A Short story by Nessa
For all intents and purposes, Willa’s apartment had never really looked like an apartment.
It looked like someone had tried to turn a library into a place to sleep.
There were books under the bed, shoved so far against the wall that getting them out meant lying flat on the floor and reaching underneath with one arm. Books beside the nightstand. On top of it. Stacked beside the sofa in crooked piles that had long since stopped pretending to be temporary.
There were even books in the kitchen.
She had no idea how those had gotten there.
The bathroom wasn’t safe either. A small stack sat beside the bathtub, including the annotated copy of Middlemarch she’d dropped into the water one winter evening.
She’d spent twenty minutes trying to dry the pages with a hair dryer.
It hadn’t worked.
A battered copy of Howl sat on her nightstand. On the Road was under the bed somewhere, beside three unfinished notebooks and a sweater she’d been looking for since November.
She’d stopped looking for the sweater.
The books were more important.
Willa loved the Beat Generation. She’d watched Kill Your Darlings enough times that she could sometimes say certain lines before the actors did. Every now and then she’d leave it playing on the little television in the living room while she slept.
The television, naturally, was sitting on top of a stack of books.
There were worse things to fall asleep to.
Words had always been easier.
People required timing.
At twenty-seven, Willa had gotten pretty good at taking up as little room as possible. She could sit at the edge of a room and go almost completely unnoticed. If a conversation got too personal, she knew how to smile, say she was tired, and excuse herself before anyone could ask what was really wrong.
She was particularly good at the Irish exit.
When someone asked how she was, she said fine.
Fine was useful.
School had been where she’d first realized she didn’t quite work the way everyone else seemed to.
Her teachers had called her unmotivated. Troubled. One had called her a bad student. Another had written wasted potential across a report.
The phrase they seemed to like best was bright, but inconsistent.
They always said the second part a little more carefully.
As though being intelligent was supposed to make the rest of it easier.
Sometimes Willa was exhausted. Sometimes she was depressed. Sometimes she couldn’t understand why getting dressed felt like climbing a mountain.
Home wasn’t good.
She didn’t have many friends.
Everyone else seemed busy with romance and parties and whatever new thing they were pretending to care about that week.
Homework felt very far away from anything that mattered.
So did grades.
She hated maths.
She still did.
Numbers made her head hurt. Sometimes her stomach too.
People weren’t much easier.
She never understood how everyone seemed to know what to say without having to think about it first. She could manage for a while. Smile when she was supposed to. Laugh half a second after everyone else.
Eventually, though, somebody would say something and she’d realize she’d been standing there too long without answering.
And one day, she stopped going to school.
There wasn’t a dramatic final day.
No slammed locker. No crying in the parking lot. No teacher chasing after her and asking where she thought she was going.
She just stopped.
She couldn’t remember exactly when it had happened. One day she’d been a student and then she wasn’t.
That happened with a lot of things in her life.
What remained was usually the doubt.
Maybe everyone had been right.
Maybe she was lazy.
Maybe she was difficult.
Maybe she’d wasted whatever intelligence she’d been given.
Depression was good at turning her fears into facts.
One unfinished manuscript meant she wasn’t a real writer.
One missed deadline meant she had no discipline.
One bad day meant she’d failed again.
A good day could be just as inconvenient. It gave her another reason to wonder whether she’d been exaggerating the bad ones.
She could argue against herself for hours.
She was a writer, technically.
At least, she wanted to be.
That distinction bothered her.
She’d been writing for years. Pages and pages of it. Stories that stopped halfway through. Sentences she loved on Tuesday and couldn’t stand by Friday. Notes in margins. Characters who appeared once and then vanished.
She had notebooks she wouldn’t let anyone touch.
Some were mostly questions.
Where am I going?
What happens if I never become anything?
What if I already am what I’m going to be?
On the page before that, she’d written:
I have no future.
Then, underneath it:
I don’t know where I’m going.
She’d stared at the two sentences for ten minutes before shutting the notebook.
They sounded too certain.
Years later, there were finally words for some of it.
“It’s bipolar disorder, Willa.”
So she took her medication.
She went to therapy.
She tried to write.
She tried to eat at normal hours and sleep enough and answer messages before they turned into embarrassing little monuments to how long she’d been avoiding people.
Some days she managed.
Other days, brushing her teeth felt like a reasonable accomplishment.
