than usual.

“home.” she answered with a face that looked like she was clawing the words out of her mouth.

“aren't you staying for breakfast?” 

“no- i..” alysa began trying to form a sentence, but she was cut off.

“how are you gonna sober up with no food?” you asked with the same whiny tone.

“but..”

“alysa.”

a long sigh from her.

“fine.”

that caused a soft smile to grow on your face.

the next thirty minutes were a blur — alysa took a shower while you prepared breakfast.

once the table was set, she sat across from you, refusing to make eye contact. 

you'd prepared her favourite breakfast, and alysa thanked you for remembering, but to you, this wasn't something you did on purpose.

you always made her the exact same breakfast when she came over because you loved hearing her little squeals of excitement every time she caught a whiff of what was being prepared. to you this was instinct, routine, something you did absent mindedly.

for the first 10 minutes, you both picked at your food until alysa broke the ice, finally speaking.

“im not gonna tell you i'm sorry, because ive said it so many times, it doesn't mean anything to you..”

a beat of silence while you processed her words and the sudden shift in topic.

“but i..i did really try to improve the things you said i should improve.”

“like what?”

“i.. cleaned my room and the rest of my apartment..actually cleaned it, not just shove things in drawers and call it a day. i even wiped the counters and stuff. i also did my homework. poorly, but i did my best. and i stopped with the parties.”

“first, i have to see it to believe it. second, if you really stopped with the parties, how did i end up picking you up wasted from some rando’s house?” 

both of you were surprised at the harsh tone your words escaped in. you weren't intending to sound like that, not when she was being so vulnerable.

it was almost like your body was trying to protect itself, acting on its own without your input. 

for a second, you wanted to reach out, to wrap your arms around her and apologize for your harsh tone.

alysa cleared her throat, her gaze averting from your eyes and towards her food.

“well, you..you can check my grades, my room..i..you can even ask my friends, and they'll tell you that the party you picked me up from was the only party i attended since we fought.”

your glare burned into her forehead, disbelieving and full of frustration yet a want to believe her words.

a few moments of silence passed till alysa spoke again.

“i want to show you that i can be better.”

“i know you can be better..will you be better?”

“yes. please. just let me show you.”

“fine.”

you felt bad that you were giving her this treatment. you didn't like the words that came out of your mouth, you didn't like your voice, and you didn't like how alysa winced every time you opened your mouth.

                                  ⋆⋆⋆

alysa fumbled with her keys and unlocked the door. her hands were trembling, her body language and tense facial expression mirroring the fear and anxiety she was holding.

at first, you thought you walked into the wrong apartment.

the blinds were open — the sun illuminating the entire area, the usually cluttered chairs and tables now free of unnecessary weight (save for your hoodie she borrowed months ago still on the sofa), the counters shining, and the place filled with fresh air. 

nothing about this place said “alysa’s”. the last time you were here, it was dark, messy and suffocating. 

“oh wow,” you stammered. “i didnt think you were being serious.”

alysa remained silent, holding her own hands in a cowered stance.

“you did this?”

“i..yeah.”

you walked through the rooms. 

her cats came rushing to you.

“oh wow, you actually groomed them too.”

“i did.”

“damn, lys.” 

a slight smile tugged at her lips when she heard the nickname.

“well, okay..you got me there. i’m proud of you..i hope you keep this up.”

“i’ll try my best.”

“you better.”

you sigh and walk out of her bedroom, the door creaking behind you.

you clutch onto your bag, looking down to your feet and then up at the front door.

“i gotta go.”

“what?” alysa stammered.

“i have to go..got some chores.” lying through your teeth, trying to remove yourself from the uncomfortable atmosphere.

“wait– stay, we need to talk.” alysa insisted.

“what is there to talk about?” you questioned.

“i think you deserve some closure.”

“i have all the closure i need.”

“you think that but you really don't.”

“how are you gonna tell me what i need?”

“y/n.” her tone was whiny, eyes glossy and pleading with you. 

alysa letting go of her dignity like this was a rare sight.

“you better make this worth my time.”

“just let me explain myself. if you choose to stay, great, and if you dont, well..its your choice.” her voice faltered at the “and if you dont”, and you pretended to not notice it. 

you pretended the frown that grew on her face didn't bother you. how her shoulders being slumped instead of carried with confidence didn't overwhelm you with guilt, knowing you were the reason alysa was reduced to nothing but a pathetic, pleading mess.

the soft cushion on the sofa had the same cover you bought her months ago. it had a cat that resembled one of her past cats, and it threw you back to when you first gifted it to her, how she pretended not to care about it much, but she still softened and gave you a hug.

now you want to be in her embrace again, to let yourself melt and not let the outside world bother you any longer. 

you sat down, holding the cushion, tracing little patterns on it.

alysa hesitated to sit close to you, her mouth opening without anything coming out.

“sit.”

she sat next to you, her knee bumping yours.

“sorry.”

“dont apologize.”

alysa wasn't the kind to apologize for seemingly small things like bumping into you. this was a first.

“ive been an asshole to you and to everybody else.”

“you have.”

she sighs, her chest aching at your affirmation.

“i don't get it. you come over, and you hold me like i'm the most precious thing in the world, and the next day you're posted up on some other girl's lap. how does that work?”

