Sway Me One More Time

Chapter 04

Maybe it was foolish to think a single year could erase a history built on shared sunrises.

Maybe it was even more foolish to believe that the year had successfully changed me.

I kept reciting the mantra: It doesn’t matter anymore. It is over. I have grown past it. I told myself I had outgrown the naive version who used to stay up all night, waiting for a message that was never intended to be sent.

But the crushing truth clung to me, intimate and unavoidable, like a second skin.

Deny, deny, deny.

It had practically become second nature—this quiet, stubborn insistence that my composure was flawless. That whatever profound connection we shared was ancient history, nothing but dust swept under the rug of new responsibilities and the louder, more immediate demands of my future.

Even though my chest still contracted, painfully tight, every time his name floated into a conversation, landing like an accidental bruise I couldn’t manage to cover.

"You're lying to yourself, you know," Nai stated one afternoon, her cruelty casual in the specific, protective way only best friends can achieve.

She leaned her chin against her palm, her silver bracelets chiming softly, a sharp, metallic punctuation mark. Her eyes—precise, cutting straight through every carefully constructed defense I possessed—pinned me to my seat.

"You were wrecked after he left."

"I wasn't—" I started, my voice instantly defensive, the sound cracking brittle. But the look she returned was enough to instantly shut down the resistance.

"You were," she conceded, softer this time, almost hating the burden of speaking the truth aloud. "You just hid it better than most people could."

I didn’t answer. Instead, I stared intently at the condensation sliding down the chilled glass of my iced coffee cup. I focused on the cold seeping into my fingertips rather than the deeper, internal cold curling up inside my chest.

Somewhere deep inside, beneath the heavy layers of refusal, something cracked under the weight of her devastating accuracy.

Because I did remember.

I remembered too much.

The way every sound in the world had felt too loud, too intrusive, except for the one voice I desperately longed to hear again.

The way I lay staring blankly at my ceiling night after night, wishing I could simply dial his number and say something—anything—but knowing with chilling certainty that there was no point of contact left.

The way the world kept spinning, classes kept running, and friends kept laughing, while I remained fiercely frozen, clinging desperately to something that was already a memory.

But the essential nature of denial is this: it doesn't need to make logical sense.

It just needs to be loud enough to effectively drown out the terrible, undeniable truth.

I excused myself soon after, mumbling something about crushing assignments and impossible deadlines. Blaming school. Blaming the endless meetings I piled onto myself for distraction.

Blaming anything, everything, except the tightening, suffocating knot in my throat that threatened to utterly undo me.

Walking back to our room, I kept my head down, ignoring the loud buzz of life around me. I felt like a balloon, stretched too thin, about to snap free from its tether.

Everywhere I turned, memories lurked like concealed landmines, waiting to detonate.

Like the time I failed a math quiz so badly the shame was physical, and he found me curled behind the library stacks, silently blinking back tears. He didn’t offer empty words—he just sat down beside me, shoulder to steady shoulder, humming some ridiculous, off-key song under his breath until, against all expectations, I laughed.

Or the chaos of the science fair, when my project went haywire five minutes before the judges arrived. He miraculously pulled together a last-minute fix with a stray wire and that ridiculous, ever-present penknife he always carried.

There were so many times when I needed someone—and he was there, solid and certain.

And just as many times when I needed him the most—and he wasn't.

By the time I reached home, my skin itched with the raw, visceral need to be alone. I shut my bedroom door with more force than was necessary, kicked off my shoes, and flung my burdensome tote bag onto the chair.

I sank onto the edge of my bed, digging into my wallet for loose coins—then froze.

There it was.

The star charm.

Small. Silver. Slightly scuffed from a year's worth of denial and pretending it didn’t matter.

I held it between my fingers, the metal cool and startlingly unfamiliar against my skin. How could something so minuscule possibly weigh this much?

An ugly, thick sadness welled up inside me, rising like a black tide I couldn’t fight off anymore.

Without thinking, driven by a violent need to purge, I stood up, crossed the room, and hurled the charm into the wastebasket beside my desk.

It landed with a soft, traitorous clink.

I stared at it, arms folded tightly across my chest, as if the sheer pressure could somehow hold my shattered pieces together.

Good. Let it stay there.

Let it rot with every other piece of him I had tried so desperately, so futilely, to bury.

I turned away, grabbed my laptop, and tried to drown the rising tide of emotion in schoolwork. Equations, essays, deadlines—anything to fill the growing, dangerous hollow inside me.

But the words on the screen blurred together into a meaningless, dizzying mess.

Minutes passed. Perhaps hours. The sky darkened beyond my window, and the house settled into a profound, suffocating quiet.

And before I could stop the betrayal, I was back at the trash bin, heart pounding stupidly, pathetically against my ribs.

