24. Macey/Noah
MACEY/NOAH
Macey
The Burrow Bitches
Britney: Macey what’s wrong babe, you haven’t responded to any of the tiktoks i sent you
Ariadne: Did something happen with Noah?
Britney: do we need to beat him up?
Kira: I’ll go knock on her door
Kira: …Macey where are you?
Nothing seemed bad when you were burrowed under the covers. The darkness brought a sense of safety over me—here, I didn’t have to deal with my problems.
It reminded me of when I was a kid, playing house with my parents in our one-bedroom apartment.
We had lived there until I was ten, when Dad got a big promotion at work, and we upgraded to a two-bedroom.
When we played, we’d use a blanket as the pseudo roof of the house, and somehow, all three of us crammed onto the floor, staring up at the blanket above.
It was dark and quiet, two words that normally meant scary, but with my parents, it was calming.
Nothing existed under the covers now, so I couldn’t feel the effects of everything I’d lost in the last twenty-four hours.
My job.
Noah.
My dignity.
I poked a head outside of the blankets, only to still be met with darkness. Rain fell outside in furious sheets as angry bolts of lightning cracked through the skies. If I wasn’t so pathetic, I’d get up and turn on the light switch, but that sounded like too much work.
My shoulders ached from my hunched position. I stretched them out, lifting my arms above my head, and then collapsed into the fetal position.
I didn’t know how long I was curled up in bed before I heard the front door open. Kira must be home.
“Macey?” she called. A moment later, she pushed open the door to my room.
When she saw my sorry state, she ran towards me and placed a hand on my forehead. “What’s wrong? Are you sick? We’ve been texting you all day.”
Let’s rip the Band-Aid off.
“I got fired today,” I said. “And Noah and I got into a huge fight.”
“Oh my God.” Kira dropped her purse onto the floor and kicked off her flats, then climbed into bed next to me. “Tell me everything.”
I did. Starting with Noah going behind my back to confront Victoria, to how I was then fired the next day.
Kira listened intently, nodding at the right places, offering me silent understanding. But when I was finished, she exclaimed, “This is amazing!”
What.
The.
Hell.
She added, “Not the Noah stuff—I’m going to kill him for that—but everything with Roamer’s Digest .”
I glared at her. “Why would you say that?”
“Macey, my best friend, I say this with love,” she said, squeezing my cheeks with her palms. “ Roamer’s Digest was a great place to start your career, but think about all the late nights you spent fixing articles, the weekends you spent dreading Monday, all the effort you put into appeasing Victoria.
You got comfortable being walked over, and it’s time for you to do the walking now.
You would have stayed there forever, making excuses about why it’s not the right time to chase your dreams. Sometimes the universe recognizes the bullshit we tell ourselves and gives us the kick we need to put ourselves first. That might mean getting knocked to the ground, but you pull yourself up again even stronger than before. ”
Hot tears pricked the back of my eyes. “I don’t feel stronger.”
“That’s the thing. Sometimes other people recognize your strength before you do,” she said. “And that leaves you no choice but to trust the potential your loved ones see in you.”
There was a beat, and I tried hard to stop the rising tears, but it was impossible. I frantically wiped under my eyes.
Kira’s words reminded me of Noah, who always encouraged me to take my work into my own hands. My career was important to me. I wanted to grow and be the best version of myself, but had I even been happy at Roamer’s Digest ? Or had I tolerated it for my mother’s sake?
I had struggled with standing up for myself. I knew how to be my own advocate in a personal sense, but replicating that in a professional environment was much more difficult for me. But now, I wondered, what was the worst thing that could happen if you stood up for yourself? You get fired?
That happened to me anyways.
Before I knew it, the tears had taken over. They tore themselves from my body, leaving me tense and trembling, gasping for air between wracking sobs. The tears were just as much for losing my job as they were for losing Noah.
Kira and I lay there in silence for a few minutes after my tears dried. Some energy had returned to my body, but I still felt defeated.
There was a loud knock on the door before someone let themselves in. Ariadne and Britney pushed the door open.
“We brought cookies.” Britney set a cream-colored box on the bed. The Velvet Whisk was the best bakery in town, and my stomach rumbled looking at it. “Chocolate chip.”
