MAX
The porch creaked tiredly under me, the wood still warm from the afternoon sun. The smell of lilacs and freshly-cut grass filled the air around Grace’s house. I used to love that scent. Now it only reminded me of how everything kept moving forward, even though I felt stuck.
Grace was sitting next to me with a cup of tea. She looked at me with a mix of worry and patience that only sisters could pull off. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry the team didn’t make it to the next round.” Her voice was soft and careful.
I shrugged one shoulder, as if it didn’t matter. “That’s fine.” My throat tightened anyway.
She tilted her head to the side and squinted her eyes. “Wow. What happened to my brother who’s all about hockey?”
Her words stung because she was right – I used to live and breathe the sport. Now, I didn’t even have the energy to care about losing in the playoffs. I looked out into the yard at the swing set, squeaking when the wind blew it. “Emma happened,” I said.
The name tasted like loss.
Grace didn’t say anything right away. She just waited, like she knew that pushing me would make me clam up.
“Have you talked to her since she left?” she asked at last.
I shook my head, jaw tight. “No. I promised her I wouldn’t.”
When I said the words out loud, they felt heavier; once they were out, everything else followed, like I couldn’t hold it back anymore.
“I knew it was going to hurt, but I didn’t expect to feel this gutted.
” My hands knotted together in my lap, restless.
“She was the one, Grace. She just didn’t feel the same way about me. ”
Her face softened, and her eyes looked sad in a way that made me feel both seen and pitied. “She might come back.”
I laughed, sharp and short. “It’s been a month.
I have to stop hoping because it’s killing me.
” The boards creaked as I shifted forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
“And I can’t blame her, you know. She told me from the start she didn’t want a relationship because she moves around so much.
She told me to keep my feelings in check. ”
But I couldn’t. I remembered her laugh and the way her eyes lit up when she talked about the books she was reading.
I remembered how she kissed me and how she would grab my shirt like she couldn’t get close enough.
Even in a crowd, she always reached for me – her fingers on my sleeve, her hand on my shoulder – and it always felt so intimate, like she was choosing me.
I pressed my hands against my face and dragged them down, as if I could scrape the pain out of me. “But the idiot that I am, I went all in. I just had so much hope, Grace. Hope that she’d pick me.”
The porch was quiet except for the cicadas buzzing in the trees and Grace’s old wind chime clinking against itself in the wind. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked.
Then the doorbell rang.
Grace pushed herself up with a soft grunt and went inside.
The screen door slammed shut behind her.
I stayed where I was, hunched over and staring at the cracks in the wooden boards as if they might tell me something I didn’t already know.
My hands hung useless between my knees, still tingling from dragging them over my face.
I heard voices: Grace’s, low and welcoming, and another, softer one. I didn’t pay attention. Couldn’t.
I let out a heavy sigh, as if trying to release all the ache in one breath, but it wasn’t enough to make things easier.
A shadow fell across the porch.
“You’re sighing pretty loudly over here,” a voice said, warm, teasing. “Need any help?”
The world stopped. The cicadas, the wind chimes, the blood in my veins – everything just… halted. I froze. Couldn’t breathe. My heart skipped a beat, then started pounding like it might crack me open, because I knew that voice. God, I knew it.
I shut my eyes. My hands curled into fists against my knees until they hurt. My chest felt too small, too narrow, to hold it all in – relief and disbelief, joy so sharp it cut. Emma. She was here.
I forced myself to stand up, slow at first, like moving too fast might break the moment. Then I lifted my head and turned.
There she was. Emma. Smiling so wide it nearly undid me, those beautiful green eyes finding mine like they’d never left. All the air in my lungs rushed out at once.
I didn’t say her name. I just drank her in – the way she looked so solid and real against the backdrop of my sister’s porch. I didn’t blink. I didn’t dare, terrified that if I did, the world would go back to being empty.