⋆ i was young and sweet, and then something happened.
truck driver!sevika x female!reader. men & minors dni.
synopsis: you're back home after burning out your new york dreams. mississippi has been waiting for you and comes with the old and new—including the delivery driver that frequents your mother's boutique.
cw: truck driver!sevika, female!reader, age gap, older woman/younger woman, reader is in her twenties, modern!au, unresolved sexual tension, slow burn, strangers to lovers, returning to the hometown you worked to escape from, complex mother daughter relationships, non-sexual intimacy, mentions of grief and loss of a loved one, open (but very positive) ending.
notes: i hate this, just a bit. but please, please tell me what you think. send long asks, even. i love them. i love you.
It's the rat that skitters over your foot that sends you home.
You'd just climbed out of the endless well that is the New York subway, steadfastly avoiding eye contact with the man rocking back and forth right outside the stairwell. You feel a sense of shame as you refuse to look at him, a horrible aching feeling that speaks to you losing sight of your roots and where you came from.
Your most recently created playlist was blasting—aptly titled "songs that are what's wrong with me"—when you'd felt it. A heavy brush against your ankle and across the top of your foot. You looked down, almost in slow motion, and watched as the plump body of a well-fed city rat finished its travel across the top of your square-toe black flats.
You resist the urge to scream, cautious of seeming just as crazy as the man you keep refusing to look at. You hear him laugh and it makes you press your lips together until there are only two thin lines on your face. You contemplate dragging your heels out of your bag but you still have at least three blocks to go and you're tired and so sick of it all.
A billboard flashes across from you as you turn the corner: a woman's bright face with bleach-white teeth advertising a new aesthetic clinic that just opened approximately two streets away from where you live. You feel insane.
You open your phone and buy the plane ticket.
On the plane ride home, you dream of Talladega County.
You haven’t been in years. The last time was when your mother took you on a “girls’ trip” where she told you that she didn’t love your father anymore, that she was leaving him. You had started crying, begging to go home because you could feel somewhere deep in your gut that he’d be gone by the time you came home. She told you he wouldn’t, promised you.
You stared into her face, her features shadowed by the halo of the sun behind her head. She was tanned and beautiful—and everything you believed in. You’d calmed down, called him to tell him you loved him. He had said it back, his voice weary.
He was gone when you got home, somewhere out in the thickets of Alabama where you had been only moments ago.
In the dream, you stand in the fold in a tiny triangle bikini. It’s blue, but sometimes pink, and you have long black wet hair streaking all over you. Behind you, there's a field and dilapidated shacks—or maybe they’re houses only broken down by shame and time.
In front of you hovers a buck with tall antlers. He's come and found you, pushes forward until his face is against your stomach and your upper body is in between his antlers like a sun. It's only this close that you can see the other antlers trapped on top of his, dripping blood off the bone.
He's killed something. One of his own, maybe he’s gutted you. You begin to twirl in a circle as he herds you, Ethel Cain's throaty vocals invading you spiritually through your wired headphones until you settle your chin on a shotgun (when did that appear?) and look back at the buck.
But beyond him now. Someone is looking at you. Come to me. You don’t know which of you is asking, including the animal.
When you land, you text your mother about your dream. She tells you to go see her psychic, that you can drive there straight after she picks you up. You’re not here yet? You text her. She doesn’t respond. You don’t check her location. You were never one for seeking answers.
Welcome to Mississippi, the flight attendant tells you as you step out of the door. Her voice is chipper and bright, someone who clearly doesn’t see anything past the palm trees and pale Marlboro Lights. Thank you, you respond, for getting me here. You wonder if it's a little too intense to say thank you in this manner to someone who hasn’t talked to you for the entire flight.
But her eyes soften and maybe she sees something, maybe she knows that in your blood runs the waters of the Gulf Coast. Her mouth parts and out comes, welcome home.
🪽♱
Your mother is waiting outside baggage claim, leaning against her faded blue Cadillac—the one your grandmother always said would be the death of her. Her hair is different now, lighter where it used to be the same shade as yours, cut in a bob that frames her face and makes her look younger than her fifty-three years. You feel a sense of irritation at the change in color as if she’s taken something away from you. As much as she could annoy you, you loved that the resemblance between you used to be uncanny.