For all of Britney’s jokes and lackadaisical attitude, she knew how to be empathetic. It showed on her face as she sat on the corner of the bed. Ariadne climbed over me to perch on the other side.
They were worried. I hadn’t checked my phone since this morning, but I was sure there were lots of unanswered messages.
Ariadne’s warm gaze caused another swell of emotions to form in my throat. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I recounted the story to them.
When I was done, Britney jumped off the bed. “I’ll kill Noah. I will shove this box of cookies down his throat, make him choke on the only thing good in this world, and then?—”
A laugh escaped me. “No, no, we don’t need to kill him.”
“Or waste a perfectly good box of cookies,” said Ariadne through a mouthful of chocolate .
Britney huffed dramatically but sat down again. “What do you need us to do then?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just stay with me a while longer.”
Ariadne smiled and threaded a hand through mine. “That we can do.”
Tomorrow will be better.
And if not, I’ll keep saying it until it’s true.
Noah
The rhythm of my footsteps barely drowned out the chaos in my head.
I’d barely slept the last few days. Instead of staying in bed this morning, I laced up my running shoes at dawn and took off, hoping I could outrun the thoughts clawing at my brain.
Spoiler alert: I couldn’t.
My ankle was doing much better, but I welcomed the pain of the dull ache today.
The park was quiet this early, with only a few other runners and dog walkers scattered along the trail. The air was crisp, the kind that bit at my lungs in a way that almost felt good. Like maybe if I pushed myself hard enough, I could burn through the ache sitting heavy in my chest.
But every stretch of pavement, every curve in the path, felt like a new place to replay the last few months.
Macey and I had walked through this park once.
It was after a press dinner that went too long, and neither of us wanted to go home yet.
She had kicked off her heels and made some grand speech about how bloggers weren’t afraid to walk barefoot in the city.
I’d called her a lunatic, she’d called me a snob, and we had ended up on a bench, sharing a bag of convenience store peanut M&M’s at midnight .
The same bench passed by in a blur.
I picked up my pace.
Macey wasn’t wrong last night. I had made decisions for her. I thought I was protecting her, but I was just deciding for her, as if I knew better.
She was right about something else, too. I had suggested the fake relationship because it made sense. Because it was mutually beneficial. Because we could both get something out of it.
But somewhere along the way, it stopped being about that.
I stopped thinking about the benefits and started thinking about her.
How she made everything feel lighter. How she challenged me, pushed me, made me laugh even when I didn’t want to. How she looked at me like I was someone worth trusting.
Except she didn’t now.
I exhaled hard, shoving my hands onto my hips as I slowed to a stop near the water’s edge. The lake was still, the surface reflecting the sky above.
The whole point of this run was to clear my head, but all it had done was solidify what I already knew.
I wasn’t ready to let her go.
And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let our last conversation be the way this ended.
After running as much as I could before my ankle—and, let’s be honest, my lungs—needed a break, I checked my phone’s notifications, only to be flooded with missed calls from my sister.
For someone who claimed to have phone anxiety and got nervous calling the dentist’s office, she had left me an unsettling number of messages.
I scrolled through them with mounting dread, my stomach tightening with each notification.
Was something wrong? Did something happen to Daphne?
Oh.
Oh, shit .
I double-checked the date on my phone. May 15. My heart sank. I had been so consumed with my failed fake relationship with Macey that I had completely forgotten the date. Daphne’s semester had ended, and she was flying into Chicago today. Right now, actually.
We were supposed to be packing up for our big summer road trip—the cross-country adventure we’d planned since last year before everything in my life went sideways.
What the hell was I going to say to Daphne? I couldn’t cancel the trip. We both needed this. But it didn’t feel right to leave Chicago with my life in shambles. My thoughts whirled in panic, my brain trying to grasp a solution as if I could fix everything in the short time before she arrived.
I checked her location on my phone. She was almost at my apartment. If I hurried, I could beat her there.
But first—a pit stop. I jogged down the street, my mind racing as fast as my feet. I needed a peace offering, something to soften the blow of my negligence. Donuts. Mario’s Donuts. Her favorites. I grabbed a half dozen and sprinted back to my place, barely beating her to the door.
I unlocked the apartment and left the door slightly ajar, knowing Daphne would let herself in like she always did.
