The Deal We Never Made

THE AFTERMATH

Madison POV

I woke up to the smell of eggs and... something slightly burnt. For a second, I forgot where I was. Then I heard the soft clatter of pans and remembered—Ethan’s house. I slept in the guest house last night.

I sat up slowly, still in his oversized T-shirt that felt way too soft against my skin. It was weird—comforting and weird. I caught a refection of my hair and it was a mess, and I didn’t even care.

When I walked into the kitchen, Ethan didn’t say anything at first. He just handed me a mug of coffee like it was completely normal for us to be doing this—existing in the same space without biting each other’s heads off.

He looked up from the pan. “Want breakfast?”

I blinked. “Are you… cooking?”

He raised a brow. “You’re welcome to starve if you prefer.”

I gave a little shrug and tried not to smile.

He dished out food and handed me, as I walked to sit down across where he kept his plate. We ate at the island, mostly in silence. The eggs were slightly too salty, and the toast was a little burned on one side, but it was… nice. Which made it more confusing.

Afterward, I offered to clean up. He waved me off. “I’ll drop you home.”

I didn’t argue. My phone had no service last night, and I hadn’t checked the news. I thought the storm was over, just like how they always end in the summer here. Loud, messy, kinda scary, but then it’s just... gone. People forget fast.

The roads were still wet. You could see steam coming off the ground ’cause the sun was trying to come out through the clouds. Stuff was everywhere—tree branches, glass, even part of a lawn chair someone must’ve left out.

But then we turned onto my street… and my heart kind of dropped.

My apartment looked wrecked. Like, totally smashed. The door was half-off, just hanging there. Part of the roof was gone, literally gone. Just torn open like a gift no one wanted. One window was broken all the way. The balcony was gone—just bent-up metal and wood that looked like it drowned.

I didn’t even wait for Ethan to stop the car right. I just got out. The front step cracked under my foot and I almost tripped. My hand was shaking when I touched the doorknob.

Inside... it smelled weird. Moldy. And something sharp in the air, like metal or something burned. Wet drywall was everywhere. My couch was soaked, my bookshelves knocked over. My little TV had fallen face-down, screen cracked like a spiderweb.

I don’t even know what made me reach for that stupid photo. It was buried under a stack of old receipts and rain-soaked pages from my notepad, but the edge of the frame was peeking out like it wanted to be found. I pulled it out with numb fingers.

It was the last photo we took as a family.

Christmas. I must’ve been thirteen. Mom wore that knitted red sweater she always said made her look bloated. My dad was holding a glass of wine, looking like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. I looked awkward. My smile was lopsided. My bangs were too short. But we were all there. Real. Together.

And now—ruined.

The picture was warped from water damage. Faces smeared. My mom’s eye was gone, just a blur now. My brother’s smile bled into my shoulder.

I didn’t plan to cry. It just happened.

The first sob came out like I couldn’t breathe. I fell down on the messed-up floor and just lost it. Everything hit me—the stink, the wreckage, how tired I was, all the fake smiling I’d been doing lately like I was fine.

I cried so hard I forgot Ethan was there. Forgot I wasn’t alone.

“This was all I had,” I whispered quietly. “Like… my one tiny space in the world.”

I felt a shadow fall beside me. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t try to stop me. No awkward hug. No cheap words. Just the sound of his breath near mine, steady and unsure.

After a long, long while, I wiped my face with the back of my hand, which only made it worse. My nose was running. My eyes were puffy. My voice, when it came, sounded hollow.

“Where will I start from?” I whispered.

“You can start from anywhere,” he replied quietly. “You can come back with me. Or….”

“I’ll go to Jess’s,” I cut him off, swallowing hard. “She’ll understand.”

Staying with him felt like… crossing a line I wasn’t ready to redraw. And I wasn’t in the mood to decode whatever unspoken thing was happening between us. Not with my family’s ghost dripping onto my shoes.

He nodded. No argument. No pushback. Just grabbed the half-soaked duffel I’d managed to stuff some clothes into and walked with me to the car.

It was just me and the sound of the wipers brushing off the last bits of rain. The car engine still on, humming low.

I stared out the window and didn’t really see anything. My brain just started showing me old stuff I didn’t want—my dad singing in the kitchen, my mom singing louder like she had to cover him up. I hadn’t thought about that in forever. And now it was all back, like maybe those memories were mad I forgot.

And now? I didn’t feel like I had a place anymore. No roof. No roots. Just a shoebox full of memories that were kind of melted and bent and not even whole anymore.

When Ethan pulled up to Jessica’s building, he didn’t say anything. Just looked at me, then looked away.

I opened the car door.

“Thank you,” I murmured, my voice gravel.

He nodded without uttering any words.

But he waited until I got to the front door before driving off.

That counted for something.

Jessica didn’t even ask what happened. I figured she already knew.

I on the other side didn’t say anything. She just opened the door and saw my face and... yeah. That was enough.

She pulled me into her arms before I could even take a full breath. And I just stood there, soaked and stiff and trying not to completely fall apart on her doorstep. But she held me like she didn’t care if I cried or collapsed or cursed the whole damn universe. Like I was allowed to do any of it, or none of it. She didn’t let go.

“You’re okay,” she held out my hair, ruffling it slowly. “I got you.”

I didn’t believe her at first. I didn’t feel okay. I felt like I’d been scraped out from the inside, like someone took a crowbar to whatever part of me was holding all the memories in place and just… pried.

But she said it again. “I got you.” And I guess I needed to hear it more than I realized.

My arms came up slow, like they weren’t sure what they were doing, but I held her back. Not tight. Just enough.

When we got inside, she gave me this old sweater I left here forever ago, the one with the stretched-out sleeves and holes in the cuffs. I put it on without saying much. She handed me tea. I took it. My hands were shaking a bit, but she didn’t comment.

I sat on her couch like a ghost. She didn’t crowd me, didn’t start digging for details. She just sat beside me, her legs tucked up, scrolling through her phone like it was any normal Saturday and not the day my life collapsed, again.

Her silence was the best thing she could’ve given me. Just her being there was loud enough.

“I saw the picture,” I said after a while, not looking at her. “From my parents’ wedding day. It was in my shoe box I had abandoned on top of some broken glass.”

She didn’t say anything. Just let me keep going.

“It still smelled like the hallway from our old apartment. Can you believe that? After all this time.”

I laughed a little, but it was that kind of hollow laughter that hurts your throat.

Jessica just reached out and put her hand on my knee. Didn’t squeeze or anything. Just rested it there like an anchor.

“I didn’t think I’d care this much,” I said. “It’s been years. But standing there, with the rain dripping through my ceiling and my life looking like it got hit by a wrecking ball… it just hit different.”

She nodded. Not big, not dramatic. Just enough to let me know she was still there, still with me.

“I could’ve stayed at Ethan’s,” I added. “He offered. But… I didn’t want to.”

“Yeah,” she pointed out. “I wouldn’t have wanted that either.”

That made me laugh for real, just a tiny bit. She got it. Of course, she knew I needed soft right now, not stone-faced and weirdly polite.

We didn’t say much after that. Just sat in the quiet, the kind that didn’t

need filling.

And somehow, that quiet said more than anything.