February

Chapter 7 Friends and Flames

(Arlo)

The light came through the window like a punishment.

It made everything in the apartment look harsher.

Every bottle cap, every dust mote, every stupid relic of the life I just lost. The couch groaned beneath me when I shifted slightly, though I hadn't moved much since yesterday.

My body ached in that dull, toxic way it does after too many hours in the same position. I didn't care.

The letters sat in a messy pile on the coffee table.

All of them. Lyra's ghost in ink, lined up beside Berrie's heartbreak, laid bare in soft and steady handwriting.

My stomach twisted every time I looked at the one from Berrie.

But I couldn't stop looking. It felt like if I read it enough times, she might come back, like maybe she'd see me drowning and toss me a rope.

A knock at the door broke the silence. Then keys jangling, and finally then the door creaked open.

"Arlo?" Milo's voice called out.

Levi's followed, louder. "If you're naked, make a sound now so we don't accidentally bleach our eyes."

"Shut up," Milo muttered as they stepped in. They froze when they saw me.

"Jesus," Levi whispered. "You look like a Victorian widow."

"I brought coffee," Milo offered, always the gentle one. "And muffins. February told us to check on you."

"Where is she?" I asked, throat dry. They exchanged a look. Milo opened his mouth, then closed it. Levi shrugged.

"She didn't say exactly," Milo said finally. Levi took a cautious step forward. "What happened, man?"

I let out a long, slow breath. The truth tasted like rust.

"She found the letters I wrote to Lyra."

They were silent.

"All of them," I added. "Even one I wrote while I was with her."

"Were they bad?" Milo asked gently.

I laughed, short and broken. "Awful."

Levi blinked. "So... why the hell did you keep them?"

"At first, I thought they were my past. Something I survived." I rubbed a hand down my face, shame crawling up the back of my neck. "I told myself it was like keeping old hospital bracelets or court document, proof that I made it through something. That I was still standing."

They didn't say anything, so I kept going. "And then I just... forgot. They were buried in a drawer, out of sight. They stopped feeling like fire. They were just... paper. Dusty pages from a chapter I didn't want to reread. I never thought she'd find them. I never even thought about them."

Silence. Levi let out a long breath and shook his head. "You idiot."

"I know."

"I mean like—certifiable, grade-A, polished dumbass."

"Thanks, man," I muttered.

Levi muttered, shaking his head. "We hated that bitch."

"Levi!" Milo hissed.

Something snapping in my chest. "What the hell did you just say?" I stood fast. My knees buckled and I stumbled forward, grabbing Levi by the collar.

"Don't you dare call my Berrie that."

Levi's hands went up. "Whoa, whoa. I meant Lyra! Jesus, Arlo. You think I'd say that about February? She's like... kindness personified in human clothes."

I stared at him, breathing hard. "You hated Lyra?"

"Yeah," Milo said quietly. "All of us did. We just never said anything."

Levi nodded slowly, his voice low but firm.

"She made you weak and dependent. Like you forgot how to have a spine.

Every little decision, you second-guessed yourself.

Every moment, you were waiting for her reaction, like your whole worth depended on it.

She loved the control. The drama. The power trip of watching you bend over backwards just to keep her from detonating.

You were... less when you were with her.

Like watching someone dim their own light just to keep someone else comfortable. "

I sat back down hard on the couch, like the air had been knocked out of me. My thoughts spun in circles, dizzy and unwelcome. I didn't want to believe it and didn't want to admit that it rang true.

"And then Berrie came," Milo said, softer now, sitting down across from me. "And everything changed. It was steady and quiet in the right ways. You stopped chasing someone's approval or asking permission to breathe. You laughed more. You were just... you. Calmer. Happier. Lighter."

I looked down at my hands, silent. The weight of their words settled over me, sharp and undeniable.

"She didn't just break your heart," Milo added. "Lyra convinced you it was your fault she did."

Levi leaned back, rubbing his jaw like he was still trying to process it all. Then he looked at me, deadpan. "Honestly, the real mystery here isn't Lyra. It's how you, a mostly functional and halfway decent human being, managed to fall in love with someone that toxic."

