Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
EVEREST
I’ve never hated silence until now.
It used to be peaceful. Something I could slip into like a hoodie on a rainy day.
Now it’s just loud. Like the whole world is whispering around me, but not to me.
And every whisper sounds like her name.
Cove.
She’s in the walls now. In my skin. In the goddamn gaps between each heartbeat. I can feel the shape of her absence like a bruise forming under the surface.
I haven’t showered. Haven’t eaten. Barely slept. My mom’s stopped asking questions out loud, but every time we video chat, I can see her watching me with that worried-mom look that I used to find endearing. Now it just makes me feel like I’m being dissected.
Tanner stops ignoring the issue on day three.
I’m lying in bed under my blanket staring at my phone, willing her to answer my text.
I've been doing this thing where I almost text her. Like muscle memory. Like maybe if I just type something, she’ll respond and everything will rewind back to before.
Before her name became a weapon. Before her bloodline made me sick with guilt.
“Bro, you alive?” He pokes my back through the blanket.
“No.” I answer, pulling the blanket from over my head and looking at him.
He sinks into the armchair across from me and studies me like I’m a museum exhibit.
“You get dumped or find out she was married or something?” he jokes. “Because you look like someone canceled Easter and pissed on your dog.”
I almost laugh. Almost. But my throat clamps shut around the sound. Instead, I rub my palms over my face and stare at the ceiling.
“I can’t talk about it,” I say eventually.
Tanner frowns. “Why not?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe me if I did.”
He’s quiet, which is rare. Tanner always has something to say. But I guess there’s something in my voice that tells him this time is different.
He stays for a few more minutes, awkwardly flipping through his phone, pretending he’s not checking on me.
Then he stands, pats my shoulder, and says, “I don’t know what happened, man.
But if it’s about her? She had you looking like you got to have your favorite dessert every night. Don’t lose that.”
I close my eyes. That’s the problem.
She was mine.
Later that night, someone knocks on my door and I sigh but get up to answer it.
My mom’s voice comes through the door. “Sweetheart? Can we talk?”
I don’t answer right away. My hand hovers over the door knob.
“Everest, I know you’re in there!” My mom knocks harder and I open the door just a crack.
“I’m not in the mood to chat, Mom.”
She nudges the door open and forces her way past me inside. She’s got that look. The one that says she’s been practicing what to say all afternoon.
“Everest, this is crazy. You can’t keep moping around over this.”
“You don’t understand. I thought she was the one. This wasn’t some college phase or first crush. It was real, deep. She was mine,” I argue.
“You’re young,” she says gently. “You’ll move on.”
I laugh bitterly. It tastes like metal on my tongue.
“I don’t want someone else,” I snap. “I want her.”
Her expression softens with something that might be pity. It only makes me angrier.
“She’s not a phase, Mom. Not some crush I’ll outgrow. She’s—she’s it. She’s everything.”
“I know you feel that way now—”
“No,” I cut her off. “Not just feel, Mom. I know. I knew it when she made me laugh without trying. I knew it when she called me her first safe place. I knew it when I kissed her for the first time and felt like I was home.”
My voice breaks. “And I didn’t know. I didn’t know who she was to you. I didn’t know.”
“I know, baby,” she whispers, eyes glistening. “I swear I didn’t either.”
She sits beside me. Reaches for my hand. I let her take it, but it feels wrong—because the hands I want to hold are too far away.
“She looks just like my brother,” she murmurs.
“She looked terrified,” I say quietly. “And she ran. She ran like I was something to be ashamed of.”
“You’re not,” my mom says, squeezing my fingers. “Neither of you are.”
But I don’t believe her. Not all the way.
Because shame doesn’t care who’s right. It just is.
It’s past midnight when I finally crawl back out of bed and pad barefoot to the bathroom. The whole dorm is asleep. The mini-fridge hums low and steady like a lullaby.
I open my phone, go to the camera roll, and scroll until I find it. It’s a video I took at the cotton candy festival. I don’t even think she knew I was filming.
She’s got cotton candy stuck to her bottom lip, and she’s laughing so hard she snorts. She’s teasing me for getting glitter on my face. Her eyes are squinty with sunlight, her hair catching the breeze, and there’s not a single wall up between us in that moment.
It’s just her. Raw. Radiant.
Mine.
I press play again. And again. And again.
I can’t breathe.
The silence she’s left behind is the loudest thing in my life. I didn’t know you could miss someone like this. Like it’s a second heartbeat you don’t know how to live without.
I don’t want to scare her. I don’t want to pressure her. But I can’t keep pretending this didn’t matter. That it wasn’t real.
I open our text thread. The same one that used to be filled with inside jokes and countdowns to our next date. Now it’s just one message.
I’m here. Whenever you’re ready.
My thumbs hover. My chest pounds.
And then I type.
Me: I know this is insane. But I don’t regret a second of it. Not even one.
I hit send.
Then type again.
Me: Can we talk? Just talk.
There’s no read receipt. No dots.
Just more silence.
But I hold the phone anyway.
Like maybe—just maybe—she’s holding hers too.