Aspen #3
Jillian let out a loud snort and Nai pursed her lips, folding her arms across her chest.
“Reformed your wicked ways? I don’t believe that for a second,” Jillian said. “You always did have a new ‘cleanse’ up your sleeve—usually just long enough to make me throw out perfectly good bread.”
Nai smiled. “Well, you were right. I missed the bread more than I missed being ‘gluten-optimized.’”
Jillian’s eyes sparkled with fondness. “That’s you though, isn’t it? Never could resist a trend. Or a fresh baguette.”
“Speaking of which, better move before someone grabs the last roll.”
Jillian grinned and melted back into the line. Nai followed, plate in hand, letting herself drift on the current of conversation and laughter. Part of it, but not quite anchored.
After dinner, Aunt Rose served dessert, a filthily decadent pecan pie with dark caramelized sugar. Once the food was gone and plates were cleared, everyone sank into their chairs and the rhythm slowed, as if everyone were content waiting for the post-dinner daze to clear.
Nai found herself edging past the hallway, wine glass in hand. It’d been a long day, she’d steal just a few minutes to herself before going back in again. She slipped her coat from the hook, shrugged it on, and nudged open the heavy balcony door.
Cold air greeted her, sharp and clean. The door clicked shut behind her, muffling the laughter and voices into background noise. The house’s warmth glowed through the windows in golden rectangles.
She exhaled slowly. As she crossed the snow-covered deck, her boots padded softly on the powdery snow, and her breath plumed into the air while the cold nipped at her cheeks. This she could feel, though it was still dulled.
The house had been filled with sound and commotion, but the quiet outside made space for her thoughts. She filled her lungs with the cold, fresh air and felt herself relax. Until now, she’d been unaware of how the conversations and the crowd pressed a little too hard on her chest.
Snow covered everything. The trees, the ground, the deck. Even the string lights suspended between the porch lights.
As she reached the railing and leaned against it, her shoulders dropped for the first time since she stepped from her car.
Maintaining a good posture was fucking exhausting.
She dug in her pocket for the cigarettes she’d impulsively bought on her drive up, lit one, and watched the smoke curl toward the mountains.
She took a drag, let it sit on her tongue, then blew out slowly.
The people inside were nice, some were even lovely. They welcomed her as if she were one of them, and yet something was missing. Like a puzzle piece that had been lost. One she’d been looking for ever since but couldn't find.
She blew out more smoke and shook her head. How was it possible to feel both surrounded and entirely on her own?
Nai tilted her head . The night was clear, the stars sharp and glittering, scattered across the sky.
Even dropping her head all the way back, she couldn’t catch the entirety of it.
The vastness reminded her how small everything was, including whatever piece she was missing.
Looking at the sky, she thought this should have been the moment.
Where melancholy swelled, where longing pressed at the ribs and demanded her attention.
Nai waited for it, seconds whispering by, but nothing came. Nothing ever did. No ache bloomed behind her sternum, no heaviness gathered in her throat. There was only the knowledge of what ought to be there, like a favorite place she could picture but no longer find on any map.
She brought one hand up to her necklace again, fingers finding the familiar shape of the oval pendant. Gold, smooth, slightly warm from her skin. She pressed it into her fingertips, grounding herself in the feel of smooth gold and the warmth it retained from her skin.
If she could feel properly, this is the moment where the sadness would live.
But with her, the thought arrived fully formed, settling factual and weightless instead of mournful.
She exhaled, long and steady, watching her breath disappear into the night.
She shook her head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
What the hell is wrong with you, Khachaturian? The memory came unbidden, without any warning. Safi’s voice, all teasing affection. “Who doesn’t like donuts?”
Nai could still see that incredulous grin, the way Safi’s nose crinkled when she laughed, her colorful presence always a little too big for a room that never quite deserved her.
Funny how the smallest things could pull her into the past. Safi with sugar dusting her fingers, rolling her eyes at Nai’s pickiness, swearing she’d never met anyone so stubborn about baked goods.
Nai would just grin, lean in, and steal a kiss—powdered sugar on her lips—murmuring, “I like it this way though.” Safi would laugh, pretending to be scandalized, but she always kissed back, sweeter than any donut.
