STILL HERE AT 2:14AM

CHAPTER 12

Maya – Day Forty-Seven

I stopped counting the days after the taco night.

Somewhere around day thirty-five I realized the calendar had become a weapon I was using against myself, and I quietly put it down.

Tonight I’m on my couch with a glass of cheap red wine and the apartment to myself for once. The windows are open; late-summer air drifts in, thick with the smell of cut grass from the community garden downstairs and someone’s barbecue two floors up. Music plays low (something with a bass line that feels like a heartbeat). I’m not listening to the lyrics. I don’t trust lyrics right now.

I keep replaying the way Eli looked at Lena across that table forty-seven days ago and then looked at me like I was the only solid thing in the room.

I hate that it still makes my chest tight.

I’m not proud of it, but I’ve become a professional at wanting things I’m not allowed to have.

I open my phone and scroll to the photo I took that night (candid, no one noticed). Eli mid-laugh, mouth open, eyes crinkled at the corners. Lena is blurred in the foreground, reaching for her margarita, but the focus is all on him. I made it that way on purpose. I’m not sorry.

I’ve looked at this picture more times than I’ll ever admit.

There’s a new text thread with him now, separate from the group chat. It’s small things:

• a meme about bad kerning

• a voice note of him humming while he cooks

• a photo of the sunrise from his run with the caption “thought you’d like the color”

I save every single one.

I’m careful. I match his energy. I don’t push. I don’t flirt. I don’t say the things I still rehearse in the shower when the water is loud enough to cover the sound of my own voice cracking.

I’m good at careful. I’ve had eight years of practice.

But tonight I’m tired of careful.

Tonight I’m thirty-one days past the night I told him he was allowed to walk away, and he hasn’t walked toward me either. He’s just… existing in this soft, in-between place where we’re friends who maybe, possibly, one day could be more, and I hate how much I want to live there forever if that’s all he ever offers.

I open our private chat.

The last message is from him, three hours ago:

just saw a dog wearing tiny sunglasses and thought of you

I smiled so hard my face hurt.

I type tonight’s truth and delete it four times.

Finally I settle on something that feels like jumping off a roof with no guarantee anyone will catch me.

Maya

Can I say something reckless?

The typing bubbles appear almost instantly.

Eli

Always

My heart is hammering so loud I swear the neighbors can hear it.

Maya

I don’t want to be the safe place you land when you’re done grieving her.

I want to be the place you choose when you realize you’re ready to be happy again.

And I’m terrified that day is never coming.

I hit send before I can stop myself.

Then I throw the phone onto the couch like it’s on fire and drain the rest of my wine in one gulp.

The bubbles appear, disappear, appear again.

Thirty-seven seconds later (yes, I counted) my phone lights up with a call.

His name on the screen makes my knees liquid.

I answer on the third ring, trying to sound normal.

“Hey.”

His voice is low, careful, like he’s holding something fragile.

“Maya.”

Just that. My name in his mouth like a prayer and a question.

I wait.

He exhales. “I’ve been trying so hard to do this right. To not use you as a rebound or a band-aid or whatever ugly thing people do when they’re healing. I didn’t want to drag you into the mess.”

“I know,” I whisper.

“I’m still messy,” he says. “I still think about her every day. I still check my phone at 2:14 like an i***t sometimes. But it’s not the same. It doesn’t feel like dying anymore. It feels like… remembering.”

I close my eyes.

“And when I think about the future now,” he continues, voice rough, “I don’t picture her in it. I picture late nights laughing about nothing. I picture someone who chooses me back without making me earn it every day. I picture someone who looks at me the way you looked at me on that pier when you told me I was allowed to want more.”

My breath catches.

“I’m not all the way there yet,” he says. “But I’m closer than I was forty-seven days ago. And every time I take a step forward, it’s your voice in my head telling me I deserve it.”

Silence stretches, soft and electric.

“I don’t need you to be fixed,” I say finally. “I just need you to let me walk next to you while you finish becoming whoever you’re becoming.”

He laughs once, shaky. “You’ve been doing that for years.”

“Not like this.”

“No,” he agrees. “Not like this.”

Another beat.

“Tomorrow night,” he says. “Dinner. Just us. No group buffer. No safety net. If you still want reckless, I’m ready to jump with you.”

My heart is trying to climb out of my throat.

“I still want reckless,” I manage.

“Good.”

He hesitates. “Maya?”

“Yeah?”

“I see you. I’ve always seen you. I just… couldn’t look away from the fire long enough to notice the sun was already up.”

I’m crying now, silent and ugly and perfect.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says softly.

“Tomorrow,” I echo.

The call ends.

I sit there for a long time, phone pressed to my chest, city humming outside my windows.

For the first time in eight years, the future feels like a place I might actually get to live.

I open the private album on my phone (the one with 412 photos of him).

I add a new one: a screenshot of tonight’s call log, 11:46 p.m., duration 4 minutes 23 seconds.

Then I do something I’ve never done before.

I make the album a shared one and send him the link.

No caption.

Just an invitation.

Three minutes later my phone buzzes.

Eli

I’m in.

I laugh so hard I have to cover my mouth so the neighbors don’t call the cops.

Tomorrow night isn’t a promise.

It’s not a guarantee.

It’s just two people who have spent almost a decade loving in the wrong direction finally deciding to try pointing the same way at the same time.

It feels like the first day of the rest of my life.

End of chapter twelve.

Maya just took the wheel.

The story isn’t over, but the shape of the ending just changed forever.