She was trying not to keep score.
She wasn’t very good at it.
At twenty-seven, she still wondered what her life was supposed to look like.
She didn’t have a finished book. She didn’t have a career that made much sense when someone asked what she did. She didn’t have a five-year plan taped to the refrigerator.
There wasn’t even anything on the refrigerator.
Nothing about her life looked particularly impressive on paper.
Sometimes it felt as though she’d written the first few pages of a book and then kept putting it down.
She looked around the apartment.
Books.
Everywhere.
She picked up Howl from the nightstand and turned it over in her hands.
The Beats made sense to her. They were messy and restless and sometimes ridiculous. They weren’t especially interested in making themselves respectable.
Willa liked that.
She liked that Howl didn’t seem embarrassed by the ugly parts.
Maybe that was what she wanted from writing too.
She wanted people who could be funny and frightened and intelligent and completely lost, sometimes all in the same afternoon. She wanted real.
She checked the clock.
She needed air.
The bridge was about fifteen minutes from her apartment.
She went there when her thoughts got too loud.
Tonight, the sky was unusually clear.
There weren’t many stars. The city took most of them, but enough had made it through that she stopped at the railing and looked up.
Willa liked stars.
Some of the light reaching her had been travelling for years. Some of those stars might already have been gone. She loved stars, particularly the idea that we were all made of stardust.
That before we were people, before we had names or histories or all the things that made us who we were, some part of us had belonged to something burning millions of light-years away.
Maybe that was why certain people felt familiar.
She liked to think that when she will eventually die, she wouldn’t disappear completely. She’d return to the universe in some small way, becoming part of the same vastness she’d spent so much of her life looking up at.
On nights like these, it made her feel less separate from everything.
Less like one small person beneath an impossibly large sky.
More like she was already a little bit of it.
For some reason, she liked that.
She hated maths but loved astrophysics. Irreconcilable truths, she thought.
She’d stopped worrying about whether every part of her had to make sense.
She liked black holes and time travel and parallel universes. Anything that made reality feel a little less fixed.
She loved Project Hail Mary, both the book and the movie. She’d watched Dark enough times that she should probably have been embarrassed.
She wasn’t.
She liked Predestination, Tenet, The Prestige, and the third Harry Potter, mostly because of the time travel.
Stories where reality could bend made sense to her.
She opened her notebook against the railing.
The page was still blank except for one sentence.
I don’t know where I’m going.
She stared at it.
Then added:
But at least I am somewhere.
She read it twice.
Then, beneath it:
That’s progress.
“Debatable.”
Willa froze.
She knew that voice.
She turned.
Hayes stood a few feet behind her.
She hadn’t heard him approach.
They’d gone to the same high school. That was it.
Different friends. Different tables at lunch. Different lives.
They’d never dated, never been friends, never shared some secret history everyone else had somehow forgotten. They’d simply occupied the same building, passing each other through its halls without ever really crossing paths.
Still, there had been the occasional look.
Across a classroom. Down a hallway. Once, she caught him watching her and looked away before she could decide what it meant. Maybe it happened once or twice more. She’d never been sure.
He was a jock, a golden boy. There was always a girl on his arm, a crowd around him, somewhere he was expected to be.
And somehow, he had the grades to go with it. He was captain of whatever team he happened to be on, the kind of student teachers remembered and everyone seemed to know.
For a second, her brain refused to put him together with the boy she’d known in school.
He wasn’t unrecognizable. Ten years had simply happened to him.
He was taller than she remembered, tan, with light brown hair the wind had made worse and both hands shoved into his black jacket pockets.
Still handsome.
Annoyingly so.
She’d thought that even when they were teenagers, though she’d rather have died than admitted it.
Hayes glanced at her notebook.
“You’ve been staring at that page for about five minutes.”
“I have not.”
“You have.”
“You were timing me?”
“I had nothing better to do.”
She looked at him.
“That sounds sad.”
“I’m aware.”
She smiled before she meant to.
He smiled back.
“Hi.”
Willa stared at him.
“Hi.”
Ten years, and somehow that was all they had.
Hi.
She almost laughed.
“This is weird.”
“Very.”
“We never talked.”
“I know.”
“Like, ever.”
“I know.”
“So why does this feel like we’re picking up a conversation?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
A beat passed.
“I’m panicking internally, if that helps.”