He gave me a mock-astonished look. "Like... were you cursed? Did you hit your head? Did she slip something in your coffee? Because I've seen people fall for complicated, I've seen people fall for broken but that was like watching a guy adopt a tornado and then ask why his house blew away."

"Levi!!" Milo snapped.

Levi wasn't done. "She had all the warmth of a tax audit and the emotional depth of a teaspoon, and there you were, writing sonnets in your stupid notebook."

He smirked and jabbed a finger at me. "Love really is blind, and apparently, also deaf, concussed, and into masochism."

"Levi! stop it!" Milo

I buried my face in my hands. "How stupid am I?"

"Very," Levi said instantly.

Milo threw his arms up, "Okay, okay! we're leaving now."

The apartment fell quiet again after Milo and Levi left, the kind of quiet that doesn't feel peaceful, just vacant.

The only sound was the slow tick of the wall clock and the whisper-click of the door sealing shut behind them.

I stayed slumped on the couch, sunk into the same cushion I'd been marinating in all day.

I didn't hear the knock this time. Just the creak of the door swinging open again. For a brief second, I wondered if the universe was just sending in characters from my downfall like acts in a tragic play.

"Jesus," I muttered. "Is this house Grand Central Sad Station now?"

"Careful," came a voice I recognized instantly. March. "I brought food and a frying pan, and I will use either one as a weapon if you mouth off."

She stepped inside with the swagger of someone who gave zero damns about personal space but infinite damns about the people she loved.

She was dressed in sweatpants and a faded tank top, hair up in a messy bun like she'd been summoned out of sleep by righteous fury and carbs.

In one hand, a plastic grocery bag rustled. In the other, a no-nonsense expression.

She didn't say anything for a second. Just stood in the middle of my emotional wreckage and scanned the apartment like it had failed a health inspection.

She exhaled. "Yep. This is depression stank."

"Don't start," I groaned, pressing my palms into my eyes.

But she was already in motion, kicking off her slides, marching into the kitchen, flinging open cabinets like she owned the place. Bread. Eggs. Oil. She moved like a hurricane with purpose.

"Why are you here?" I called after her, the words dry in my throat.

"Because," she said loudly over the sound of clattering pans, "Feb called me. Said she was worried you wouldn't eat. Then she hung up before I could talk her down. So congratulations, Arlo. You've been adopted."

I blinked. "What?"

She turned, a slice of bread halfway to the toaster. Her eyes were steady and unreadable. "I've decided you're now my annoying little brother. That means I get to cook for you, insult you, and slap you upside the head when you act like a dumbass."

"That sounds wildly unhealthy."

"Too bad. Should've thought of that before you broke her heart."

Silence stretched between us, taut as wire. Then, her voice softened, just a notch.

"Look... I'm always on February's side. She's my ride or die.

My soul sister. But..." She trailed off and looked straight at me.

"I don't think you're evil, Arlo. I think you're broken, and maybe you didn't mean to be selfish, but you were.

You are. Still, I see people clawing their way back from worse.

So let me ask you something, and don't lie, because I swear to God, I will know. "

I nodded, bracing myself.

"Do you love her?"

"Yes." The word came out of me before I even took a breath.

"Do you feel bad?"

"God, yes."

"Are you willing to fight for her?"

"Yes." This time, my voice cracked. "Even if she never forgives me.

Even if she finds someone else. Even if she never believes me, and even if I only ever get to see her from a distance at the kids' birthdays.

I'll spend the rest of my life trying to be someone she could've trusted.

I just want to be worthy of the way she loved me. Even if it's too late."

March watched me with those sharp, dissecting eyes of hers, like she could see right through the words to whatever was hiding underneath. Then, the corners of her mouth tugged upward. She slid the toast down and cracked an egg into the pan.

"Good," she said finally. "Now shut up and eat. Redemption starts with protein."

I looked down at my hands, still ink-smudged from clutching Berrie's letter like it could tether me to her somehow. "Where is she, March?" I asked, quietly.

