37 | Bonfire
THEO
Last two weeks were the best I could remember in a long time.
Not dramatically. Just in the quiet, accumulative way of days that felt right—her showing up at my door after work still in her scrubs, both of us cooking something that didn’t require a recipe, falling asleep on the couch with a movie neither of us watched.
Weekends that didn’t need planning. Mornings that didn’t need explaining.
I’d stopped counting the nights she stayed.
That felt like progress.
----
The Fourth felt different before it started.
Not a premonition.
Just the awareness of someone who had a good thing going and knew it. She’d laughed at something on the way over—I couldn’t remember what—and I’d thought: I want to keep doing this.
Just this.
Us.
For a long time.
Melissa’s parents’ place was the biggest house on the street—always had been. Wide porch, manicured lawn, the kind of effortless presentation that came from money maintained over generations rather than spent all at once. I hadn’t been inside in years. The outside looked the same.
Half the group was already there when we arrived. Cole with a beer. Ryan trying to explain something to someone who wasn’t listening. Nate and Hailey near the drink table.
And Charles. Near the fence with two people I didn’t know, holding a drink, looking comfortable in the way he always did in rooms he’d decided belonged to him.
Tessa’s hand found mine.
I didn’t look at him again.
Melissa appeared and hugged Tessa with both arms, loud and warm and present. Slightly too much. She told me I looked good it the way she said things that were meant to land somewhere specific.
I smiled and moved past it.
The afternoon was easy. That was the thing—it was genuinely easy.
Drinks and old jokes and the comfortable drift of people who’d known each other long enough to stop performing.
Tessa stayed close, her shoulder against my arm when she laughed, her hand finding mine when the conversation split and pulled us briefly apart. We’d gotten good at this.
Better than good.
An item.
Charles kept his distance. Melissa kept moving—from cluster to cluster, always near enough to be part of whatever was happening, never quite still.
I noticed.
Filed it away.
Tried not to focus on this.
Hailey pulled me aside near the grill at some point. Nate was already gathering their things.
“We have to head back,” she said. “Early morning.” She glanced toward Tessa, then back at me, with the look she sometimes gave me that felt like being seen more clearly than was comfortable. “Take care of her tonight.”
“Always,” I said.
They left before dark.
----
The bonfire went up around nine.
Someone dragged chairs into a loose circle, close enough that the heat settled low against our legs. The air had cooled just enough to make the fire feel necessary. Tessa sat beside me, her knee pressed lightly to mine, her hand resting near my thigh—close, but not quite touching.
I felt it anyway.
We’d gotten used to that. The almost-touch. The quiet awareness of each other in small spaces.
For a while, it was fine.
Conversation drifted. Someone passed around beers. The fire cracked softly, steady and predictable. Tessa leaned into me when she laughed at something Ryan said, her shoulder warm against my arm, her fingers brushing mine.
It was instinct now.
Two weeks of that.
I let myself relax into it.
Then Melissa said, almost to herself—
“Isn’t it funny.”
She was looking at the fire, not at any of us, like the thought had just come to her.
Charles glanced over. “What is?”
Her hand lifted, a slow, loose gesture toward the circle. “Just this. The four of us.” Her gaze moved between me, Tessa, Charles, and back again, something unreadable in her expression. “How we’re all… connected.”
My chest tightened.
Not this.
Not like that.
Please.
Charles gave a short laugh. “That sounds like the start of a bad story.”
Melissa smiled faintly. “Not that dramatic.” A small pause. “I mean—we’ve all kissed each other at some point, haven’t we?”
She said it lightly.
Like it was nothing.
Like it had always been known.
The shift in the air was immediate, even if no one moved.
Beside me, Tessa went still.
Not pulling away.
Not yet.
Just… still.
Charles looked from her to me, something sharpening in his expression.
“Huh.” He leaned back, one arm slung over the chair. “Mr. good guy.” A slow, crooked smile. “Thought you were supposed to be better than me.”
“Don’t,” I said, too fast, already feeling something old starting to rise.
Melissa didn’t react to the edge in my voice. If anything, she softened.
“It was high school,” she said. “Right before homecoming.” A small shrug. “I just assumed everyone knew. You two are so… open with each other.”
Tessa turned to me.