She laughed.
His smile widened.
“Okay,” she said. “That helps.”
They stood there for another moment.
Then Hayes nodded toward the railing.
“Can I?”
She moved over.
He came to stand beside her, leaving enough room between them to be polite.
Willa noticed anyway.
The river below them was almost black.
For a while, neither said anything. She studied him, his eyes were amber, with little flecks of gold scattered through the iris, visible even in the dark night. Stardust, she thought.
“So,” he said.
“So.”
“You’re still writing?”
She looked down at the notebook.
“Sometimes.”
“That’s vague.”
“It’s accurate.”
He smiled.
“You always answer questions like that?”
“Only the ones I don’t know how to answer.”
“Good to know.”
She glanced at him.
“You’re very observant.”
“I’ve been told.”
“By who?”
“People who were trying to flatter me.”
She laughed.
The first thing Willa realized about Hayes was that he was funnier than she’d remembered.
That annoyed her.
She’d always remembered him as handsome, popular, confident.
Funny hadn’t made the list.
“So,” he said again. “How have you been?”
Willa gave him a look.
“That is a dangerous question.”
“Why?”
“Because people usually don’t want the real answer.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
She looked back at the water.
“How about you?”
“Complicated.”
“That tells me nothing.”
“Exactly.”
She smiled.
He looked at her notebook.
“You disappeared.”
The smile slipped from her face.
“Toward the end,” he added.
She looked down.
“I dropped out.”
He turned toward her.
“You did?”
“Eventually.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Not many people did.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“I didn’t exactly make an announcement.”
He was quiet for a second.
“Why did you leave?”
Willa picked at the corner of the notebook.
“I wasn’t very good at being there.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
She appreciated that.
“Teachers thought I was wasting my potential,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Were they wrong?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Careful.”
He smiled.
“I’m kidding.”
“In all seriousness…”
He hesitated.
“I always thought you were troubled.”
Willa looked at him.
He immediately lifted his hands.
“Not in a bad way.”
“Very reassuring.”
“I mean it. I noticed you.”
“That isn’t what I remember.”
“What do you remember?”
She hesitated.
“You.”
His expression shifted.
She looked away.
“You were always surrounded by people.”
He smiled.
“That’s what everyone remembers.”
“It seemed nice.”
“Sometimes.”
“Wasn’t it?”
He looked out at the river.
“No.”
She turned toward him.
“Why?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Being surrounded by people isn’t the same as knowing them.”
Willa looked at him.
That one stayed with her.
“You don’t think people knew you?”
“I think they knew the version of me that was easiest to know.”
She smiled faintly.
“That sounds familiar.”
He looked at her.
“Does it?”
“Everyone thought I was quiet.”
“You were.”
“No.”
She turned toward him.
“I wasn’t”
She looked him up and down. Then continued.
“I just didn’t say most of what I was thinking.”
Something in his face softened.
“I’d like to know.”
She didn’t have an answer for that.
So she looked up.
The sky was still unusually clear.
“They’re disappearing.”
“The stars?”
“Yeah.”
“Morning.”
“I know.”
She looked toward the horizon.
“I don’t like when mornings interrupt things.”
He smiled.
“Fair.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Do you like stars?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“Probably the same reason you do.”
She looked at him.
“You don’t know why I like them.”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
He smiled.
“Then you’ll have to tell me.”
She thought about it.
“I like that some of them might already be gone.”
He looked at her.
“That is a little depressing.”
She smiled.
“I’m a little depressing.”
“I don’t think so.”
She looked at him.
He didn’t look away.
“I like astrophysics too,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Why?”
“You seem more like a literature person.”
“I am a literature person.”
“So you contain multitudes.”
“Apparently.”
He laughed.
She liked the sound of it.
They talked until the sky began to lighten.
Books became movies. Movies became old songs. Old songs turned into arguments about what they’d liked when they were teenagers.
Eventually they started talking about people.
About how everyone seemed to have an idea of who they were supposed to become.
About how strange it was that some people seemed to know.
Hayes admitted he didn’t.
That surprised her.
“You always looked like you knew exactly what you were doing.”
“I was acting.”
“The whole time?”
“Pretty much.”
She laughed.
“You’re telling me the golden boy was improvising?”
“Constantly.”
“That is deeply disappointing.”
“I know.”
She looked at him.