When she sees you, she straightens, takes one last puff of her bubblegum pink vape before tucking it into her denim shorts’ pocket, and bounces on the tips of her white sandals. You can see slight redness along her brow this close to her, and needle marks from where she’s gotten her “preventative” Botox. It’s only a matter of time before she starts suggesting you join the club.
"Look what the Gulf dragged in," she says, arms outstretched.
You let her sweep you into a hug, her perfume a perplexing mix of caramel and cinnamon. Maybe it’s the tightness of her hug, the silent admission that she missed you (because you never spoke about your feelings to one another) that causes your face to crumple and your body to shake. Your mother coos, the sound throaty from years of smoking, and rocks you back and forth. You’re blubbering about that fucking rat in New York, but she just knows you need this.
Somehow, she gets you into the car and stuffs a stick of celery into your mouth, depositing a tiny tub of ranch and breaded chili wings into your lap. The drive from Gulfport to Bay St. Louis takes you along the coast, windows down despite the July heat. Salt air whips your hair around your face as you stare out at the water. It's different here—softer somehow than the aggressive Atlantic you'd grown accustomed to. The Gulf looks like it's breathing, with gentle rises and falls that match the rhythm of your chest.
"Angels is doing well," your mother says, referring to the boutique as if it's a third person in the car. You nod to show your listening, your front teeth break apart the body of another piece of celery. "Tourist season's good this year. The snowbirds are spending money."
You nod, watching pastel-colored houses roll by, their wrought iron balconies and weathered shutters telling stories of hurricanes survived and summer loves forgotten. Spanish moss hangs from live oaks like old women's hair, swaying in the breeze off the water.
"Shit, we need to stop for gas. I knew I should’ve filled her up before leaving," your mother announces, turning into a station that looks like it hasn't changed since 1975. The sign—Silver Cove Gas & Grocery—flickers in the late afternoon sun, neon just beginning to glow against the darkening sky. "Get me a Diet Coke, would you? And whatever you want." Yeah, you think, on my card.
As you step out of the car, the humidity wraps around you like a blanket, familiar in its weight. The feeling makes you think of your childhood best friend Ella, a broad-shouldered girl who used to come up behind you and hug you with a quarter of her true strength. Last time you checked (you’re always checking) she was a professional athlete, free from this town.
The concrete beneath your feet is warm, and for a moment, you stand still, feeling the heat rise through the soles of your worn down ballet flats. It's nothing like New York pavement, which always feels cold somehow, even in summer. Maybe this is what makes you unlock your phone, find Ella’s Instagram, and send her a message. She probably won’t even see it, given she’s verified and has over two million followers.
The bell above the door chimes as you enter, and the cashier—a teenager with braces and freckles—nods in recognition. "You're Nina’s girl," she says. Not a question. It doesn’t need to be. You have her face.
You're picking up your mother's Diet Coke from the cooler, and grabbing a Cola Lacaye for yourself, when you hear it—the deep rumble of a diesel engine pulling into the lot. Through the window plastered with faded beer advertisements and fishing tournament flyers, you see it: a massive black truck, clean despite the dusty roads, commanding the space around it like it owns the whole town. Maybe it does. It’s been a long time since you were back anyway.
The driver's door opens, and a pair of heavy boots hit the ground first. Then legs in well-loved jeans, and finally, her—tall, with arms corded with muscle and dark hair pulled back in a short, practical braid. A scar runs down one side of her face, but it doesn't diminish her beauty; instead, it feels like a warning. This woman has survived things you can't imagine.
She walks steadily toward the store, and as she reaches for the door, your eyes meet through the glass. For a second, neither of you moves. Something passes between you—recognition, maybe, though you've never seen her before. Or perhaps it's just that you both seem out of place here, returned to a world that's both familiar and foreign.
