CHAPTER 19 #3
Miley took a deep, ragged breath, her fingers sliding into the pockets of her trousers as her shoulders dropped.
"You told me about Megan. Let me tell you about Alicia.
We were roommates back in college. Freshmen year, completely lost in this massive university, and we just clicked.
Alicia was brilliant—like, ridiculously smart.
She had this laugh that could fill an entire stadium, and she was the kind of girl who would stay up with you until dawn helping you study for a test she wasn't even taking. "
She stopped near a large, weeping willow tree whose long, green branches draped down toward the ground like a curtain, shielding us from the main path. The air beneath the tree felt cool, still, and heavy with the weight of the past.
"But Alicia had dark clouds inside her that nobody could see," Miley whispered, her voice trembling slightly, losing its usual Harlem swagger, replaced by a raw, fragile vulnerability that made my chest ache.
"She hid it so well behind that big smile.
She wasn't just my roommate back at Buffalo State University, Angela...
she was my girlfriend. I loved her so damn much.
But one Tuesday, it all shattered. It was just a regular afternoon, and I had left my business class early because I forgot one of my papers.
I walked into our dorm room, expecting it to be empty, and I caught her...
right there in our space, tangled up with my nemesis, Maxine.
Maxine was the most renowned, vicious bully on that entire campus, and seeing the girl I loved letting that monster touch her absolutely destroyed me. "
Miley choked on her next breath, her eyes closing tightly as if she were actively trying to fight off the memories screaming inside her mind.
"I was so hurt, so utterly broken, that I immediately changed my room and stopped speaking to her entirely.
Alicia took it incredibly hard because she really did love me—she wrote about it over and over again in her journal, begging for forgiveness, trying everything to talk to me.
But I just couldn't get over the cheating.
Weeks later, out of despair or spite, Alicia moved into Maxine's room, and I had moved to a completely different building.
Then, one day, I was just coming back to the campus after a college trip.
As I walked up, I saw the flashing lights, the cops, the paramedics team everywhere...
only to find out that my once lover, Alicia, had unalive herself right inside Maxine's dorm room, hanging from the ceiling fan.
She was already gone, Angela. The guilt and the horror of how we ended... it haunts me every single day."
A sharp, horrified gasp tore from my throat, my hands flying up to cover my mouth as a heavy, freezing chill ran straight down my spine.
I stared at Miley, my eyes widening in absolute, unfiltered shock.
The sheer, unimaginable horror of what she had witnessed—the absolute trauma of that moment—shattered my heart into a million pieces.
"Oh my god, Miley..." I choked out, the tears finally breaking past my eyelids, spilling hot and fast down my cheeks.
"She left a journal," Miley continued, a single, solitary tear escaping her closed eyes, cutting a glistening path down her rich skin.
"It was sitting neat and clean right on her desk, addressed to me.
I spent the next six months reading those pages over and over again until the ink faded.
It was filled with this agonizing, beautiful prose about how lonely she was, how she felt like an invisible ghost moving through a loud world, and how she just wanted the noise in her head to stop.
It completely broke me, Angela. For a long time, I blamed myself.
I thought, How did I sleep five feet away from her every night and never see the rope forming in her mind? "
Miley opened her eyes, looking directly at me through the wetness of her lashes.
"I commiserate with her so much now, Angela.
It breaks my heart and makes me feel so deeply sorry that she felt she had to take her own life all because of a love that felt unrequited in the end.
But back then, I was just too damn hurt.
Ever since I read her journal and saw her write the word 'love' over and over again, that specific word has terrified me.
It instilled this awful fear in my chest that loving me will just get people dead, and I've been terrified of connecting deeply with anyone ever since.
I thought keeping everyone at a distance was the only way to keep them safe from me.
But looking at you... seeing how you've been trying to protect your light from the dark, I realize I can't keep hiding. I’m finally ready to step out of the shadow of my past and let go of the regret. Life is just too short to stay broken."
The profound, spiritual intimacy of her confession completely overwhelmed me.
I didn't care about decorum, or the park, or the fact that my face was an absolute mess of tears.
I stepped into her space and pulled her into a tight, desperate embrace, burying my face into her neck as I sobbed openly for her pain, for her loss, and for the beautiful, tragic depth of the woman holding me.
Miley held me back just as tightly, her fingers digging into my sweater, the two of us standing beneath the weeping willow like two survivors clinging to each other in the middle of a storm.
By the time the tears finally dried, a quiet, peaceful stillness had settled over the park.
The heavy clouds above had shifted slightly, allowing a soft, lilac-tinted twilight to bleed across the horizon.
To break the heavy, somber weight of the ghosts we had just buried, we began walking back toward the open green pastures of the Great Lawn.
As we approached the paved intersection, the familiar, nostalgic jingle of an ice cream truck echoed through the evening air—a playful, high-pitched melody that felt like a deliberate olive branch from the universe, urging us to return to the sweetness of the present.
"Man, look at that," Miley said, a soft, wet chuckle escaping her lips as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, her natural humor breaking through the grief like a ray of sun.
"An old-school Mister Softee truck. I haven't seen one of those since I was pulling braids out of my hair in middle school. "
"We are absolutely stopping," I smiled through my residual tears, my heart swelling with a nostalgic warmth. "My treat. You can't talk about heavy college trauma and corporate tech empires without balancing it out with some cheap sugar."
"You ain't lying," Miley laughed, her stride lightening as we walked up to the brightly lit service window of the truck.
We ordered two massive soft-serve cones—classic vanilla dipped in a hard chocolate shell for her, and a double-swirl with rainbow sprinkles for me.
Holding the melting treats like two kids playing hooky from adult life, we wandered off the paved path and found a smooth, pristine patch of thick emerald grass that sat on a slight slope, overlooking the distant, glittering lights of the Midtown skyscrapers.
We sat down together, our thighs completely brushing against one another through our clothes, a constant, electrifying current of heat radiating between us. Max immediately collapsed onto his side between our knees, panting happily as he watched the ice cream with an intense, unblinking focus.
I took a bite of my cone, my eyes shifting sideways to look at Miley.
The view was absolutely captivating. She had taken off her tailored blazer, leaving her in a sleeveless silk undershirt that exposed the smooth, tone curves of her bare shoulders and the elegant line of her collarbones.
Her lips, dark and glistening, wrapped around the edge of the melting chocolate shell, a small drop of white vanilla cream lingering at the very corner of her mouth.
A sudden, fierce wave of desire struck me right in the pit of my stomach—a hot, heavy ache that made my breath catch in my throat.
I looked at her lips, and a barrage of forbidden, highly arousing thoughts flooded my brain.
I wanted to lean over and lick that cream off her skin.
I wanted to ask her if she was single. I wanted to look deep into those dilated eyes and ask her if she had ever thought about dating another woman after Alicia...
if she had ever thought about what it would feel like to have my hands buried in those box braids while my mouth explored her body.
The urge to love-bomb her, to pour out all the sudden, intense infatuation building inside my chest, was almost overwhelming. It was the perfect, romantic twilight setting, the intimacy of our shared secrets hanging beautifully in the air.
But as I looked at the peaceful, relaxed expression on her face—the way the tension had completely vanished from her eyes—I forced the thoughts down, ruthlessly shunning them to the very back of my mind.
This wasn't the time. Miley had just escaped a massive, toxic storm at the E-Tech penthouse, and she was carrying the weight of a professional transition.
She didn't need me complicating her sanctuary with unrequited lust. She needed a friend.
She needed safety. I chose to preserve the fragile, beautiful bond we were cultivating, prioritizing her peace over my own burning desire.