Chapter 27 – Alise #2
Don’t worry, she had pants on. They were low-key emotionally eye-fucking, though.
“I’m going to bribe him with cookies and cash to delete that entire thread.” I groan and drop the pillow over my face. “Not that it worked last time.”
“You’re spiraling,” Michele says as she plops into the armchair like she’s in this for the long haul. “And not just because your business is all over the group chat. You’re scared.”
“Terrified,” I rasp, like the word scraped my throat raw on its way out. “Of getting it wrong. Of trusting someone who’s hiding something. Of being too much and not enough at the same time.”
Ramona doesn’t speak. Michele doesn’t crack jokes. They just sit with me, close enough that I can feel them on either side, like bookends keeping me from falling apart completely. No fixing. No hurrying me through it. Just giving me the space to break, even if only just a little.
“I’ve known Beau my whole life.” My voice is so quiet, I’m not even sure they hear me.
“He’s not just some guy I kissed and now I’m spiraling about whether he’s gonna ghost me or marry me.
He’s basically my brother. He’s one of my best friends.
He’s—he’s been there for everything. Every birthday party, every shitty high school play, he even held me as I cried the night my dad left.
He’s the one who helped me duct tape my first car mirror back on after I hit a mailbox. ”
“Twice,” Ramona mutters.
“It was poorly placed.” I sniff, eyes wet.
“Okay, so he’s part of your history. That doesn’t mean you can’t rewrite your future.” Michele exhales slowly.
“You don’t get it. If this goes bad—” I look at her like she’s speaking in a foreign language. “If I ruin this, there’s no blocking him and pretending we never happened. I can’t make up a rumor that he gave me herpes and move on.”
“Wow. That’s the bar for normal breakups now?” Ramona snorts as I narrow my eyes in her direction. “Sorry, please continue.”
“This’ll be different. This will crush me.
” I press my knuckles against my mouth, trying to hold the rest in, but it’s already spilling out.
“There’s no escape plan. No emergency parachute.
If this ends badly, I’ll still see him at every family gathering, every Timberwolves thing, every holiday dinner.
I’ll have to smile and pretend I’m fine while my heart’s in pieces at the bottom of someone else’s boot. ”
Ramona places her hand gently over mine. “Then don’t plan for the end before you’ve even given the beginning a chance.”
“But what if I’m not built for a beginning?” The words feel like glass in my throat. “What if I’ve spent so long convincing myself I don’t need anyone that now, when I do, I don’t know how to handle it? What if I wreck this because I can’t believe someone like him could actually want me and stay?”
“Then you tell him,” Michele says softly. “You tell him exactly what you just told us. And if he’s worth the risk, he’ll stay anyway.”
“What if he’s not?” I stare at her, mascara clinging to my lashes like brittle armor.
“Then we pick up the pieces with you, but this?” She gestures to the mug I’m cradling like it holds my last shred of courage. “This isn’t a failure. It’s fear, and you don’t get to treat them like the same thing.”
“God, I wish I were the type of girl who could just… detach.” I laugh, brittle and breathless. “To burn it all down and walk away. Leaving scorched earth behind me and never looking back.”
“You? You feel too much to even return a library book late.” Michele raises an eyebrow.
“I’m not built for heartbreak,” I whisper.
“No. But you’re built for love.” Ramona smiles, nudging my shoulder.
“Okay. This is officially too emotionally raw to continue without snacks.” Michele leans forward suddenly, pointing dramatically toward the kitchen. “I’m invoking the sacred sisterhood clause: No hard conversations without cinnamon rolls.”
“We have a sacred sisterhood clause?”
“We do now.” Ramona nods her head in agreement before pointing toward the kitchen. “There are cinnamon rolls in the kitchen. Make sure to warm them and put the icing on.”
Michele pushes to her feet and disappears around the corner, calling back, “Ramona made you crisis carbs, making her the responsible one. I’m just the emotional support.”
“You’re allowed to want something good, you know,” Ramona whispers, nudging my knee.
“I don’t know if I know how.” The words come out quieter than I expect, almost small.
“Every time I think maybe this time is different, that I’m different—better, healthier, stronger—it’s like my brain goes on red alert and starts clocking every exit.
Scanning for signs he’s about to vanish so I can brace for impact. ”
“Classic hypervigilance. Love that for you. Not really, but I respect the strategy,” Michele shouts from the kitchen, followed by the beeping of the microwave and the clicking of plates.
“You don’t have to brace for impact just because you’re falling. Sometimes falling means flying.”
“I don’t know how to tell the difference.”
Michele returns with a plate piled high with cinnamon rolls—three slightly squashed, over-microwaved blobs of icing-drenched sugar chaos and drops onto the couch beside me with the reverence of someone handing over a peace offering.
“Eat. This is the emotional support of our people.” She hands me one like she’s giving me a communion wafer. “Your trauma response is showing, babe.”
