#danny rambles

It starts with a message.

No greeting. No punctuation. Just a photo.

The porch.

Sun-drenched and colorless, like an old bruise. The same cracked step you once tripped over as a kid. The plastic chair that never matched anything, still stationed by the door like it’s waiting for someone who never came home. The paint is peeling, the sky is pink, and the caption—if it can be called that—says only:

“Your uncle’s birthday is Saturday. Everyone’s coming.”

No “how have you been?” No “I miss you.”

Just a date, a place, a presumption.

You feel it in your gut first — the slow tightening, the curl of something cold and sour deep in your stomach. Then your hands, suddenly unsure of what they’re holding. Then your chest, which seems to forget how to do the simple work of breathing.

You haven’t heard from your mother in four years. Not on your birthday. Not when you moved cities. Not when you were hospitalized for that emergency appendicitis scare, when Joaquin slept on the fold-out chair and held your hand like it was the only real thing in the world.

You reread the message anyway. As if repetition will unlock context, will conjure some hidden line beneath the silence. It doesn’t. It just stings in new ways.

Joaquin finds you like that — still, back half-turned toward the window, the dying light soft around you like dust. Your phone dangles from one hand. The other is clenched into a fist you hadn’t realized you were making.

He doesn’t speak at first. Just steps into your space with a gentle kind of gravity. When he finally does, his voice is soft, careful, like he’s brushing snow from your shoulders.

“Querida… what’s going on?”

You hand him the phone, and with it, a silence you don’t know how to fill. He reads the message once, brow furrowed — not in confusion, but understanding. Like he already knows this isn’t just about a party, or a porch, or your uncle. It’s about them. About her.

He doesn’t ask the obvious questions. He doesn’t need to. He just lowers the phone, places it on the table between you, and looks at you like he sees every shattered piece you’re pretending not to step on.

“She hasn’t reached out since graduation, right?” he asks quietly.

You nod, voice brittle. “Not a word.”

“...She didn’t even ask how you’ve been.”

“Why would she?” You laugh, but it’s the kind that folds in on itself. “It’s not about me. It never is. She just wants me to show up. To prove to everyone that I’m still the good daughter. Still obedient. Still theirs.”

Joaquin takes a slow step forward. His gaze never leaves yours.

“Do you want to go?”

You exhale through your nose, hard. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I want to know why she’s texting me now, but I don’t want to walk into that house and become someone I spent four years clawing my way out of.”

“You’re not her anymore,” he says. “You won’t ever be her again.”

You blink fast. Something behind your ribs tightens.

“I thought I’d stopped hoping for this,” you murmur. “For her to say something. Anything. But the second she does, it’s like I’m sixteen again, waiting for her to notice I’m bleeding.”

Joaquin doesn’t flinch. He’s a solid thing in a room that suddenly feels paper-thin.

“I want to tell her to fuck off,” you say quietly. “But I also want to… see. Just see. If maybe something’s different.”

He nods, like he’s already made up his mind. “Then let’s go.”

You stare at him. “What?”

“I mean it,” he says. “Let’s go. We’ll drive down. You won’t have to walk through the door unless you want to. You don’t have to smile. You don’t have to stay. You can leave the second your chest gets tight. I’ll have the car running. You just squeeze my hand, and we’re gone.”

You hesitate. The thought of it makes your skin crawl — and ache. Both at once.

“I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“And maybe you’ll never be,” he says, gently. “Maybe that’s okay. But maybe… just maybe… this gives you the power again. To walk in on your own terms. To face it — not for them, but for you. So that you get to decide whether there’s anything left to heal, or whether the wound’s better left closed.”

You press your forehead to his chest. He smells like wind and soap and something warm you don’t have a name for. He wraps his arms around you like he’s been waiting to, like he’s been carrying this weight in halves until you were ready to set it down.

“You’ll stay close?”

“I won’t leave your side.”

“And if it all goes bad?”

“Then we get tacos and drive home with the windows down and talk about anything but this.” He leans down, presses his lips to your temple. “You’ve already survived worse, mi amor. Now you get to choose what kind of ending you want.”

You nod into his shirt, the fabric damp where your cheek rests. And for the first time in hours — maybe longer — the fear doesn’t feel like it owns you.

“Okay,” you whisper.

And he doesn’t say are you sure?

He just says, “I’ve got you.”

---

You shouldn’t have come. You knew it before you knocked, before your mother’s eyes flicked past you like you were a guest she hadn’t expected. But you came anyway.

The house is loud — not with joy, but with posturing. Dishes clatter in the kitchen. The TV blares something no one’s watching. Laughter bubbles in awkward, lopsided bursts. People you haven’t seen since you were seventeen glance at you like you’re something that grew back wrong.

You try to breathe, try to smile like it doesn’t sting.

Joaquin stands beside you, tense and watchful, like he knows something’s about to go wrong. And then it happens.

Your cousin — the one who used to lock you out of your room and then gaslight you about it — sidles over with a red cup in his hand and too much amusement on his face.

“Well damn,” he says. “Didn’t think you’d show your face again. Thought you’d finally run off and made a mess of your life, like everyone expected.”

You freeze.

The room doesn’t.