The bell chimes again, and she's inside, the small space suddenly feeling smaller. She nods to the cashier—"Evening, Annie"—and heads straight for the cooler where you're still standing, Diet Coke clutched forgotten in your hand.
"Excuse me," she says, her voice lower than you expected, rougher. When you don't move immediately, one corner of her mouth quirks up. "Unless you're planning to buy all of those."
You step aside and say, “I was thinking about it.”
She smiles fully as you continue watching as she reaches for a Diet Coke of her own and a package of cream-filled cookies in a blue wrapper. As she moves past you toward the counter, you catch a whiff of diesel and something sweeter—maybe vanilla, maybe just the sea.
"You're new," she says over her shoulder.
"I'm home," you correct her, surprising yourself with how right it feels to say it.
She smiles again, and this time you smile back. You stand in line behind her, your mind following the thick lines of her back as she reaches for her wallet and counts out some bills. Soon enough, she’s finished, and you pay for your own things before slipping out the door. Your mother waves giddily from the driver’s seat and you laugh a little, slightly touched at how glad she is to see you over and over again.
“You’re Nina’s daughter?” that gravelly voice asks and you turn your head to look over your shoulder.
“Yeah,” you say, an eyebrow raised in confusion.
“Your mom’s shop just got added to my delivery route. I see her every Thursday evening,” the woman says. “Guess I’ll be seeing you too.”
“Um, guess so,” you push out, your chest warming at the way she’s gazing down at you. She’s taller by a few inches, but the inches matter. You’re used to being the tallest around.
She eyes you for a minute longer before making her way back to her truck. You watch until she’s back in the cab, then walk quickly to the Cadillac. As you slide in, your mother presses a kiss to your temple in thanks for her Diet Coke.
“I see you’ve met Sevika,” she comments. “Strange little woman.”
“Little is not the word I would use to describe her.”
Your phone vibrates with a notification and you check it. It’s a rather sweet response to your Instagram DM. Hey, wow! This was a pleasant surprise. I’m doing great, how are you? You still look the same.
Sorry? You type back without thinking.
Lolll, don’t apologize. It’s not a bad thing. You always had a timeless face.
Maybe you aren’t forgettable. At the same time you receive the message, your mother laughs.
🪽♱
"Absolutely not," your mother says, setting down her wine glass firmly on the kitchen counter. "You're supposed to be resting, [Name]."
You tilt your head, watching the condensation gather on her glass. The kitchen is the same as you remember—blue and white tiles with little anchors, ceiling fan that clicks when it spins too fast, the refrigerator covered in magnets from places neither of you have actually been.
"I need something to do, Mom. I didn't come back to sit around and count the ceiling tiles."
"What you need is to recover. Work is what made you break down and come back in the first place."
You sigh, picking at the label on your beer bottle. "That was different. That was sixty-hour weeks with a boss who thought weekends were a suggestion." You look up at her. "I’m afraid despite my best attempts, I’ve been corporate-pilled. I will collapse without any work. Just let me take the opening shift. You know you hate mornings anyway."
She narrows her eyes, looking so much like you it's unsettling. "Only mornings?"
"Only mornings," you agree. "I'll have the place ready when you come in at noon. Or one."
Her eyes narrow at the extra hour you’ve added on, but she looks away as she considers.
"Fine," she relents. "But if I see those little crease lines between your eyebrows coming back, I'm firing you."
“Harsh,” you quip, but you squeeze her shoulder as you get up to begin washing the dishes.
Angels by the Sea sits at the corner of Harbor Drive and Magnolia Street, a converted Victorian house painted the palest shade of pink, like the inside of a seashell. The sign—written in your great-aunt’s handwriting and preserved all these years—hangs from wrought iron brackets above the porch. Two white rocking chairs flank the entrance, inviting passersby to sit and watch the Gulf waters in the distance. You think they shouldn’t sit down. People tend to get stuck here.
You unlock the front door at 8:15, earlier than necessary, but there's something about the morning light filtering through the stained glass transoms that feels sacred. Inside, the boutique is a carefully curated treasure trove: whitewashed wooden floors, antique display cases salvaged from a New Orleans department store, and clothes hanging from driftwood racks your grandfather made decades ago.