“My trauma response is always showing. It’s like an emotional sunburn. Everything rubs it the wrong way.” I crack a smile and take a bite, frosting sticking to my fingers.
And it is. That’s the thing people don’t get. This isn’t a one-time freakout; it’s been years of trying to keep myself safe. From people. From disappointment. From that slow, aching sting when someone you let in decides they’ve had enough of you.
Ramona just watches me, quiet and steady, while Michele wipes icing off her pinky with a napkin and says, “Then let him see the burn. If he can’t handle it, he’s not for you.”
“You know what pisses me off the most? He’s been so kind. It would almost be easier if he were an asshole, then I could walk away and convince myself it didn’t matter.”
“But he’s not,” Ramona says gently.
“No. He’s the guy who remembers I hate pulp in my orange juice and always gets me the pulp-free kind without asking.
He checks the thermostat before I walk into a room because he knows it might be too cold sometimes, and it makes my skin feel like needles.
He notices when I’m overstimulated and adjusts without making me feel like I’m an inconvenience for needing something different. And that should feel good, right?”
“It should, and it does,” Michele says, licking icing off her thumb. “But it also makes you feel exposed.”
“Like I’m holding up a neon sign that says, here is where I break, aim carefully, but that’s stupid because a part of me is already picturing what it would be like to wake up next to him. To be chosen, not just tolerated or dealt with, but wanted.”
Ramona reaches over, lifts the half-eaten cinnamon roll out of my hand, and replaces it with her fingers instead. “You are wanted.”
“You don’t get it. What if I let myself fall, and whatever he’s keeping locked up is something that changes everything? I don’t know whether I can come back from that. I don’t want to be the girl who misreads things again.”
“Then don’t let him in all the way,” Ramona says. “Not yet, just open the door a crack. Enough to let him see the light’s still on.”
“You guys always make it sound so easy.” I stare down at the smear of icing on my palm.
“Nothing about this is easy, but it’s worth it. If it isn’t and breaks your heart?” Michele leans over and swipes her finger through the frosting on my half-finished roll. “Then we’ll make you more cinnamon rolls and key his car.”
“Metaphorically.” Ramona sighs.
“Sure.” Michele shrugs, “Plausible deniability for Ramona, it is.”
“What would happen if you let yourself believe it was real?”
“I’d want everything. I’d stop holding back. I’d love him like I mean it, and then if he leaves, I’d break.”
“And what if he doesn’t?” Ramona squeezes my fingers.
That’s the problem. I don’t know how to picture the version of this where he stays.
I’m not waiting for the moment it all crumbles because I’ve never had a relationship where that wasn’t the outcome.
I’ve been left by boyfriends before who said I was too much, who looked at me like I was a puzzle they didn’t have the patience to solve.
Friends who swore they’d stick around, then stopped calling when I needed them most. Every time, the pattern was the same: the shift.
The distance. The eventual goodbye, and after a while, I stopped trying, convinced it was safer to build walls than to watch another person walk away.
And Beau is different. He’s too good. Too thoughtful. Too careful. And maybe that’s what scares me most. I know what it’s like to be someone’s burden. I’ve seen it in their eyes—the shift, when affection turns into obligation—but that’s never happened with him. Although that doesn’t mean it won’t.
“I don’t want to be his secret weight to carry. I don’t want to be the reason he has to smile through something heavy and awful. And whatever it is he’s keeping to himself is big. I can feel it in my chest like a second heartbeat.”
“So ask him,” Michele says, leaning in.
“I tried. Not directly. But I’ve hinted, and he changes the subject or deflects. And maybe that’s fair. He doesn’t owe me his everything, but how am I supposed to let him into my everything if I don’t know what he’s hiding in his?”
“Okay, so the thought of opening the door is terrifying.” Ramona stares into my eyes, warm and steady. “But you can decide not to run. You can sit in the messy middle, where you want him and you’re scared. Both things can be true.”
I swallow but nod because, as much as it terrifies me, I don’t want to walk away just yet. Not when part of me still hopes he’ll choose to let me in. That this time I won’t be the one left holding the wreckage.
“I think I want to believe,” I murmur, staring at the cold cinnamon roll in my lap like it might have the answers. “I just don’t know how to survive it if I’m wrong.”
“Then we’ll help you figure it out.” Ramona leans her head against my shoulder.
Michele doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then says quietly, “Sometimes the bravest thing isn’t staying or leaving, it’s staying open. Letting yourself hope, even when you know how bad it can hurt.”
My throat clenches as traitorous tears sting my eyes for what feels like the millionth time because that’s what this is, isn’t it? It’s hope. Real, sharp-edged hope. And that’s fucking terrifying.
“I just…” I wipe my hands on a napkin and take in another rattling breath. “What if I’m not strong enough for the good stuff?”
Ramona lifts her head and looks at me like she sees all the shattered parts, stitched-up scars, and the heart that still beats anyway and says, “What if you are?”
And I don’t have an answer.
At least not yet.
But for the first time, I think I want to find out.