"None of your business," she said simply. "She's healing, and so should you."

There was a pause. The eggs sizzled in the pan like static. Then she glanced back over her shoulder, her expression softer but deadly serious.

"But if you ever want to be worthy of her again, you start today. No more excuses. No more self-pity. You want her back? Then rise."

I swallowed hard. "I'm not even sure I can stand up," I said.

March plated the eggs with a flourish and turned to me fully. "Then start by sitting up straight," she said. "And tomorrow? We try standing."

I waited until nightfall, after March left, I finally moved.

I packed up the letters. Every one of them.

Folded pages stained with time and whatever bleeding self I'd poured into them.

Love letters. Obsession notes. Apologies wrapped in metaphors.

There was even one with a coffee stain shaped like a heart. Pathetic.

I didn't reread them. I didn't need to. They'd lived too long in my head already.

I walked all the way to that place. The tiny clearing near the old train bridge, where Lyra and I first met. She made us sit on the gravel and drink corner-store wine from paper cups like we were already tragic, already art. I remember thinking it felt like a movie. God, I was such a fool.

The place was still as forgotten as we left it.

A rusted fence, weeds like wild rebellion.

The river hummed below, steady and indifferent.

I kicked at a stone and let the silence settle, thick and familiar.

This place had started everything. This is where she looked at me like I was something she could ruin just for fun.

And I let her. I handed her the match and begged to be lit.

And now I was back, full circle, standing in the ashes of a fire I never had the guts to put out.

I crouched low, knees in the dirt, the weight of the past pressing down like a second spine. The letters were lined up in front of me, one by one, like headstones marking every moment I didn't let go. Each envelope carried a version of me I no longer recognized.

My fingers trembled as I pulled out the lighter.

The flame jumped to life with a flick, and I watched the first letter curl inward, the paper shrinking in on itself like it was ashamed of the things I'd written.

Ash lifted in tiny spirals, gray ghosts vanishing into the night.

My words—once poured out like they meant something dissolved into nothing.

I should've done this a long time ago. I should've known that keeping them wasn't devotion. It was denial.

One by one, I fed them to the fire. My past, spelled out in aching ink.

Phrases I once thought were love turned brittle with time.

They weren't poetry anymore, they were chains.

Every "I miss you," every "please come back," a sentence in a self-imposed prison.

I stayed in that cage because it was familiar.

Because hurting felt like home. Because some foolish, frightened part of me believed that if I let go, I would disappear too.

With Berrie, everything shifted. The noise quieted. The ache had somewhere to land, and that should've been the end of it. The final chapter, the graceful fade-out. But I didn't let it end. I let the past linger, let it haunt corners of our happiness like a bad smell I swore wasn't mine.

I stood, wind licking at the smoke, watching it curl upward.

She won't believe me. I wouldn't either.

Not after what I've done and what I've written.

But if this broken, threadbare life has taught me anything, sleeping on hardwood floors, scraping together rent, apologizing to people I love only after they've already walked away, it's patience.

The last scrap of paper curled into itself, charred edges glowing faintly before collapsing into ash.

It was over in seconds—years of longing, delusion, and self-inflicted wounds reduced to dust at my feet.

I stared at the remnants, still smoking in the night air, the heat fading but the sting burning deeper than fire ever could.

I ground the ashes beneath my boot, slow and steady, like I was putting down a rabid thing I'd kept too long. It didn't deserve a grave. It didn't deserve memory. It had ruled me for too long, and now it was gone.

For the first time in what felt like years, I breathed.

I stood there, hands trembling but heart steady, staring into the night like I could already see her face on the other side of all this. Smoke stung my eyes, but I didn't blink it away. I let it burn. I wanted it to.

The letters were gone now. I walked away from the ashes without looking back. It wasn't closure. It was a start. The past won't get to narrate my future. That fire was just the prologue to the man I'm still becoming.

Maybe, someday down the line, she'll look at me again and when she does, I want her to see that I finally became someone worthy of her love.

Someone who didn't just survive the story, but rewrote the ending.