Nothing has really changed and the way the store seems to be waiting for you lances through your chest like a harpoon.
The inventory is eclectic—sundresses in gauzy fabrics, handmade jewelry from local artisans, vintage-inspired swimwear, and the salt scrubs your mother makes in her kitchen. Everything smells faintly of spice and sea salt.
You feel the urge to break down again, but you refrain. Instead, you slide off your converse and socks, let your bare feet rake in the unswept gravel from travelers’ boots as you flip the sign to "Open" and turn on the small record player behind the counter. You sort through the stack of vinyl until you find it—A dusty handmade pink vinyl, titled “Unreleased.” As the needle drops and "Dust Bowl (Demo)" fills the space, you can't help but sway, your hips finding the rhythm naturally.
Ethel’s rich voice singing about blood-stained blondes feels right for this moment—this return to something that feels like yourself. You let your arms drift above your head, spin once in the empty shop, bare feet sliding across the whitewashed floors. No one's watching, and there's a freedom in dancing without worrying about looking graceful or composed.
You twirl and twirl until you stop with a hand clutching over your stomach, dashing madly to the small employee restroom in the back to vomit into the rusted sink. You scrub it for the next twenty minutes with bleach, humming along as the record still spins. For the first time since stepping off the plane, you feel your shoulders drop.
Your outfit today—a simple white spaghetti-strap tank and low-rise jeans you found in your old closet—feels like a revelation after years of pencil skirts and blazers. You'd forgotten what it feels like to have your collarbones exposed to the air, to feel fabric that moves with you rather than constrains.
When the song ends, you're slightly breathless and barely smiling. You can't remember the last time you danced in New York—maybe at some corporate happy hour where movement was performative rather than joyful. You try not to think about it for too long, lest the sadness finds you again.
The morning passes quietly—a few early tourists browse without buying, a regular picks up a special order perfume, and you rearrange a display of sea glass earrings, picking a few out in between to try on. It's mindless work, but it's yours, and there's something satisfying about the way your hands remember how to tie the perfect bow on the pale green gift boxes.
The bell above the door chimes just before eleven, and you look up from the sales ledger you've been updating.
"We don't usually get deliveries until—" The words die in your throat when you see who's standing in the doorway.
Sevika fills the frame, a clipboard in one hand and a small package tucked under her arm. Today, her hair is loose around her shoulders, dark waves that catch the sunlight streaming through the windows. She's wearing a faded black t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing more of those arms that seem designed for gripping steering wheels and lifting heavy things. You notice one of them is a prosthetic, and your gaze caresses it, tracking the graffiti-like doodles alongside it. It’s as if she’s allowed a child to paint all over it.
"Usually Thursdays, I know," she says, the corner of her mouth lifting. "Had to reroute today. Accident on the causeway." Her eyes move from your face to take in the rest of you, lingering for a moment on the strip of skin visible between your tank top and jeans. "Nina usually signs for these."
"Mom’s still in bed," you reply, moving toward the counter. "I'm covering mornings while I’m around."
She nods, crossing to you and laying the clipboard down. "Signature on the bottom line." As you sign, she glances around the shop. "Nice place. Never been inside before."
"Seriously? You deliver here every week."
"To the loading dock in back," she clarifies. "Never through the front door."
You hand back the clipboard and accept the package, your fingers brushing hers in the exchange. Her skin is warm and slightly rough.
“God, that’s awful. When I was younger, we used to give the drivers something sweet for the road, sometimes savory.”
“Yeah, well,” Sevika sighs. “People got creepier, meaner. Women got wiser. I’m fine without a treat if that means my customers feel safer.”
Your eyes soften minutely at that, and she notes the way you look down, your lashes brushing your cheek gently as if not to spook yourself.
"You settling back in okay?" she asks, and there's something in her tone that suggests genuine interest rather than small talk.
"It's... an adjustment," you admit. "But this helps." You gesture around the boutique. "It's quiet here."