The world had felt so much fuller with Safi in it; every taste, every argument, every laugh had a weight and color that nothing else ever managed to match.
Safi was the one person who saw Nai—all of her—and made even the difficult parts feel worth it.
Loving her had been like stepping into sunlight, every day.
Nai pressed her pendant into her palm until it left a faint mark, letting the memory settle, warm and sharp at the same time.
There hadn’t been a fight. Not the kind people expected—no raised voices, no slammed doors, no tidy list of grievances to point to later. No slow unraveling, either. No months of distance, no careful withdrawal. It had been a snap.
One day, the world had weight and texture. The next, it didn’t.
She remembered waking up in her own bed, sunlight spilling across the room.
Her bed was filled with dirt, her shoes caked in mud, but she had no memory of what had happened.
When she tried to recall the night before, nothing came up.
When she tried to remember the summer, there were flashes, barely-there images.
Safi’s laughter echoing from down the hall, the blur of game night with April and Harper.
But even those faded when she tried to hold on to them.
It was the strangest thing. After a summer spent so wildly in love, planning a whole life together, she woke that day to find the feeling had simply…
gone quiet. All the longing and certainty she’d carried for Safi was just gone.
As if someone had turned down the volume inside her and left everything muted.
Nai had looked at Safi and felt nothing answer back. No warmth, none of the pull she’d felt before. No instinct to reach out and touch her, to feel her near. Only…silence.
Safi’s laughter no longer sparked anything. Her touch registered as information rather than sensation. Nothing hurt. Nothing ached. That should have been the warning. But she didn’t understand it at the time.
At first, Nai told herself she was just overwhelmed with end-of-summer heaviness, and the strange pressure of a future about to begin. Everyone had flat days, didn’t they?
They were still teenagers when it happened. Still living at home. Well, Nai mostly stayed with Safi’s or April’s families. They were all counting down the days until everything was supposed to change.
They were leaving the little shit town of Crickalade Bay for the city.
They’d found an apartment, April and Harper were going to the same university.
Safi was going to take a year off and Nai was just about to start her first DiVA channel to try and save up for her surgeries.
They had it all planned out and the city waited for them.
Four best friends sharing an apartment. New lives folded neatly together. And the best part? She was going to build a life with Safi. This was their beginning, one they had planned with the reckless confidence of people who believed love was a constant. That forever was real, not just a fairytale.
She’d watched Safi turn toward her with that familiar, hopeful smile and felt the wrongness of her own stillness like a misfiring nerve.
The memory sharpened. Details lining up clean and unforgiving. The way Safi’s hand had brushed her arm. The way Nai hadn’t leaned into it. Safi noticed something was off. Of course she did. She asked in quiet moments, careful not to push. Are you scared? Is it the move? Do you want to slow down?
Nai told her it was just a phase. That she was tired. That everything would settle once they got there. She believed it when she said it, and so had Safi.
Out on the porch, the cold bit deeper into Nai’s skin but she barely registered it.
Ever since that morning, she barely registered anything.
Not pain, not sensations, and certainly not emotions.
She stayed very still, pendant clenched in her fist, as the memory settled into place with the quiet certainty of something that couldn’t be undone.
Leaving Safi hadn’t been a decision. There was only a before and an after. And she had crossed the line without meaning to. One morning, before the sun had fully risen, she packed a bag and left. A bus ticket, a quiet exit. No big scene.
It had all happened so fast. And somehow, it had lasted forever. But it wasn’t how she left that stayed with Nai. It was cowardly. It was wrong, but she hadn’t known how else to do it. And yet, what she couldn’t make herself forget, wasn’t any of that. It was the weeks just before it.
Safi, trying. Not dramatically or desperately with big gestures. That had never been Safi. She just kept trying with that quiet and loyal faith that whatever this was could be mended with enough care.
Nai remembered those last weeks as a series of small offerings. Safi showing up at her door with the snacks she knew Nai liked. Notes slipped into her bag. A hand finding hers automatically, even when Nai didn’t reach first.