“i..im just scared of getting attached. i’m scared of being let down. disappointment isn't really a thing when you didn't expect much in the first place. i was scared. i didn't know how to run from what i was feeling, i didn’t want to accept that you were starting to mean more than a fling to me.. and.. the only way i could really distract myself is parties.”

“so all those nights i begged you to stay, to try and be something with me, to commit..and you just ran off to parties. and..”

“i thought you'd leave! i thought if we got together, and i got too comfortable and you saw how i really was — obsessive, broken, complicated, you'd leave, and i would get hurt.” 

she was getting defensive, her voice raising slightly before she caught herself and lowered it, a little guilty from snapping like that.

“what makes you think that? i stayed through you hoeing around and i still tried to make something of us. you think I couldn't handle whatever else you could throw at me?”

alysa shut up at that. she realized she underestimated you. finally, she murmured: “she said the same, and she left not a month later.”

“..she?”

“my ex.”

“who?”

“there was this girl back in.. middle school,” only then did it fully hit her how stupid her whole thought process was. a small, embarrassed chuckle escaped her with the realization that this was something she should've gotten over years ago.

“she promised me she loved me as i was, that she'd stay..and when i started to get complicated, she left. and i got so attached, i really thought..this was it, i’ll marry her. when she left it broke me. i didn't let myself look at anyone how i looked at her ever again. when college rolled around, i dont know how this started, i dont know why i became this way. i promise. i'm not..i can love. i'm not completely broken.”

your heart broke a little at her confession, but your pain stood in the way of your sympathy making you forgive her and letting her off the hook. 

“you can't let a failed middle school relationship keep holding you back from forming any meaningful connections.”

“i know!” a self deprecating laugh came out of her mouth, a sheepish smile on her face.

 “i realize that now. and- and i hate how i handled this. because i care, okay? you were the only one on my mind for months, do you know how many bottles i had to down to run from my mind and find some distraction? i know this sounds insane, maybe because it really is.. but i don't want you to think that you weren't enough, or.. or that this was all surface level. i dont remember the last time i let someone hold me and kiss me like that. hell, our quick pecks were more intimate than the sex i had at random parties. my point is, if you thought you mattered to me more than others did, you were right.”

now the whole place was silent save for alysa's breath, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes.

you were at a loss of words, your mouth opening, but no sound came out of it.

“just- please, let me show you, let me prove to you that i can be better?”

“i dont understand what you're asking.”

“will you be my girlfriend?” alysa blurted out.

you could've sworn your heart skipped a few beats, followed by your eyes widening.

“h-huh?” you stammered, giving her a confused look.

“you heard me. will you be my girlfriend?”

“you're serious?”

“yes.”

“..girlfriend.. like.. you're willing to commit…?” 

the incredulous tone your words were spoken in made alysa wince and question how lowly you thought of her.

“yes. i'm..willing to do all the cheesy stuff, to do all the communication, the dates, the hard parts.. i’ll do it all if you let me.”

you bit your bottom lip, gauging her sincerity. 

this was all you've ever wanted. what you've been begging for for the past couple months, and now it's being handed to you. 

you couldn't tell if she was being serious, you couldn't tell if there was some ulterior motive behind this.

“please? just one chance?”

sigh.

“i’ll be your girlfriend.” 

alysa perked up at that, her smile instantly growing, her hand reaching up to rest on your thigh without her even realizing.

“really??”

“yes, really.”

she no longer tried to suppress the tears that were threatening to wash over her cheeks.

her arms came up to wrap around your neck, burying her head in the crook of your neck, her tears forming a wet spot on your shirt.

you crumbled, fingers flying up to play with her hair in a soothing motion.

“you're being serious?” she asked between sobs.

“yes, lysa, i’m being serious.”

her legs moved to wrap around your waist, straddling you as she made herself comfortable.

“god i’ve missed you.”

“i missed you more.”

having her in your arms like this felt weird. 

this was the first time you held her knowing she was yours, that she belonged in your arms and your arms only. 

obviously, alysa still had to prove that she would keep her word. 

she had to keep cleaning her place and taking proper care of her cats, keep parties on the low, stay loyal to you. 

she gave you a spare key to her apartment so you could check on her whenever you'd like.

sometimes you'd catch her staring at the alcohol on the shelves, clearly fighting with herself not to grab one by the neck and down it in a minute.

you'd catch her struggle to cope with her emotions, sitting across you and relearning how to form a sentence that would express the emotions she was experiencing instead of the ones she thought you could digest with ease.

she would invite you to every party she went to and would be glued to your side the entire time, and every time a girl approached her, her heart was heavy with guilt when she saw the insecurity in your eyes. 

alysa was still witty, nonchalant on the surface and complicated to understand, but this time she was willing to cooperate, to help you understand her and show you all the love she held for you in her heart. 

her gifts turned from bribes to displays of affection, her attention no longer felt like something you had to work for, and her arms were your safe space instead of something you feared would never be yours. 

each time she saw doubt creep onto your face, she made sure it disappeared as quickly as it came. 

each time you seeked reassurance, she gave it to you, no questions asked. 

her arms held you tight against her with love and care, gently squeezing you to let you know that you still belonged in her arms.