Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CLARA
I’ve always hated hospitals.
The weird, sterile smell, the buzzing lights, it all takes me back to watching my mom slowly lose her battle with cancer.
I should have been in my 7th-grade English class, learning about sentence structure or research basics. Instead, I had been in a hospital room, watching my mom die.
The air in that room had been stale and cold, too clean to feel real.
Machines had beeped steadily around us, indifferent to the weight pressing down on my chest. I’d been holding her hand—what was left of it, anyway.
It used to be warm, full of life, always gentle, always cooking up something delicious.
But it just lay there. Fragile. Paper-thin skin stretched over bones, her usual warm brown tone turning bluer and paler as a priest read her last rites and took her final confession.
He was preparing her for God. The same God who was letting this happen to her. I’d known faith was more complicated than punishment and reward, than black and white. But at that moment, all I’d felt was rage. Not at her. Never at her.
At Him.
Because if He was listening, if He actually existed, why had this been the best He could do?
Why had He let a fourteen-year-old girl watch her mother—the strongest person she’d ever known—get hollowed out by pain and sickness until she was barely holding on?
The priest had placed a hand on her forehead, and I’d wanted to shove it away, to scream and ask him why we were pretending this was some kind of blessing when it felt like a curse.
He’d spoken words I couldn’t bring myself to hear. Something about forgiveness. Mercy. Eternal peace. The usual bullshit about an afterlife that didn’t feel real to me. Because when she’d left me, that had been it. She was gone. Forever. No warm afterlife or heaven. Just darkness.
I’d tried so hard not to cry at that thought.
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t, not in front of her.
She’d hated seeing me cry—it had made her feel like she’d failed me somehow.
Like she was leaving me unprepared. I’d never told her this, but she was.
What was I supposed to do without her? How was I supposed to navigate the world without her?
Her breathing had slowed. The beeping had changed tempo. And even though I’d known it was coming—had known for months, it had still hit me with a force that rocked my entire world. And all I could think was, This is it.
I’d leaned forward, pressed my forehead to her hand, and whispered something. I don’t even know what anymore. Maybe a goodbye. Maybe nothing. I’d leaned in, and she’d leaned back.
“I love you so much,” she’d whispered, a tear sliding down her face, landing on the top of my hand. I hadn’t dared look up. I’d just held on to her hand, squeezing harder than I should have for how fragile she was, but I hadn’t been able to help it.
When I’d finally lifted my head, she was gone.
A hand had landed on my shoulder and I’d known who it had been without looking. It had been a hand so secure, so full of warmth, it could have only belonged to one person—the single most important person in my life from that moment on: Alejandra.
I hadn’t thought I could hate hospitals more than I already did. But now I’ve lost two people here. First, my mom, and now—somehow—my best friend.
“Clara,” I hear for the twelfth time in a span of thirty seconds.
“What?” I finally snap, and the word echoes off the walls.
When I turn, Alejandra is standing there with the most pained look on her face, and my heart cracks a little more.
We stare at each other for a second, breathing hard like we’ve both run a marathon.
“Can we please talk?” she says desperately.
Heat pricks behind my eyes, and I swallow hard, forcing down the lump in my throat. “Talk?” I shout. “Now you want to talk?”
She flinches, and I instantly hate myself for how it came out.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” she says quietly. Her voice breaks, and it makes it hard to hold on to my anger.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. We have always been able to talk honestly.
With everything that’s happened lately, I expected more from you, Ale.
I thought I was your person, the one you could tell anything to.
” My voice cracks, and I feel so naive for opening myself up to her completely when she’d barely cracked the door open for me.
She steps closer, cautiously, like I’m a wounded animal that might bolt. “You are,” she says sweetly.
“No. You should have told me before we did anything. After our first kiss. You shouldn’t have let me get my hopes up for an ‘us’ you knew might not exist once you decided to leave.”
Silence stretches between us again, the fluorescent lights above humming like they’re trying to fill the space.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. And for the first time, I see how scared she looks. “You’re right, I should’ve told you.”
My shoulders slump with sudden exhaustion.