"Too quiet for some," she says. "That why you left in the first place?"
The question is direct, almost intrusive, but she asks it without judgment. Just curiosity.
"Partly," you say, surprised at your own honesty. "I wanted to see what else was out there. Had dreams for a big life."
"And did you? See what else was out there?"
You think about the rat, the subway, the billboard with the too-white teeth. "I saw enough. Then life got…too big."
She nods as if this makes perfect sense to her. "Well." She taps her clipboard against her thigh. "Guess I'll be seeing you mornings now instead of your mother."
"Guess so."
She turns to leave but pauses at the door. "You know, there’s nothing wrong with trying something and it no longer being what you want."
"I wish someone told me that before now," you say quietly.
"I’m saying it now." Her eyes flick down to your outfit and back up. "Have a good day…"
“[Name],” you supply.
“[Name],” she repeats. “You seem like a sweet girl. Those big places? They tend to lure you in, then swallow you up. From the looks of it, you gave it all you got. And in some ways, you won the fight. You made it back home.”
Before you can respond, she's gone, the bell announcing her departure as clearly as it did her arrival. Through the window, you watch her walk back to her truck, the confident stride of someone who knows exactly who she is and where she's going. Maybe she could keep you on the path.
You look down at yourself—at the simple clothes that feel more like you than anything you've worn in years—and breathe in. Maybe she’s right. Maybe you didn’t fail. Maybe this was the true mission.
Or maybe, you think as you watch Sevika's truck pull away, there was no mission. Only the decisions you made.
🪽♱
It continues the same way for a while.
You see her in the mornings, and when you do, you talk more. Spend less time inside of yourself. The days bleed into one another like watercolors on damp paper—pink sunrises giving way to white-hot afternoons, then purple dusks that settle over the Gulf like a bruise. Through it all, Sevika arrives with the steadiness of tides, her presence an anchor in your drifting days.You feel more alive, less like a child with their face toward the wall.
You start collecting moments like shards of glass: the way morning light catches in the joints of her prosthetic. How she smells like motor oil and salt air and something sweeter underneath. The low rumble of her laugh when you say something unexpectedly sharp. You hoard them, these fragments, turning them over in your mind at night while ceiling fans spin shadows across your childhood bedroom. Sometimes you start crying, not understanding why its so difficult to allow yourself to want this.
There's something almost holy in the ritual of her arrival—the bell above the door, the heavy tread of her boots, the weight of her gaze finding yours across the shop. You're twenty-something and already tired of a world that promised more than it gave. She's forty-something—maybe you should ask—and somehow both weathered and unwavering, like the cypress trees that survive hurricane after hurricane.
You learn she lives out past the old lighthouse in a boathouse painted midnight blue. You ask her if she’s lonely. She takes a long sip of her Diet Coke, looks at you for a second too long, then says no. That the prosthetic came after an accident offshore—something with machinery and poor timing and the sort of pain that changes a person forever. That she keeps a three-legged cat named Commander who sleeps on her chest at night. That she has nightmares about drowning despite knowing how to swim since before she could walk.
You learn about her makeshift family, about Jinx and the way she and Sevika sort of fell together after some job they’d done in the military had blown out. We were mercenaries, she lets slip and you raise a brow in surprise. Are you supposed to be telling me that? You ask. Nope, she says, popping the ‘p’. You laugh.
She talks about Isha, the little runaway they found rooting around in their shed. Isha, who they adopted. Isha who got sick. Isha’s who’s gone.
“Jinx didn’t take it well,” Sevika says and you hold her hand. “She left, went somewhere. Called me to tell me she couldn’t come back. Told me—told me loved me. Took on some job and…”
You know what she’s about to say next, and you brace for it. You still flinch.
“Blew up. That’s what they said. I think she gave herself a way out.”
You tear up but manage to tell her about your dad. She strokes your back as you cry about the way he left, about how he’s well and alive and newly married. How the two of you are Facebook friends but never speak.
