Liam
Mary.
Even her name felt like a breath I didn’t deserve to exhale.
She stood across the garden, sunlight pouring over her like it was made just for her skin. Her laughter floated through the air like music I’d spent my whole life trying to remember, and for a moment, just a moment, I let myself pretend she was mine.
Her eyes… God, those eyes.
Deep blue, like the ocean on a stormless day — calm, vast, but with something dangerous underneath if you looked too long.
I’d spent hours, days, years, losing myself in them.
Trying to map the depth, trying to understand how someone could carry so much pain and beauty in a single glance, and her hair — that wild, messy crown of dirty blonde that always smelled like fresh rain and stubborn dreams. She hated when it tangled, but I loved it most that way — undone, natural, real. Just like her.
She wasn’t the kind of beautiful that begged for attention. No, Mary was the kind of beautiful that demanded your soul’s silence just to witness her. She was grit and grace, fire and softness, all in one impossible girl.
And me? I loved her.
I loved her more than I ever planned to love anyone. The kind of love that clings to bone. That doesn’t flinch when things get ugly. The kind that roots itself so deep, it starts to feel like part of your anatomy.
But here’s the part that never stops cutting: She doesn’t see herself the way I do.
She doesn’t see how her hands shake when she’s trying to be strong for everyone else, or how her voice cracks when she’s about to tell the truth she’s scared to say out loud.
She doesn’t see the way I’d drop everything — everything — just to make her laugh one more time, and yet, no matter how many times I tell her I love her…
No matter how many nights I stay awake praying she’ll finally believe it…
She still looks like she’s got one foot out the door.
I watched her then — smiling at someone else, pulling her hair back as the wind picked up — and I whispered something I’ve never said aloud.
“I wish I was enough for her. Enough for her to stay.”
I swallowed the ache that followed, that cruel echo that never left.
Because maybe loving someone wasn’t always enough.
Maybe sometimes, no matter how much of your soul you give,
They still have to choose to stay.