“I was worried you’d tell me not to go and that I’d do it because of how deep I’m falling for you,” Alejandra sobs, and it breaks something in me.
I step forward without thinking and wrap my arms around her. She collapses into me, burying her face in my chest, clutching the fabric of my shirt like she’s afraid if she lets go, I’ll disappear.
We stay like this for a while, in the middle of the hospital corridor, wrapped around each other as nurses and doctors race past us.
“I don’t want you to go,” I whisper into her hair. “But I would have never asked you to stay. I hate that you thought I would have, but I get it. Right now, I’m concerned that I don’t know what your potential move means for us.”
“I don’t have an answer.” Alejandra leans her head back on my shoulder. “But I don’t want to lose you.”
I don’t say anything. I want to comfort her, to promise she won’t lose me, but the truth is, I don’t know how I feel right now. So I stay quiet, because saying something I’m not sure of feels worse than saying nothing at all.
When Alejandra and I make it back home, we kiss goodnight and head into our separate bedrooms. I lie in bed, looking up at the dark ceiling, faintly illuminated by a candle I’d lit earlier, trying to figure out how to move forward.
I think about her move and try to imagine what long-distance would be like. I try to picture late-night phone calls and airport goodbyes, but the images are blurry and uncertain.
Can I make that work? Do I have enough experience—enough strength—to hold something like this together from miles away?
I don’t know. I’ve never even had a close-distance relationship, so I have no real frame of reference for making a long-distance one work.
I want to believe that the desire to make it work enough.
I want to believe we can figure it out, but I don’t, and right now, all I can do is lie here in the dark.
Then, a knock sounds on my door, and I force myself to get up and walk over. Slowly, I open it.
“Hey,” Alejandra says with the tiniest smile I’ve ever seen on her face. “Can we talk?”
I step to the side, and she settles on the edge of my bed. I sit right next to her, watching Alejandra nervously play with the rings on her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Alejandra says, tears forming in her eyes.
“I know.” My voice is steady, even as my heart pounds. I don’t doubt that she is, I just hate that we’re in this position. I pull her closer, wanting to fix everything with this one touch.
“I’m so sorry.” Her shoulders drop. “I should’ve told you sooner that I was thinking of moving.
I should’ve been honest instead of letting everything get more complicated.
And I shouldn’t have let things become .
. . so real and safe between us, not when I knew there was a chance I was leaving.
That isn’t fair to you.” Her voice trembles slightly.
“But lately, the decision hasn’t felt as solid as it once did.
I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to derail us over something that might not even happen. ”
I hear the words, and something inside me twists—not with anger, but with shame.
She’s apologizing for how I was hurt, and yes, she should have told me.
But my reaction feels so much bigger because I’ve been waiting for this for so long.
There are years of yearning and want behind everything I do with her, and she doesn’t even know it.
I try to look at this objectively, because if nothing had happened, if those feelings hadn’t existed until a few weeks ago, I’d still be hurt . . . but it wouldn’t hurt like this. She had no way of knowing. And now, I have no right to blame her.
Alejandra begins pacing the room, and the longer I watch her, the more it feels like I’m the one who should be apologizing. While she might have kept from me that she was thinking about moving, I’ve kept my feelings for her buried for over a decade, and that doesn’t seem very fair, either.
“Ale,” I murmur, trying to gather all the courage I have left.
She turns toward me, her eyes soft, and just like that, my heart starts beating faster. Telling her how I feel, how I’ve felt for the majority of our friendship, suddenly feels impossible, but urgent at the same time.
“I should’ve said this a long time ago,” I start, my throat tightening with each word. “But I kept telling myself the timing was wrong . . . and that telling you was a mistake.” I take a shaky breath, trying to steady myself.
Why is this so damn hard?
My heart thuds against my chest in an effort to break free.
“I—” My voice cracks slightly. I try to push through it, but I can’t.
Alejandra’s expression shifts. There’s a flicker of something, almost a panic, and it makes me spiral even more.
I take a step closer—closer than I’ve allowed myself to be to her the past few hours, and immediately pick up on the electricity between us.