She learns about your failed escape, about the way New York chewed you up and left you hollow. About how sometimes you wake with your heart racing, convinced you're back in that cramped apartment with the subway rattling your windows. About the recurring dream of the buck with blood-soaked antlers, how he's started appearing with Sevika's face, her dark eyes watching you from between points of bone.
It's a Thursday in late July when something breaks open between you. The air hangs heavy with coming rain, pressing against windows like something desperate to get in. You've spent the day rearranging displays, moving in slow circles to music that feels like church—Ethel's voice coating the empty shop in honey and ash.
The day has stretched too long, customers sparse in the gathering storm. You're supposed to be closing, but instead you're dancing alone, barefoot on whitewashed floors, arms raised toward the ceiling fan as if in supplication. "American Teenager" fills the space, and you're spinning with your eyes closed when the bell chimes.
You stop mid-turn, eyes flying open to find Sevika standing in the doorway, rain-damp and beautiful in her severity. Water clings to her eyelashes and the sharp line of her jaw. Behind her, lightning splits the sky, illuminating her silhouette in electric blue.
"You're late," you say, breathless from dancing or from the sight of her, you can't tell which.
"Roads are flooding." Her eyes track over you—bare feet, tiny jean shorts, hair wild from spinning. Something in her gaze feels like hands on skin. "Should've been closed an hour ago."
"I got lost in it," you admit, gesturing vaguely to the record player, to yourself, to the empty shop that feels suddenly too full with her in it.
She crosses to you, boots leaving wet prints on the floor. Places a small package on the counter, but doesn't pull away. "You’re always lost in it, honey" she says, voice lower than usual.
"Yeah. I think it’s my way of staying alive." The words slip out, heavy with meaning you didn't intend but don't regret. Her eyebrows furrow, but she doesn’t respond.
Thunder crashes outside, close enough to rattle the windows. The lights flicker once, twice, then go out completely. In the sudden darkness, all you can hear is the rain, the needle skipping on the record, and Sevika's breathing, closer than you expected.
"You can say," you whisper, the words a prayer in the dark. "The streets will be underwater."
Her silence stretches long enough that you think she'll refuse. Then her hand finds yours in the darkness, flesh against flesh, warm and rough with calluses. Foolishly, you think of asking her to go swimming.
"I'll stay," she says, and the words feel like a covenant.
You find candles in the storage room, arrange them in a circle on the floor. In their glow, Sevika looks carved from shadow and stone, all sharp angles and dark depth. You bring out the emergency bottle of bourbon your mother keeps behind the counter, two little shot glasses because there are no proper glasses. Your dad got them from when he’d served back in Vietnam.
"To all the light going out," you toast, and she echoes it, eyes never leaving yours as you both drink.
The bourbon burns sweet down your throat. Outside, the world drowns, but in here, you're closer to floating.
"Tell me," she says after a while, voice rough with liquor and something else, "what are you running from? Really?"
You stare into your cup, watching amber liquid catch candlelight. "I’m not sure. I guess mainly the feeling that I've already used up all my chances," you admit. "That I'm in my twenties and already failed at the only thing I tried to be."
"And what's that?"
"Someone who matters. Someone who left a mark." You look up at her, finding her closer than before, drawn into your orbit through some gravity you don't understand. "I thought New York would make me real. Instead, it made me into a ghost. Everyone could see right through me."
She reaches out, fingers brushing your cheek, tucking hair behind your ear with surprising gentleness. Her prosthetic catches the candlelight, metal warmed to gold.
"I think a lot of New York is faking it. You’re real, and it’s hard to recognize the disingenuous when you only ever are real," she says, and the words feel like truth.
You feel something fall away inside of you, and you put down your glass before leaning forward. When her lips find yours, it's like breaking the surface after too long underneath a lake. You gasp against her mouth, hands reaching to hold yourself in the solid reality of her—fingers digging into her shoulders, sliding into her rain-damp hair.
She kisses like she does everything else: with absolute certainty, with a focus that makes the world still. Her prosthetic arm wraps around your waist, pulling you closer until you're nearly in her lap, the heat of her body burning through your thin tee.
"I've been watching you," she confesses against your throat, words pressed into skin like secrets. "Since that first day."