I knelt down, hand trembling, and swiftly fished the star charm out from beneath crumpled papers.

It glinted weakly in the low light, a fragile, stubborn constellation, as if silently asking if I truly meant to leave it there.

I didn’t.

Shame flooded my face, a burning wave under my skin.

I hated how instantly easy it was to slip it back into my wallet. Hated how instinctive it felt, tucking it back behind my ID, like it had never once left its designated place.

I hated that no matter how desperately I tried to run from the echo of him, a small, stubborn part of me still hoped.

Reality, however, was mercilessly swift.

It didn’t take long before I noticed everything about him again. The easy, confident way he moved through the crowded halls; the way people’s laughter followed him like a loyal, second shadow.

He was topping his class again, effortlessly reclaiming the academic spot that once felt like it belonged to us both, a shared throne. It was profoundly unfair—how untouched he seemed by the emotional wreckage he left behind. Like I was the only one left picking up the shattered pieces.

It wasn’t just that he was physically present again.

It was how quickly the malicious universe decided to put him right back into my desperate orbit.

I thought I could master avoidance. Stay invisible. Stay fiercely busy.

But fate, it seemed, had other, crueler plans.

It happened first in the library—my supposed sanctuary, my fortress of quiet concentration.

I was hunched over my notes, scribbling down equations, when I heard it.

A voice I knew better than the rhythm of my own heartbeat.

"Hey, Raina..."

The pencil froze instantly in my hand.

I didn’t look up. I didn’t breathe.

My heart thudded painfully against my ribs, a loud, panicked drum. Yet my face stayed carefully blank, schooled by months of rigorous practice.

I heard him shift awkwardly beside the table—the very same restless movement he used to make when he wasn’t sure how to begin a conversation.

"Didn’t know you still studied here," he said, his voice low, almost hesitant, brittle with disuse.

The words floated between us, fragile and deeply awkward.

As if I was the one who dissolved into air.

As if he wasn’t the one who definitively walked away.

"I'm busy," I said without lifting my gaze, forcing my voice to sound flat, utterly unaffected.

A silence stretched between us—thick, uncomfortable, pulling taut as a wire.

I could almost feel him standing there. I could perfectly picture the nervous way he bit his lower lip, the restless shoving of his hands into his pockets.

"Congratulations," he said after an impossibly long pause, attempting a tone that was light and conversational. "Top of the batch, huh?"

The phrase struck something deep inside me—something sharp and fiercely aching.

Once upon a time, he would have been the first person to grab my hands, spin me around until I was dizzy, and declare that he always knew I could do it.

Now, the hollow words just sounded empty, ringing false.

"Thanks," I said shortly, turning a page in my notebook with a precise, dismissive motion.

Another beat of profound silence.

"You’re still amazing, you know," he added, his voice gentler this time, edged with residual warmth.

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted the metallic tang of copper.

Without a single word, I began to pack my things, my movements clipped, mechanical, purposeful.

I felt his eyes follow my retreat as I slung my bag over my shoulder.

I didn’t look back.

Not when the blinding ache in my chest threatened to buckle my knees beneath me.

Not when the cold, tiny star charm in my wallet pressed insistently against my side, a betrayal.

Some stars, I realized, didn’t burn out completely.

They just flickered—waiting with infinite patience.

But avoiding him was a beautiful lie, easier said than desperately done.

Our paths crossed again and again, with the relentless, cruel inevitability of some cosmic joke.

In the brightly lit hallways.

By the dented lockers.

In the loud, echoing cafeteria.

Sometimes it was the brush of shoulders in a crowded corridor, a collision of unexpected warmth that lingered on my skin too long.

Sometimes it was a glance—sharp, devastatingly fleeting, but heavy enough to leave me rattled and breathless.

Sometimes it was the sound of his rich, familiar laugh, wrapping itself around my exposed heart with merciless, surgical precision.

I hated it.

I hated how a traitorous part of me still tuned itself perfectly to his frequency without permission.

I hated how much he still felt like home, even when I wanted nothing more than to slam the door on him and shatter the lock forever.

I wasn’t the same girl who once clung to fragile promises whispered under starlit skies.

I wasn’t the girl who wrote unsent letters, who made ridiculous wishes on birthday candles, who believed in the impossible concept of forever because one boy once told her it was real.

I wasn’t going to fall again.

Not for a few awkward, hesitant smiles.

Not for the crippling weight of old, treasured memories.

Not for the way his voice still knew exactly where the cracks in my carefully constructed armor were located.

I wasn't going to fall.

Because the ultimate, agonizing truth was this: I didn’t just hate him for leaving.

I hated myself far more for still wanting him to fight, desperately, to stay.

And some treacherous part of me—small, stubborn, and utterly stupid—still hoped he would.