“Is that true?”
Her voice was quiet.
Too quiet.
“Yes,” I said. “But it wasn’t—”
“You kissed her.” No accusation. No raised voice. Just precision. ?After—?
“Yeah,” I said. “But it wasn’t like that.”
Her eyes didn’t move from mine. “Then what was it like?”
I exhaled slowly, my jaw tightening before I could stop it.
Because suddenly I wasn’t here anymore.
I was back there.
Standing in my kitchen, listening to Melissa tell me not to come. That I should just let it go.
The same tight feeling in my chest.
The same quiet humiliation.
I should explain it calmly.
I couldn’t.
“You don’t get to be upset about that,” I said instead.
The second the words left my mouth, I knew.
Wrong.
Her expression didn’t explode. Didn’t crack.
It just… shifted.
Closed.
“I don’t get to be upset,” she repeated with disbelief.
“No,” I said, sharper now, the frustration coming up too fast, too familiar. “Not after everything.”
A beat.
“What everything?” she asked.
And there it was.
That gap.
Wide. Invisible. Impossible to cross.
I stared at her, searching her face for something—recognition, maybe. Understanding.
There was nothing.
“It didn’t mean anything,” I said instead.
Her lips parted slightly. Just a fraction.
Melissa shifted in her chair, perfectly at ease. “Exactly,” she said softly. “We were kids. You can’t have a real thing when you are that young.”
Tessa’s fingers curled against her knee.
“That’s not what I said,” I cut in, more force than necessary.
Melissa glanced at me, calm. “Of course not.”
Tessa didn’t look at her.
“Did it mean something to you?” she asked.
The question landed clean.
And completely wrong.
“It’s not about that,” I said.
Her breath hitched—small, but I saw it. Felt it.
“Then what is it about?”
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Because I didn’t know how to say it without sounding insane.
Without saying you didn’t want me there.
“Oh man,” Charles cut in, breaking the tension like he’d been waiting for it. “I mean, for what it’s worth, I had both of them too.”
The words landed like something dirty dropped into clean water.
He lifted his beer toward me. “Tough call, right?”
No one laughed.
He didn’t seem to notice.
“But yeah,” he added, a grin spreading slowly. “Melissa’s more fun. So I get it. No judgment.”
I went still.
Then—
I was on my feet.
The chair scraped back behind me, loud against the gravel.
“Say that again.”
Charles blinked, surprised. “Relax. It’s a joke.”
It wasn’t.
I took a step forward. I could feel my pulse in my hands, sharp and immediate.
“Tough crowd,” he added, still smiling. ”But we could switch again from time to time. I’m up for that. She's fine in moderation.”
My fist connected with his face before I could stop myself.
The crack was loud. Clean. Satisfying in a way that made something in my chest loosen for half a second.
He went backward with the chair, swearing, blood already starting to show.
“Theo—what the hell—” Melissa was on her feet now, her voice cutting through the noise. “This is my parents’ house—”
I didn’t look at her.
I turned back to Tessa.
“Come on,” I said.
She hadn’t moved.
Her face was pale now, her expression tight—not just anger. Something else. Something I couldn’t read.
“Tessa.”
She shook her head once.
“I’m not going with you.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
“What?”
“Not right now.”
“We should talk—”
“No.” Her voice was controlled, but I could hear it—the effort it took to keep it that way. “Just… go.”
“That’s it?” I said. “You’re just staying with them?”
Her jaw tightened. “I need a minute.”
“If I can get past what you did,” I said, the words coming out rough now, stripped down to something I didn’t fully understand anymore, “you can get past this.”
Her eyes snapped to mine. “What I did?”
I exhaled sharply. “You really want to do this here?”
“Yes.”
“Then think about it,” I said. “Before you decide what you’re upset about.”
A beat.
Disbelief in her ever was almost painful.
Melissa stepped closer, her hand brushing lightly against my arm, softer now. “Give her space,” she said. “Seriously.”
I looked down at her hand. Then back at Tessa.
“Just go, Theo,” Tessa said quietly.
She wasn’t looking at me anymore.
So I left.
????
This book is part of The Echoes of Us contest, so every comment and reaction means the world—if you’re enjoying what you’re reading, make sure to leave a trace.