Chapter 6 #2
Look what you put her through. Just like you always do.
"I'd start messages a hundred times. But then I'd delete them all because what right did I have to waltz back into your life after putting you through hell?"
I can feel her eyes on me, steady and too perceptive for my own good.
"I guess I just convinced myself that staying away was kinder," I say. "That you'd move on, find someone better. Someone who could give you everything you ever wanted. And honestly, knowing what I know now about you, I’m glad I made that call."
I finally force myself to meet her gaze.
"It’s taken me eight months to figure out how to turn off the voice inside my head.”
Nora’s voice softens. “And now?”
“It’s still there, just not as loud as it used to be.”
Silence folds around us—not empty, just full. She’s still watching me, like she’s trying to see the parts I keep turned away from the light.
Then she speaks, quiet but certain. “You know Nate, for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve made it your responsibility to take the blame for everything.
Even when it has nothing to do with you.
Even when it hurts you.” Her brows draw together, not in judgment but in something achingly gentle.
“When are you going to realise, you don’t have to do that with me. ”
Her words land harder than anything I confessed. I swallow, and because she’s opened a door, I step through it.
So I take it as an opportunity to ask, "Truth or dare?"
"Truth," she says quietly.
“Were you happy?”
“Yes. At times sad too. Because there were times where really good things happened and the only person I wanted to call and tell,” She looks at me, “was you.”
She swallows, voice trembling. “Every win felt a little hollow because you weren’t there and every bad day felt heavier because I didn’t have you to talk to.”
I ask again, ignoring the rules of one for one.
“Truth or dare?”
Nora takes a deep breath and looks out, away from my eyes. “Truth.”
"How do you feel about me, now?"
The question is deep on a good day, let alone the path this conversation has taken.
"Truth?" another inhale, "I wish I hated you."
She keeps her eyes focused forward.
“Because it would make things easier. At least that’s what I tell myself.” She looks down at her feet and lets out a helpless little laugh. “But I can’t hate you because I understand you. Which leaves me in this limbo state, where I seem to lose either way.”
I focus on her face, on the pain I can see there that mirrors my own.
"I can't ask you to go backwards, Nora. That wouldn't be fair."
She looks up with a dull ache in her eyes. “I know.”
So here we are, once again existing in a state of maybe’s. And maybe that's what we both need right now—not the comfortable lies we tell ourselves, but the brutal honesty of what we've become.
It’s what I loved about her.
She was the one person in my life who never sugarcoated the truth to me. Not pretty lies to spare my feelings, not convenient lies to make things easier. Even when it would have been kinder to soften the edges, she gave me honesty.
And somehow, despite everything I'd put her through, she was still doing it. Still refusing to feed me comfortable bullshit when what I needed was the raw, unvarnished truth.
The craziest thing about time is that it somehow manages to move differently when you're with someone who matters. Minutes feel like hours, hours feel like minutes, and before I know it the sun is fully up and the magical pre-dawn atmosphere has shifted into something more ordinary.
“Tell me something interesting,” she says, interrupting my thoughts. “Like one of those random facts you always seem to have.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“A random fact?” I murmur, glancing down at the ground.
My foot nudges a small stone near my shoe, smooth and pale against the darker gravel. I bend and pick it up without really thinking, rolling it between my fingers, feeling its weight.
“What do you want to know about?”
“Anything.” The way she says it—simple, open—tightens something in my chest.
I turn the stone over in my palm, rubbing my thumb along its edges.
“Okay,” I say finally. “Male penguins propose with pebbles. They’ll spend days searching for the right one, carrying it around until they find a female worth giving it to. And if she accepts it…” I glance at the stone in my hand, then back at her. “That’s it. They’re mates.”
I remember reading it somewhere years ago and thinking how stupidly beautiful it was. Just the act of choosing something small and offering it like it matters.
Before I can overthink it, I hold the stone out to her. It feels stupid and reckless and right all at once. She hesitates for half a second, then takes it, curling her fingers around it. When she looks up at me again, her smile is different—gentler, touched with something quiet and unspoken.
“So, penguins huh?” She says finally.
I shrug, but I can’t stop the smile pulling at my mouth.
“You said random fact.”
Her laughter softens into a smile—small, warm, real—and something settles in my chest, like I’ve won something I didn’t even know I was playing for.
I clear my throat. “Come on,” I say as the clock in the town square chimes. “There’s somewhere else I want to take you.”