“Then what were you actually doing?”
“Trying not to look like I didn’t know what I was doing.”
She smiled.
“That sounds familiar.”
“Yeah?”
“Except I wasn’t very good at hiding it.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“You didn’t know me.”
“No.”
He paused.
“But I noticed you.”
She looked at him.
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think anyone noticed me in high school.”
“Well, I did.”
She didn’t know what to do with that.
He looked away.
“And I never told you.”
She smiled awkwardly.
“Apparently we’re both bad at communication.”
“Apparently.”
He looked back at her.
“I always thought you were beautiful, so imagine how many other things you were wrong about.”
The words caught her off guard.
Willa looked away.
“Back then?”
“Yeah.”
She was quiet.
“You never told me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“I was seventeen.”
“Fair.”
“And you looked like you’d rather stab me than talk to me.”
She laughed.
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“I was shy.”
“I know that now, I should’ve asked you out”
“Yeah right, because the lunatic emo girl and the golden boy would’ve made perfect sense together”
“What if they did?”
“You’re pushing it, I was never your type”
“You definitely were”
He smiled.
“So imagine how many other things you were wrong about”
She laughed.
“You really like that line.”
“It’s a good line.”
“It’s terrible.”
“You’re still smiling.”
She looked away.
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Somehow, they ended up talking about fate.
Hayes said he didn’t believe people were destined to find each other. Sometimes two people simply crossed paths, and afterward they made the coincidence mean more than it did.
Willa shook her head.
“Maybe meeting is fate. Everything after that is choice.”
He glanced at her.
“How so?”
“You can meet someone because you’re meant to,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re meant to stay. Maybe you become friends. Maybe you fall in love. Maybe you build an entire life together. Or maybe you spend one night talking and never see each other again.”
Hayes considered this.
“And that’s still fate?”
“Of course.”
“Even if they become strangers?”
“Yes.”
He frowned slightly.
“That sounds less like fate and more like coincidence.”
“Not if the meeting mattered.”
“And who decides whether it mattered?”
“You do.”
He smiled.
“So fate puts people in the same place, and then they decide what happens?”
“Exactly.”
“And if they walk away?”
“Then they walk away.”
“If they stay?”
“They stay.”
“And if they find each other again years later?”
Willa smiled.
“Then maybe they were given another chance.”
Hayes was quiet for a moment.
“So fate needs a little help.”
For a moment, she forgot to be careful. Her eyes stopped at his lips. He noticed and smiled before turning away from her and looking at the sky again.
“I think everyone assumes I know where I’m going. Sometimes I don’t.”
“Neither do I.”
“I know.”
“How?”
He nodded toward her notebook.
“You literally wrote it down.”
She laughed.
“Right.”
He smiled.
“I’m observant.”
“You’re annoying.”
“That’s closer to what I’ve heard.”
They both laughed.
The sky was changing quickly now. The stars were almost gone, and the buildings along the horizon had started to catch the first weak light.
Willa looked down at her notebook. Hayes followed her gaze.
“You really love writing, don’t you?”
She smiled faintly.
“It’s more than that.”
He waited.
“It’s oxygen,” she said. “I don’t know how else to explain it. When I’m not writing or reading, everything in my head gets louder.”
Her fingers moved along the edge of the notebook.
“But it suffocates me too.”
“Writing?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because I want it to be perfect.”
She laughed softly.
“Which is impossible, obviously. But that doesn’t stop me from trying.”
He sighed dramatically, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Ah, so you’re a perfectionist!”
“Unfortunately.”
She looked down at the page.
“I’ll write something and love it for five minutes. Then I’ll read it again and suddenly hate every sentence.”
“Every sentence?”
“Every word, if I’m feeling particularly dramatic.”
He laughed.
She smiled.
“It’s a controlled kind of madness.”
“I like that.”
“Of course you do.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said it almost casually.
“I write too.”
She looked at him.
“What?”
“I write.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know why that surprises me.”
“I think you do, you’ve made your opinion on me, a long time ago”
She considered what he said, then took a deep breath.
“You’re right, and i’m sorry”
“It’s okay”
He said, hesitation lingered in his voice. Willa started feeling guilty, she was giving him the same treatment people have always given her, judging without knowing. She tried again and asked;
“What do you write?”
He looked toward the river.
“What I can’t say out loud.”
She went quiet.