“Me too,” you murmur. “I watched you get in your car.”
It’s an intimate confession, and the candles gutter around you, wax pooling on the floor like offerings. Outside, the storm rages, but it's nothing compared to what’s been building inside of you. Your limbs are heavy with exhaustion, so you shift until you lie beside her on the floor, your head on her chest, listening to the steady drum of her heart.
"Are you ever going to stop driving?" you ask, voice small in the vastness of night.
Her fingers trace constellations on your bare shoulder, connecting beauty marks like stops on a roadmap. “I don’t know if I could.”
You close your eyes, breathing in the scent of her—rain and metal and skin. “Would you take me with you?”
She says nothing, and then,
“I’m not sure, baby. Will you ever be happy right where you are?”
🪽♱
Eventually, your mother asks you about her. Well, she more so asks you what’s wrong.
You weren’t aware something was wrong with you, and tell her as much. She gives you a look as she sucks a cloud of apple from her pen.
"I'm not stupid," she says, exhaling sweet vapor that curls around her face like morning mist over the bayou. "You've been floating around this house like someone cut your anchor. One minute you're singing in the shower, the next you're staring at the wall like it's showing you visions."
“Maybe they are.” She lets out a dry laugh, and you was more time picking at a loose thread on the couch—the same floral pattern that's been there since you were fifteen, though faded now where the sun hits it through the blinds. "It's nothing."
"It's that Sevika lady." Not a question. Your mother has always seen through you like water, clear enough to count the stones at the bottom.
"I don't know what we are," you admit finally, the words tumbling out like shells from a broken net. "I don’t know what I’m doing. I always know what I’m doing, Mama.”
Your mother shifts and brings you to lay your head against her chest. You close your eyes and sink inside of her skin to the best of your ability.
“She's rooted here but always moving. I came back home because I couldn't survive out there, but I don't know if I can stay forever either."
Your mother sets her vape down, tucks a strand of hair behind your ear the way she used to when you had night terrors. "Baby, there's a difference between running away and moving forward. One's about fear, the other's about growth."
The ceiling fan clicks above you, marking seconds with metallic persistence. Outside, cicadas scream their summer chorus.
"When your daddy left," she continues, eyes fixed on something beyond the window, something maybe years away, "I thought I'd never breathe right again. But then I realized I'd been holding my breath our whole goddamn marriage."
Her accent slurs around the admission, and you think about Sevika's truck disappearing down lightly flooded roads, about her callused hands on your skin in candlelight. About her question: Will you ever be happy right where you are?—that's been haunting you like a malevolent spirit.
"I think I could be happy with her," you whisper, more to yourself than to your mother. "Maybe even without her. But I don't know if it's fair to either of us that I’m unsure."
Your phone buzzes on the coffee table. Sevika's name appears—no contact photo, just her name in plain text. Delivery tonight. Meet me at Silver after your shift?
Your mother watches your face change as you read it, catches the slight upturn of your lips you can't control. "Go," she says with a sigh that's half exasperation, half fondness. "Figure it out. But remember, staying isn't the same as giving up."
You stand, watching the smoke haze around her face as she blinks up at you. It forms a murky halo around her head, so you bend and kiss her cheek. You stay there for a minute, tilting your head so that your cheeks press together and share their warmth. This close, you swear you can hear her pulse. You hope she never dies.
“I love you, Mama,” you whisper, like its some great secret. In a way it is.
She says nothing, only kisses your temple and cradles your head. You know what she’s thinking.
🪽♱
Silver Cove glows neon against the twilight sky when you pull in, your mother's Cadillac purring beneath you. The same teenager mans the register, barely looking up from her phone as the bell announces your arrival. You still tell her hello and call her by name to let her know that you see her. You grab a Diet Coke from the cooler and add a package of the cream-filled cookies you've seen Sevika buy before and a Mountain Dew.
When you step outside, her truck is there, massive and gleaming under the fluorescent lights. She leans against the hood, arms crossed, waiting. In the harsh overhead light, the scar on her face looks deeper, the lines around her eyes more pronounced. Sometimes you forget she carries a whole life before you in her bones—years of things you'll never touch or understand.
