Chapter Four: Parallel Lines
618 Words
Adrian stared at the flickering neon light outside his motel window. It buzzed like it was trying to remember how to stay alive.
Room 207 smelled like burnt coffee and damp wood. He hadn’t unpacked. Didn’t plan to. This place wasn’t home—it was limbo. A pause between lives.
He opened the bottle of water he'd been nursing for two days and took a sip, more to occupy his hands than his thirst.
Zara.
Her name lived in his head now, like a quiet song stuck on loop.
He wasn’t supposed to be seen. Not really. He came back to the city to watch from a distance, to confirm she was doing okay. That she didn’t need… fixing. But she’d seen him. Spoken to him. Saved him. Twice.
She didn’t even know the half of it.
Adrian reached into the drawer beside the bed and pulled out an old photo—creased, faded, the edges chewed from too much handling.
Him. His mother. A blurry birthday cake in between.
She looked the same now, from what he could tell in the recent articles online. *Dr. Lena Essien: Award-winning trauma therapist, author, speaker, healer of broken minds.*
He scoffed softly.
She hadn’t healed him.
When he was thirteen, she packed a bag and said she needed time to think. Time turned into years. By the time she came back, he was already on his third group home and had stopped asking why.
And now here she was. Living in the same city. Treating patients. Breathing stability like it was easy.
And here he was. Still holding the photo.
Still holding her ghost.
---
Across town, Zara sat on her bed, laptop open but forgotten.
She'd been reading articles about abandonment trauma for the past hour—research she claimed was for a project, but really it was to understand what she’d felt in Lena’s office.
That look on Lena’s face when she mentioned Adrian—it hadn’t just been surprise.
It was guilt.
Her phone vibrated.
**Adrian**:
*You ever walk around the city for no reason just to quiet your head?*
She stared at the message for a long second.
Then replied:
**Zara**:
*All the time. Want company?*
Three dots.
Then:
**Adrian**:
*Always.*
---
They met at a quiet park downtown, where the lamplights glowed gold against the night and the grass smelled wet with early spring.
Adrian wore the same hoodie. Zara had swapped her trench for a denim jacket. Neither of them said anything for a while. They just walked.
Eventually, she broke the silence. “Do you believe people can change?”
Adrian kept his eyes on the path. “Depends. Change or heal?”
“Both.”
He exhaled. “Healing is messy. Change is easier to fake.”
Zara turned to him. “You’re speaking from experience?”
He gave a sideways smile. “Maybe.”
They walked a little more. Streetlights blinked overhead like stars caught in the wrong place.
“You ever think about the people who hurt you?” she asked suddenly.
“Every day.”
“And what would you say to them now, if you could?”
Adrian stopped walking. Looked at her. Really looked.
“I’d say: *Why wasn’t I enough?*”
Zara’s throat tightened. She hadn’t expected honesty to feel like that.
She reached out and gently touched his arm. Just for a moment.
“You were,” she said.
He didn’t flinch. But he didn’t speak either.
They continued walking. Parallel lines. Side by side, close enough to touch, but still not touching.
Each step forward was a dance between pain and possibility.
And neither of them knew just how tangled their lines already were.
- Writer