She knew that one.
Writing had always been where she put things she couldn’t figure out how to say anywhere else.
“I’ve read some of your work.”
Her head snapped toward him. A horrified look plastered all over her face.
“What?”
“Not recently.”
She relaxed.
“Then how?”
“Your old blog is still online.”
“Oh God.”
He laughed.
“It was good.”
“It was terrible.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I was bullied for it.”
“I know.”
She looked at him.
“You remember that?”
“Yeah.”
That surprised her more than it should have.
They stayed until the cold started getting into her hands.
Eventually Hayes glanced at his phone.
“We should probably go.”
“Probably.”
He looked at her.
“Same time next week?”
She hesitated.
She wanted to say yes immediately.
That was exactly why she didn’t.
“Okay.”
He smiled.
“Okay.”
She started walking.
“Willa?”
She turned.
“Yeah?”
He looked at her for a second.
“You’re not what I thought you’d be.”
She smiled.
“Neither are you.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
She walked away.
Three steps.
Then four.
She looked back.
He was still there.
She turned around before he could catch her.
For the next week, Hayes kept turning up in her thoughts.
His laugh.
The things he’d admitted.
The way he’d listened without trying to fix anything.
Mostly, she kept thinking about how wrong she’d been about him.
That bothered her.
It also made her curious.
She wondered what he thought about her.
That was the question she tried hardest not to touch.
She already knew what she thought about herself.
Most days, she didn’t feel like much.
She was tired constantly. Not the kind of tired sleep fixed.
She worked. She wrote when she could. She read. She answered messages. She bought groceries. She showered.
From the outside, she probably looked fine.
That was the strange part.
There were days when getting out of bed felt like negotiating.
Hayes had seen some of the worst parts without knowing what they were.
What happened if he looked closer?
What if he discovered that underneath the books and sarcasm was a woman who still didn’t know how to stay in her own life?
She wasn’t sixteen.
She was twenty-seven.
She shouldn’t have cared this much about what some man from high school thought of her.
Still, when the following week arrived, she changed her outfit three times.
Then stood in front of her closet.
“This is pathetic.”
She got dressed.
Put on her shoes.
Picked up her bag.
Then sat on the edge of the bed.
Five minutes passed.
Then ten.
She couldn’t make herself stand again.
She told herself she was nervous.
Then tired.
Then that maybe she hadn’t actually wanted to go.
That last one was easier.
She stayed home.
Hayes waited.
At first, he assumed she was late.
Then an hour passed.
Then another.
Eventually, he went home.
Willa didn’t text him.
She couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t make her feel exposed.
Sorry. I wanted to come, but I got scared.
Sorry. I spent the afternoon convincing myself you’d take one look at me and regret asking me to meet you.
Sorry. I don’t know how to believe someone could actually want me around.
She couldn’t send any of them.
So she sent nothing.
And then she disappeared.
Not for a day.
Not for a weekend.
A month.
It wasn’t because she didn’t want him.
That was the problem.
She wanted him enough to be afraid of losing him.
Eventually, Hayes stopped waiting.
Then he disappeared too.
Three months passed.
Long enough for Willa to start wondering if she’d imagined the whole night.
Long enough for the silence to stop feeling temporary.
Then, one night, she found herself walking toward the bridge again.
She hadn’t planned to go there.
She’d just kept walking.
When she reached the railing, she stopped.
The sky was clear again.
She looked up.
Then she saw him.
Hayes stood farther down the bridge, looking out over the river.
He turned.
For a moment, neither of them said anything.
Then, somehow, the only word either of them could find was the same one they’d started with.
“Hi.”
Willa smiled.
“Hi.”
Neither moved.
There were a hundred things they could have said.
Where have you been?
Why didn’t you come?
I waited.
I was scared.
I missed you.
Instead, Hayes looked at her.
“You look tired.”
She laughed softly.
“Nice to see you too.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
He nodded.
“Want coffee?”
She smiled.
“Yeah.”
And that was how they started again.
No explanation. No grand apology.
Just coffee.
For a while, it was enough.
Willa let herself believe in it.
Not completely.
They spent the night at a twenty-four-hour diner, tucked into a booth beneath the fluorescent lights, long after most of the city had gone quiet.
She had a cappuccino and he, a flat white, both of their coffees had gone cold.
Neither of them seemed to care.