"Thought maybe you wouldn't come," she says as you approach, voice graveled with something that might be hope.
You hand her a Diet Coke, fingers brushing hers in the exchange. "Why would you think that?”
She smiles for some reason. You continue.
“I've been thinking about what you asked me. During the storm."
She takes a long sip, eyes never leaving yours over the rim of the bottle. "And?"
"I don't know if I'll ever be completely happy anywhere," you admit. "New York was crushing me, but sometimes I still wake up missing the noise. The possibility. I don’t think this could be my life forever. It couldn’t sustain me."
The night air wraps around you both, thick with moisture and the scent of gasoline. A moth batters itself against the nearest light, desperate for something that could destroy it.
"I'm not asking you to stay forever, honey," Sevika says finally. "Just asking if you can be present while you're here."
You step closer, until you can see the flex of muscle in her jaw, the pulse at her throat. "What if here doesn't have to mean one place? What if it just means wherever we both are?"
Something shifts in her expression—surprise, maybe, or recognition. She sets her drink on the hood of the truck and reaches for you, prosthetic arm cool against your skin as she draws you between her legs.
"I have routes that go to Mobile, to New Orleans. Sometimes farther," she says, her breath warm against your temple. "Doesn't mean I don't come back."
"I could go with you sometimes," you suggest, fingers tracing the tattoos that wind up her flesh arm. "See places without having to leave for good. Or you could find me halfway. Like a long-term scavenger hunt."
She laughs, the sound vibrating through your shared space. "Never thought about it like that. Being alone for so long…staying or going were the only options I saw."
“Me too,” you tell her.
Above you, stars punch through the darkening sky, more visible here than they ever were in New York. You think about constellations—how stars can be millions of miles apart but still form a picture when viewed from the right angle. You think about how scientists have heard black holes sing. Sometimes, your heart feels like a black hole. Sometimes, you sing.
"I'm scared," you confess, forehead pressed to her collarbone. "Of getting it wrong again."
Her hand—her real one—tangles in your hair, holds the back of your head like something sacred. "Getting what wrong?"
"Life. Love. Whatever this is. My daddy was a carpenter. I don’t do well without a plan, a blueprint."
Sevika tilts your face up with gentle pressure, studies you with eyes that have seen oceans rise and machinery fall. "There's no wrong way to build a life that lets you breathe, baby."
When she kisses you this time, it feels different from the thunder-charged intensity of the boutique floor. It feels like an option, a detour, rather than an escape. Like coming home to a place you're still building.
"So what now?" you ask against her lips, tasting hints of her soda and what feels like mint.
"Now…we could get in my truck and drive somewhere. It could be down the coast, could be to my place. Could be just around the block until we figure out the next step." Her prosthetic arm traces your spine, sending shivers despite the summer heat. "I'm not promising forever. Just promising to keep showing up as long as you want me to."
You think about what your mother said—about staying versus giving up. About the difference between running away and moving forward. About how sometimes growth means finding new ways to be rooted.
"I can work with that," you say, and it feels like the truest thing you've said since coming home. “But I don’t want to leave my mom just yet. We need each other right now.”
Sevika lifts you easily, sets you in the passenger seat of her truck with a gentleness that belies her strength. As she rounds the hood to the driver's side, you watch her move through the gauzy light of Silver Cove—solid and certain and somehow yours, at least for now.
The engine rumbles to life beneath you, vibrating up through your bones like a second pulse. Through the windshield, the Gulf Coast stretches dark and infinite, full of places you might go, places you might return to.
"Ready?" Sevika asks, hand on the gearshift, waiting for your answer before putting the truck in drive.
You reach across the console, lace your fingers through hers—flesh against flesh, blood against blood.
"Yeah," you say, and as the truck pulls away from Silver Cove, you feel something inside you flatline—not with the finality of death, but with the quiet understanding of choice. “Take me home, please.”
© hcneymooners.
⚚ wife tag: @s-4pphics