Librería Mediterráneo is tucked away on a narrow side street, the kind of place you'd walk past a dozen times without noticing.
But inside, it's a bibliophile's dream—floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with books in multiple languages, comfortable reading nooks, and the kind of atmosphere that makes you want to spend entire days getting lost in stories.
"Buenos días," I say to the owner, an elderly man with wire-rimmed glasses who's become something of a friend over the past few months. "?Todavía tienes algunas ediciones especiales de clásicos disponibles?"
Nora stares at me like I've grown a second head.
"You speak Spanish? Fluently?”
"Luiza started giving me lessons when I first got here," I explain, and I don't miss the way her expression changes at the mention of Luiza's name. "It seemed like a good idea to actually communicate with people instead of just pointing and hoping for the best."
I'm about to explain who Luiza is, what she means to me, when the bookstore owner returns with a small collection of leather-bound volumes.
"Ah, perfecto," I say, selecting two from the collection.
I hand Nora a special edition of Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights, watching her face light up as she runs her fingers over the embossed covers.
"Dad loved Wuthering Heights," she says softly, and something in her voice tells me there's a story there I don't know yet. “He loved that book in a way that didn’t make sense to me when I was younger. I thought it was just dramatic. All that longing, all that pain.”
She exhales, a small, shaky laugh.
“He told me once that it wasn’t about the drama. It was about recognizing the one person who feels like home to you—even when you don’t want them to. Because some people are just bound. Not because it’s easy or tidy but because they just match in a way you can’t undo or make sense of.”
She swallows, eyes flicking away from mine.
I hand the owner fifty euros for the books, and Nora immediately protests.
"Nate, no. That's too much."
"Relax. Consider it an investment in that big ass library you'll have one day."
“The one you promised to build me?”
“Yeah, that one.”
On the drive back, the sun hangs low enough to butter the horizon in gold.
My old iPod is plugged in, the playlist shuffling through songs from another lifetime.
Nora scrolls until she finds The Cure and hits play.
“Just Like Heaven” spills through the speakers, and she rolls the window down, wind tugging at her hair.
And fuck me, she’s my favourite view.
The towns we pass blur by us—terracotta rooftops, whitewashed buildings, bursts of bougainvillea spilling over balconies, narrow roads curving along the cliffs.
But she’s the thing I keep looking at. The contrast of sunlight on her skin, the careless joy, the way she turns a car ride into something sacred.
“Your birthday’s soon.” I say, glancing over at her.
She nods slowly. “Weird that it’ll be my eighteenth and the first year not celebrating in Eden with…” She trails off.
“Jake?”
She hesitates. “Yeah.”
“Have you spoken to him lately?”
“No. You?”
I grip the wheel tighter. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me after last summer.”
Nora reaches over and rests her hand on mine, where it sits on the gear stick. “He’s your brother, he’ll come around eventually.”
We get to her apartment and I decide to walk her up because I'm not ready to say goodbye, not ready to go back to my life without her in it.
"Well," she says when we reach her door, "thank you for the books and for today."
"You're welcome."
"I guess this is goodby—"
"It's never goodbye with us, Leni," I interrupt, using the nickname I haven't said out loud since being here.
"Well, I guess I'll see you again soon."
She turns toward the door, and panic rises in my chest.
No, this can't be it.
“Truth or dare?” I ask. She turns and I start to close the distance between us.
She smiles and my heart picks up speed anticipating her answer.
“Dare.”
“Stay.”
The words are out before I can stop them, hanging in the air between us like a challenge.
"What?"
"I'm heading back to Málaga tomorrow morning. Come with me."
She stares at me like I've lost my mind.
You know what, maybe I have.
"You want me to come to Málaga? With you?"
"Yeah, Len. I do."
The honesty in my voice surprises even me.
But it's true—I want her to come with me more than I've wanted anything in a long time.
"I..."
"This is one of those fuck it moments," I say, stepping closer. "The ones where you can play it safe and spend the rest of your life wondering what if, or you can close your eyes, say yes and see what happens."
She's quiet for so long I start to think I've pushed too hard, asked for too much. But then she looks up at me with those eyes that have haunted every song I've written for the past eight months.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
"Really?"
"Well, I did choose dare, didn’t I?" She says with a smile, "So fuck it."
The smile across her face is worth every moment of uncertainty, every fear, every risk.
“Yeah, fuck it.” I say smiling back.