They talked about school. About people they’d lost touch with. About where life had taken them after graduation.
Every now and then, Willa caught Hayes looking at her.
She pretended not to notice.
It was sometime after two when he finally said, “I was worried about you.”
She looked up.
“About me?”
“Yeah.”
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his coffee cup.
“When you disappeared.”
The word made something in her chest pull tight.
“I didn’t really mean to.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to say you weren’t bothered.”
“I was bothered.”
She looked at him.
Hayes gave a small, almost embarrassed laugh.
“I just didn’t know if I was allowed to be.”
That silenced her.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then he said, quieter, “I’d like to see you again.”
Willa’s eyes stayed on his.
“Why?”
He looked at her for a long moment before answering.
“Because I’ve been thinking about you.”
Her heart stumbled.
“And?”
“And I don’t think I’m thinking about you like a friend.”
She looked down.
“Hayes…”
“I know.” He smiled faintly. “It’s probably a little ridiculous.”
“It is.”
“I know.”
She laughed under her breath.
But neither of them looked away.
By the time they finally left the diner, it was nearly morning.
The streets were empty. The air had turned cold.
They stood outside beneath the diner sign, neither making a move toward their car.
“Well,” Willa said softly.
“Well.”
She tucked her hands into her sleeves.
Hayes looked at her.
Then at the ground.
Then back at her.
“You’re staring.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
He smiled, a little nervous.
“I’m trying to decide something.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he stepped closer.
Not enough to touch her.
Just enough that Willa had to tilt her head slightly to look at him.
For a few seconds, neither of them moved.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
She noticed.
Her breath caught.
Hayes looked back into her eyes, as if checking one last time.
Willa didn’t step away.
His hand came to rest lightly at her waist.
She could feel the hesitation in it.
Her own hand rose slowly, almost without her meaning to, and settled against his chest.
Neither of them spoke.
Then he leaned in.
Slowly.
So slowly that she felt the warmth of his breath before his lips ever reached hers.
Their mouths brushed.
Barely.
They both stopped.
Willa’s fingers curled slightly against his shirt.
Hayes didn’t move his hand.
For one suspended second, they simply stayed there, lips almost touching, neither quite willing to be the one to close the distance.
Then Willa leaned forward the smallest amount.
That was enough.
Still gentle. Still uncertain.
But this time, neither of them pulled away.
And just as their lips met, a streak of light slipped across the sky above them.
Willa pulled back, blinking.
“Did you see that?”
Hayes looked up.
A shooting star disappeared beyond the rooftops.
For a moment, neither of them said anything.
Then Hayes looked back at her.
“Guess we missed our chance to make a wish.”
Willa smiled.
“Maybe it already came true.”
He looked at her for a second longer than necessary.
Then his hand tightened gently at her waist.
Neither of them said goodnight.
Not yet.
She was falling for him.
That was probably when she should have been more careful.
“So,” he said, glancing at her. “When am I seeing you again?”
Willa smiled.
“You’re assuming there’ll be a next time.”
“There better be.”
She laughed.
“Confident.”
“Not really.”
He looked at her.
“I’m just hoping.”
Something warm moved through her chest.
She looked out over the water, then back at him.
“Tomorrow?”
His smile came slowly.
“Tomorrow.”
“At the bridge?”
“At the bridge.”
Willa nodded.
“Okay.”
The next night, the energy felt different.
Nothing had really changed.
And yet, somehow, everything had.
She didn’t even get the chance to say hi before Hayes said the words that cut straight through her.
“I don’t think we should do this.”
Willa stopped.
For a second, she just stared at him, trying to understand how they’d gone from last night to this.
“Do what?”
Hayes looked away.
“Us.”
“Maybe it’s better to let this go.”
Willa stared at him.
Something in his expression had changed.
Distance.
For a second, she thought she’d misunderstood.
“You want to let it go?”
She tried to smile.
“Why?”
She said it lightly, almost joking.
She wanted him to correct her.
He didn’t.
“Because I don’t know if this is something you actually want.”
“You disappeared on me, Willa.”
She swallowed.
“I know.”
“Months,” he said. “You were just gone. And then you show up again, and we spend the whole night together, and we have this incredible kiss and then what? Suddenly I’m supposed to pretend none of that happened?”
“I wasn’t asking you to pretend.”