Someone snorts. Someone else shifts awkwardly, but no one intervenes. The moment hangs — sharp and slicing, like cold metal between your ribs.

You barely open your mouth to respond.

But Joaquin steps forward — fast.

And he explodes.

“What the hell did you just say?”

The room goes dead quiet.

Your cousin flinches, stumbling back half a step. “Relax, man—”

“No, you don’t get to say that and pretend it’s a joke,” Joaquin growls, voice like fire under pressure. “You don’t get to act like you weren’t part of making her life hell and then laugh in her face when she has the guts to walk back in here.”

“Jesus, calm down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Joaquin snaps, eyes blazing. “You think it’s funny she stayed away this long? You think it’s funny she left without anything? You want to talk about expectations? She expected basic goddamn decency and never got it from any of you.”

Your heart’s hammering in your chest.

No one speaks.

Even your mother has gone pale, mouth parted like she might say something — but nothing comes out.

Your cousin’s still holding his cup, frozen mid-drink.

And then Joaquin turns to you, breath still fast, hands clenched.

“We’re done here.”

His voice isn’t loud now. It’s sharp. Final.

You’re still too stunned to react, so he reaches for your hand, warm and strong, and laces your fingers through his with a fierce kind of tenderness.

He’s practically vibrating with fury as he pulls you gently toward the door.

And just as you pass your mother, she says — quietly, sharply — “You didn’t have to cause a scene.”

Joaquin stops.

Slowly, he turns, eyes blazing.

“You should’ve stopped them before I had to.”

Then he opens the door and walks you out, hand tight in yours, breath shaking.

Outside, the cold air hits like a slap. You make it to the car before the adrenaline catches up and your knees go weak.

Joaquin’s already helping you in, carefully, silently. But the second the door closes, he punches the steering wheel once — not hard enough to break it, just enough to let it out.

---

The car hums softly around you, a gentle thrum like the steady pulse of a heart trying to slow down after running a long race. The night outside presses close, thick with the scent of wet asphalt and distant jasmine, the world muted in the lull between storms.

Inside, the silence stretches, not brittle but heavy and tender — a cocoon stitched together from the aftermath of everything that just happened. Joaquin’s hand rests over yours, warmth seeping through skin like a whispered promise.

He chews the inside of his cheek, eyes dark pools reflecting the streetlight’s pale glow. His breath catches, a low catch almost too soft to hear.

“You okay?” you ask, voice small, fragile, like breaking glass held in careful hands.

He turns toward you, the shadowed lines of his face softening. “You’re the one who just faced hell,” he says, voice rough with raw edges. “I’m just the guy who lost it watching you get hurt.”

You try to smile, but it trembles like a candle flame in a draft.

He reaches out, fingers gentle, tracing slow, deliberate circles on the back of your hand — a slow rhythm meant to anchor you back to the moment, back to safety.

The car slows, and he pulls onto a side street, a stretch where the city noise fades into a whisper. He kills the engine, leaving the world to settle around you in a hush.

His eyes find yours, steady and fierce in the low light.

“Hey,” he breathes, voice threading through the silence like a song. “I’m sorry. For yelling. For breaking loose. I just… I saw the way they looked at you. Like you were a ghost haunting a house they’d rather forget.”

Your throat tightens. You swallow the ache that blooms there.

“I wanted to protect you,” he says, voice trembling just enough to betray the storm inside. “Because you didn’t deserve any of that. None of it.”

You nod, blinking back the shadows gathering at the corners of your eyes.

“You think they even remember what it’s like? To care?” you whisper.

He shakes his head, slow and sure. “No. They don’t deserve you. Not even a fraction of the light you carry.”

Your breath falters. A single tear escapes, trailing warmth down your cheek.

Without thinking, he lifts his hand to your face, fingers brushing the tear away like it’s a secret he’s been waiting to find. His touch is soft, reverent, as if you’re a fragile flower unfolding after winter.

“I wanted to defend you,” he murmurs, voice breaking with the weight of it, “but I know sometimes you just want to disappear instead.”

You let out a shaky laugh, the sound fragile and raw. “Yeah… sometimes.”

He leans closer, forehead resting against yours, breath mingling in the small space between you.

“You’ll never have to disappear again,” he promises, voice a vow, a benediction. “I won't let you.”

You close your eyes, the world narrowing down to the steady beat of his heart beneath your palm, the soft brush of his breath, the sanctuary in his arms.

And finally, you let go.

Your tears fall slow and quiet, the kind of sorrow that fills empty spaces and leaves behind something soft — a healing.

He wraps you close, fierce and tender all at once, as if holding together every cracked piece of your soul.

“You didn’t overreact,” you sniffle into his hoodie, voice still thick.

He exhales, the tension unraveling in a slow, shuddering sigh.

“Good,” he says. “Because I was ready to burn that whole damn house down.”

You laugh again — this time, genuine — shaky but real.

“I believe you,” you say, voice trembling with something like hope.

He pulls back just enough to look at you, thumbs stroking your cheeks with a reverence that humbles you.

“I love you,” he says, voice hoarse and fierce and soft all at once. “You know that, right?”

You nod, words lost but heart loud.