CHAPTER NINE
1234 Words
Day Four of Silence – Lena & Maya
The bar is loud, warm, and smells like spilled tequila and citrus.
Lena hates every second of it.
Maya picked the place (some new rooftop in Bushwick with fairy lights and overpriced mezcal).
She showed up at Lena’s apartment at 8:07 p.m. with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and said, “You’ve been a ghost for four days. Tonight you’re coming back to life whether you like it or not.”
Lena tried to protest.
Maya just handed her a black dress and said, “Wear this. The one that makes you feel dangerous. You need dangerous right now.”
So here they are.
Lena is on her second drink (something smoky that burns going down), sitting on a wicker couch under too many string lights, watching Maya laugh at something a guy in a linen shirt just said.
Maya’s hair is down, wild curls catching the glow, and she looks like the kind of woman who knows exactly what she wants and takes it.
Lena feels like a bad photocopy of a person.
Maya excuses herself from linen-shirt guy and slides back onto the couch beside her.
“You’re doing that thing,” Maya says, nudging her shoulder.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you disappear inside your own head and forget the rest of us exist.”
Lena forces a smile that feels like plastic. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Barely.” Maya studies her for a long moment. “You look like someone died.”
Lena’s stomach drops.
Maya’s eyes narrow. “Or like someone asked you to live without oxygen and you’re trying to pretend it’s fine.”
Lena looks away, out over the rooftop edge where the city glitters like broken glass.
Four days.
Ninety-six hours since Eli’s last message.
She has opened their chat 312 times (she counted) and never once typed a single word.
Maya follows her gaze. “Still no contact?”
Lena shakes her head.
“Good,” Maya says, too quickly.
Lena turns back, startled.
Maya’s expression is unreadable. “I mean it. You needed this. He needed this. You were eating each other alive.”
The words land like slaps.
Lena opens her mouth, closes it.
She wants to defend him.
Wants to say: He never asked for anything. I’m the one who kept taking.
Wants to say: You don’t understand how quiet the nights are now.
Instead she downs the rest of her drink in one burning gulp.
Maya watches her, something sharp flickering behind her eyes.
“You know what I think?” Maya says, voice low enough that the music almost swallows it. “I think you’re terrified because for the first time in eight years you’re feeling what life is like without him as your safety net, and you hate that it’s survivable.”
Lena flinches so hard her glass clinks against her teeth.
“That’s not—”
“It is.” Maya leans closer, curls brushing Lena’s bare shoulder. “You built your entire personality around being the girl Eli Harper would cross the city for at 2 a.m. And now that he’s not allowed to, you don’t know who you are.”
Lena feels the tears rising, hot and sudden. She blinks them back furiously.
Maya’s voice softens, but only a little. “I love you, Len. But watching you two has been like watching someone pet a stove burner for eight years and act surprised every time it hurts.”
Lena laughs, wet and broken. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple,” Maya says. “You love him. He loves you. The rest is fear wearing a fancy dress.”
Lena shakes her head. “It’s not just fear. It’s—”
She stops.
Maya waits.
Lena’s voice drops to a whisper. “It’s you.”
Maya goes very still.
Lena can’t look at her. “I see the way you look at him when you think no one’s watching. I’ve seen it for years. The way you light up when he walks into a room. The way you deflate when he looks at me instead.”
Silence stretches between them, thin and dangerous.
Maya’s face is unreadable. “You’re rejecting the love of your life… because of me?”
Lena’s eyes fill. “I’m rejecting him because I’m not willing to destroy my oldest friend to have him. You deserve him more than I do. You’d never make him beg.”
Maya laughs, sharp and humourless. “Jesus Christ, Lena.”
Lena finally meets her eyes. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you’re not in love with him.”
Maya doesn’t.
She just stares, lips parted, something ancient and wounded moving behind her eyes.
The rooftop suddenly feels too small.
Maya stands up abruptly. “I need another drink.”
She walks away without looking back.
Lena stays on the couch, heart hammering against her ribs like it’s trying to escape.
Ten minutes later Maya returns with two shots of something clear and deadly.
She hands one to Lena without a word.
They clink glasses, throw them back.
The liquor burns all the way down.
Maya wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “You don’t get to decide what I deserve,” she says quietly. “And you definitely don’t get to use me as your noble excuse to stay miserable.”
Lena’s voice cracks. “Maya—”
“No.” Maya cuts her off, fierce. “I have spent almost a decade watching the man I—”
She stops, swallows hard. “Watching Eli love you like you’re the only star in his sky. I have smiled and taken photos and liked your couple-y i********: stories and died a little every time you called him crying at 2 a.m. because some guy wasn’t him.”
Tears spill down Lena’s cheeks.
Maya’s eyes are bright with unshed ones. “I never said anything because I love you both. But I’m done being the saint in your tragedy. If you don’t want him, stop punishing him for it. And stop punishing yourself.”
Lena can’t speak.
Maya leans in until their foreheads almost touch. “Choose, Lena. Choose him, or choose to let him go. But stop standing in the middle of the road letting both of us get hit by the same truck.”
She pulls back, grabs her bag.
“I’m going home,” Maya says. “You can stay and get drunk with strangers, or you can go fix this. But I’m not watching you self-destruct anymore.”
She walks away again, this time toward the stairs.
Lena stays frozen on the couch for a long time.
The city lights blur through tears she doesn’t bother wiping away.
At 11:49 p.m. she opens her phone.
Their chat is still empty.
Her thumb hovers over the empty text box.
She types one line.
I was wrong.
She stares at it until the screen dims.
Then she deletes it, locks the phone, and orders another drink with shaking hands.
Day four of silence ends with two best friends fractured in a rooftop glow, and the truth finally out in the open (ugly, bleeding, and impossible to put back).
End of chapter nine.
The bomb just went off.
- Writer