“I know.” He looked at her then. “That’s the problem.”
She didn’t know what to say.
Something inside her went still.
“Oh.”
She looked down.
“Okay.”
She nodded.
“All good.”
It wasn’t.
But she’d spent most of her life learning how to make leaving look easy.
“Take care.”
She turned.
Then stopped.
There was something she hadn’t said.
She looked back at him.
“For the record, you did hurt my feelings.”
He looked at her.
“I don’t know if you care, but I wanted you to know.”
His face changed slightly.
“I do care.”
She didn’t know what to say to that.
He looked toward the river.
“I really like you.”
Her expression shifted.
“Then why are you saying this?”
“Because liking you isn’t the problem.”
“Then what is?”
He looked at her.
“Where you are.”
Willa frowned.
“I don’t know where I am.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean it.”
A nervous laugh escaped her.
“I have nothing, Hayes.”
He didn’t answer.
“I don’t have a career. I don’t have a plan. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know what I’ll be doing six months from now.”
Her hands were beginning to shake.
She pushed them into her sleeves.
“I have books. That’s basically it.”
“Willa—”
“And I’m not…”
She stopped.
Her throat tightened.
“I’m not well.”
He went quiet.
She looked away.
“I’ve been sick for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Years.”
He waited.
She stared at the water.
“I have bipolar disorder.”
The words came out so quietly that she almost wished he’d asked her to repeat them.
She didn’t.
“And I’m down a lot,” she said. “Really depressed.”
Her laugh sounded wrong.
“There are days I can’t get out of bed. I don’t answer anyone. I don’t eat properly. I sleep too much. Sometimes I don’t sleep at all.”
Hayes watched her.
“And then I get better,” she continued, “and I think I’m finally becoming a person again, and then it happens all over.”
Her eyes burned.
“My life is a cycle I can’t seem to get out of.”
She pressed her fingers against her forehead.
“I get sick.”
Hayes stepped closer.
“Willa.”
“I get really sick.”
Her voice cracked.
“And I don’t know how to tell someone that without making them feel like they have to take care of me.”
She swallowed.
“I don’t want you to have to take care of me.”
His expression tightened.
“Why would you think that’s what I’d want?”
“Because I have nothing.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“It is.”
Her stomach turned suddenly.
She stepped away from the railing.
“I feel sick.”
Hayes moved immediately.
“Sit down.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not.”
He guided her toward the bench.
She sat, pressing both hands against her knees.
“This is exactly what I mean.”
“What?”
“This.”
She gestured toward herself.
“I’m a mess.”
Hayes crouched in front of her.
“Look at me.”
She didn’t.
“Willa.”
She finally did.
His eyes were wet.
“None of this would have mattered.”
She frowned.
“What?”
“Any of it.”
He sat beside her.
“You being depressed. The bipolar disorder. Not having a plan.”
He shook his head.
“None of that would have mattered to me.”
She stared at him.
“If you’d leaned on me.”
Her eyes filled.
“I didn’t know I could.”
“I know.”
“You never gave me the chance.”
She looked down.
“I didn’t want to burden you.”
“You weren’t a burden.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
He looked toward the river.
“Because I used to get sad the same way.”
Willa turned toward him.
“What?”
“Not exactly the same.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“But I know what it’s like to wake up and not want to be anywhere.”
She stared at him.
“I know what it’s like to have everyone around you and still feel completely alone.”
He looked down.
“I know what it’s like to spend an entire day pretending you’re fine because explaining that you’re not feels like more work than pretending.”
Willa’s face crumpled.
“You never seemed sad.”
“I wasn’t always.”
He paused.
“But I was good at looking okay.”
She looked at him.
“That’s why I noticed you.”
Willa swallowed.
“You noticed?”
“Of course.”
He looked toward the river.
“You’d disappear sometimes.”
Her expression changed.
“Library. Stairwell. Outside behind the gym.”
She stared at him.
“I thought nobody saw.”
“I did.”
He smiled faintly.
“You always thought you were invisible.”
Willa looked down.
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
“I know.”
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Willa asked:
“Why did you come here that first night?”
Hayes looked at her.
“The bridge?”
She nodded.
He took a breath.
“I used to come here when I was younger.”
“How young?”
“Seventeen. Eighteen.”
“Why?”
He looked out at the river.
“When everything in my head got too loud.”
She watched him.