“Way to leave me on read!” Daphne’s voice rang out the moment she stepped inside, her tone laced with teasing accusation. But her expression softened the second she saw the white box in my hand, her eyes lighting up.
“Are those Mario’s Donuts?” she asked, her voice a mixture of excitement and exasperation.
“Only the best for my best,” I said, grinning as I opened the lid to reveal her favorite treats.
Her hair had grown longer, I noticed. Now it fell in tight curls down to her mid-back. When had that happened? Had I really been so wrapped up in my own drama that I missed these small changes?
She dropped her suitcase by the door and plopped down on the couch beside me, then crossed her legs. “I know you’re trying to butter me up with donuts before apologizing for ghosting me. And just so you know, I’m going to need a lot more sugar to forgive you for leaving me hanging all morning.”
“I can arrange that,” I said, handing her the first donut as a peace offering. “I really am sorry. Today was…well, let’s just say it wasn’t my best day.”
“Oh, how the tables have turned.” She took a giant bite out of the cheesecake donut and spoke through a mouthful. “You know, I’ve been waiting for the day you went through an existential crisis while I was the stable one.”
I raised an eyebrow, taking a slower, more controlled bite of my own donut. “What makes you think I’m having an existential crisis?”
Daphne rolled her eyes in that way only she could—exaggerated, like she couldn’t believe I was asking something so obvious. She picked apart another donut, intent on tasting every flavor in the box.
“Please,” she said, “I can see it in your eyes.”
“What, do they look bloodshot?”
“No,” she said, her voice softening. “They look like mine did last year—before I had any clue what I was doing with my life. And guess who helped me figure it out?” She jabbed a finger into my chest. “Now it’s my turn to help you.”
I sighed, running a hand through my hair as I leaned back against the couch cushions. It felt strange, confiding in Daphne like this. Growing up, I’d always been the one fixing things—her problems became our problems. Mine were never hers.
But now, sitting here with her, it struck me that we weren’t kids anymore. She wasn’t the little sister who needed me to pick her up from school or help her with homework. She was an adult, smart and capable in ways that surprised me sometimes.
“Fine,” I said, giving in. “This week has been rough.”
I told her everything—about Macey, about my mistake with Victoria, about the way I’d let everything fall apart because I didn’t know how to hold on.
Daphne listened without interrupting, nodding thoughtfully as if she were mentally cataloging my problems, sorting through them like some puzzle she was determined to solve.
When I finished, she sat back, crossing her arms. “You know, when I said ‘existential crisis,’ I didn’t think I’d be right, but damn, Noah. You really went all in.”
I groaned and dropped my face into my hands. “I know. I’ve screwed everything up.”
“Maybe you’ve screwed some things up,” she corrected, her voice light but firm, “but not everything. You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic?—”
“We can fix this.”
“ We? ” I looked up, confused.
“Yes, we.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, no room for debate. “We can’t go on our road trip until you settle things here.”
I started to protest. “Daph, you don’t have to?—”
“Noah, stop.” Her voice turned serious, and I stopped mid-sentence. “I know you think you have to handle everything on your own, but you don’t. People care about you. I care about you. You put everything on hold for me when I needed help. Why can’t I do the same for you?”
I stared at her, at the conviction in her eyes.
“Because you’re my little sister. It’s different.”
“It’s not different,” she insisted. “Not when you’re family.”
She paused, giving me a knowing look before adding, “And I’m sure Macey would be interested to hear how you truly feel about her. ”
My heart thudded in my chest. Macey. It was always Macey.
“I don’t know—” I began, but Daphne cut me off, her voice growing impatient.
“Stop overthinking. Just answer this: What do you want , Noah?”
I hesitated. What did I want? For months, I’d been running in circles, trying to keep everything together without asking myself that simple question.
“I—” I stammered, unsure of what to say.
Daphne poked me again, relentless. “What. Do. You. Want?”
“Macey,” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
She got up, grabbed a notebook from the shelf, and flipped it open, pen in hand. “Perfect. Because we are not leaving until I help you win her back.”
I nodded, still reeling from how quickly she’d taken charge of the situation.
Daphne smiled, her eyes gleaming with determination. “Let’s get to work.”