TruthDare? #2
Silence settles between us, so she reaches forward and turns up the volume.
Forever Young by Youth Group fills the car—that haunting, stripped-down melody that always feels like nostalgia made audible. The acoustic guitar is gentle, melancholic, the vocals raw and yearning.
The road stretches ahead, winding through countryside that hasn't changed since we were kids.
"Truth or dare?" she asks suddenly, and the question pulls me back seven years to late-night conversations in this exact car, the game we used to play to pass time on long drives.
I smirk. "Truth."
"Why did you call the studio Meridian Records?"
I let the question linger, considering how much to reveal.
"Meridian," I start, eyes on the horizon. "It's about alignment. The highest point. The moment when everything converges—the right people, the right place, the right time. It's that point where what's meant to be just... is."
She's watching me, processing.
"That's what I wanted to build," I continue. "A space where artists could find that sense of alignment. Within themselves and their music. Where the music could be what it's meant to be without compromise or corruption from the outside world.”
I stop myself before I say too much.
"It felt right."
"It is right," she says softly.
The approval in her voice does something to my chest that I'm not prepared for.
We drive in silence for another few minutes, the landscape rolling past, until I decide to use the opportunity to ask the question that’s been on my mind since she got here.
"Truth or dare?"
I glance at her, and there's something playful in her expression, something that reminds me of the girl she was before everything got complicated.
"Truth."
"Why aren't you wearing your engagement ring?"
The question lands like it's been building since the moment I saw her at the funeral.
And the truth is, I've been cataloging every detail about her since she arrived—the way she tucks hair behind her ear when she's nervous, the exact shade of green her eyes turn in sunlight, the unconscious grace in how she moves through space, the small scar on her left knee from the summer she tried to learn skateboarding.
I've noticed the absence of that ring like a beacon, impossible to ignore even when I'm trying not to look, trying not to hope, trying not to wonder if it means what I desperately want it to mean.
Because I need to know the truth.
Does she actually love him?
Is she actually happy?
She glances down at her bare left hand, thumb brushing over the finger where a ring should be.
When she speaks, her voice is barely above a whisper.
"Truth? I don't know."
I laugh softly, more to myself than at her, trying to ease the tension even as my heart rate kicks up.
"I don't believe that. The Nora I knew always knew what she wanted."
Her jaw tightens, and the defenses slam into place.
"Maybe I've changed."
"Maybe." I keep my tone careful, neutral. "Or maybe you're just not ready to admit it yet."
"Admit what?"
"That you don't want to wear it because it's not what you actually want."
The words hang in the air between us, heavy and undeniable.
I watch her process them, see the flash of something—anger? fear?—cross her face.
Shit, I overstepped and I know it.
"You don't know anything about me or my relationship," she says, and there's an edge to her voice now. Defensive. Raw.
I slow the car, pulling into a scenic overlook that offers a view of the valley below. Put it in park but leave the engine running, music still playing softly.
Tension coils in my shoulders.
"You're right," I say carefully. "I don't know your relationship. I wasn't there for any of it. I don't know how he proposed or what your life looks like with him or what he does that makes you happy."
She's staring out the window, jaw tight.
"But I know you," I continue. "I know that you don't make decisions lightly. That you overthink everything to the point of paralysis. That you wouldn't say yes to spending your life with someone unless some part of you genuinely believed it was right."
The silence stretches.
"So yeah," I add quietly. "I trust that you know what you're doing. Even if I don't understand it."
She's quiet for a long moment, staring out at the view, hands clasped in her lap.
When she speaks, her voice is tight. Controlled.
"That Nora doesn't exist anymore."
"What?"
"The one you think you know. The one who overthinks everything and second-guesses herself into oblivion. I'm not her anymore."
"Aren't you?" I ask gently.
She turns to face me then, and there's fire in her eyes.
"No. I'm not. That girl was naive. She believed in things that don't work in the real world. That wanting something badly enough meant it would work out. She was wrong."
The pain in her voice cuts through me.
"She wasn't wrong," I say. "She just—we just—"
"We what, Nate?" She cuts me off, and now there's heat in her words. Anger mixed with something that sounds like grief.
"We needed to not be so fucked up," I say bluntly. "We needed to be healthier versions of ourselves. That's not the same as being wrong for each other."
"It doesn't matter. Look what happened when I tried to believe we'd work. Look where that got us."
The accusation hangs in the air.
"We never actually tried, Nora." My voice is rough now, the truth I've been avoiding for seven years forcing its way out.
"We loved each other when we were kids. But we never actually tried to build something as adults.
We just... existed in each other's orbit and hoped gravity would do the work for us. "
She's staring at me, and I can see her processing this, turning it over.
"And whose fault was that?" she asks quietly. "Because you're the one who left. I waited for you. Then you wait until my brother’s wedding to tell me you’ve outgrown me."
The words land like a physical blow. What she believes is based on a lie and I hate myself for it.
"I know," I say, and my voice cracks. "I know I did that. And I'm not trying to pretend I didn't fuck everything up. I'm just saying—we were kids dealing with adult trauma. We didn't know what we were doing.”
"And now?" Her voice is barely above a whisper. "Now we're adults with separate lives. You have yours here in Eden. I have mine in LA. We both got what we wanted."
"Did we?" I let the question sit there, simple and devastating.
She stares at me, and I watch her throat work, watch her eyes go glassy, watch her try to find words that won't crack open whatever we're dancing around.
"I want to go home," she says finally, and her voice has gone quiet. Defeated.
Not angry anymore. Just tired.
The shift in her is immediate, palpable.
The fire dims. The walls go back up.
And I know I've pushed too hard, asked too much, crossed a line I had no right to cross.
"Okay," I say quietly.
I put the car in drive and pull back onto the road.
Neither of us speaks for the rest of the drive.
But the silence isn't comfortable anymore.
It's the kind that's full of everything we're not saying.
Everything we're too afraid to say.
When we pull up to the cabins, she's out of the car before I've even turned off the engine.
"Nora, wait—" I say, getting out of the car to go after her, stopping myself in the process.
She pauses but doesn't turn around.
"I appreciate you fixing the heating system. But I think it's better if we just—"
"Keep our distance?" I finish for her, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
"Yeah."
She goes inside without looking back, and I'm left standing next to the Mustang, staring at her closed door, realizing I've fucked this up in the only way I know how—by being honest, by showing too much of myself, by letting the past breathe when maybe it should've stayed buried.
But as I watch that door close, I can't shake the feeling that she was exactly where she should be in that moment—angry, defensive, finally showing some of that fire I remember.
That old spark that made her dangerous and brilliant and impossible to forget.
This girl is going to kill me, but I'm pretty sure I'd willingly welcome death in her arms.