“You can see more sky from here than most places in the city.”
Willa smiled faintly.
“That’s why I come.”
“I figured.”
He leaned back against the bench.
“It makes everything feel smaller.”
She looked at him.
“In a good way?”
“Yeah.”
He looked up.
“You stand here and remember your problems are happening on one little bridge, over one little river, on one little planet.”
He smiled.
“And somehow that makes them feel survivable.”
Willa looked up too.
The sky was unusually clear.
“I used to think that too.”
“I know.”
She laughed quietly.
“How?”
“You told me.”
“Right.”
He smiled.
They sat there for a while.
Then he looked at her.
“I think that’s why I noticed you.”
“Why?”
“You looked at things the same way I did.”
Willa didn’t answer.
“You understood things I didn’t know how to explain.”
Her throat tightened.
“And that connection…”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think you understand how rare that is.”
She looked away.
“I really liked you,” he said.
Her eyes filled again.
“I still do.”
“Then don’t leave.”
He closed his eyes for a moment.
“That’s the problem.”
She stared at him.
“I don’t think you’re ready.”
“For you?”
“For being seen.”
She looked down.
“You keep thinking that if someone sees everything, they’ll leave.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“And I keep thinking that if I get close enough, I’ll disappoint them.”
She looked at him.
“So we’re both afraid.”
“Yeah.”
She laughed weakly.
“That’s pathetic.”
“Maybe.”
He smiled.
“But it’s human.”
Willa looked up.
The stars were beginning to fade.
“I wish I’d told you.”
“I wish you’d let me notice.”
She turned toward him.
“I did notice.”
He smiled.
“I know.”
For a while, neither spoke.
Then Willa said, “I don’t know where I’m going.”
Hayes looked at her.
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You don’t have to do all of it tonight.”
She opened her eyes.
He looked at her.
“Just don’t disappear.”
Her throat tightened.
“I’ll try.”
He nodded.
“That’s enough.”
For a moment, she thought maybe this was the part where everything changed.
Maybe he’d stay.
Maybe she’d finally let him.
Neither of them moved.
Willa knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Maybe we still have to let this go.”
She looked down.
This time, she didn’t pretend not to understand.
“All right.”
He hesitated.
Then looked at her one last time.
“You should know something.”
“What?”
“You were never nothing.”
She looked at him.
“Not to me.”
“But you can’t keep disappearing,” he continued. “Not from your life. Not from everyone who loves you.”
Her eyes stung.
“Hayes…”
“Promise me you’ll live.”
She frowned.
“What?”
“Live.”
He smiled.
“Go somewhere you’ve never been. Fall in love. Get your heart broken. Laugh until your stomach hurts. Do all of it.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can.”
He said it simply, like it wasn’t something she needed to convince herself of.
“And if you can’t do it today,” he added, “then do it tomorrow. And the day after that.”
Willa looked at him.
“Why do you care so much?”
His smile softened.
“Because you matter to me.”
Something in her chest loosened.
She reached for his hand.
He laced his fingers through hers.
“You know you changed things for me, right?” she said.
Hayes glanced at her. “How?”
“I don’t know.” She laughed softly. “You just did.”
“You did the same for me.”
They stood together at the railing, watching the lights shimmer across the water.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Then Willa asked, “What if this is it?”
Hayes turned toward her.
“What if we lose each other again?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Then we’ll find each other again.”
She smiled sadly.
“You really believe that?”
“I do.”
“Even if it takes years?”
“Even then.”
She looked down at their intertwined hands.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Hayes stepped closer.
Willa looked up at him.
He leaned down slowly and pressed his lips to her temple.
He didn’t pull away.
He lingered there, his eyes closing, his hand tightening gently around hers.
Willa felt his breath warm against her skin.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then, barely above a whisper, he said, “When we meet again, you’ll have so much to tell me.”
Her throat tightened.
“So will you.”
He smiled against her temple.
“Deal.”
He stayed there another heartbeat before finally pulling back.
Willa rested her head against his shoulder.
For once, she didn’t feel afraid of what came next.
Maybe life would pull them in different directions.
Maybe they’d grow into people neither of them could imagine yet.
But it didn’t feel like an ending.
Not anymore.
They had found each other once.
They’d find each other again.
Above them, the sky was unusually clear.
And somewhere in all that darkness, the stars were still shining.
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