The Note Left Behind

Reconciliation

Neither of them slept much that night, as far as Nathan could tell from the state Sasha was in the next morning — pale, quiet in a way that had nothing to do with her usual restraint, waiting by his locker with her arms crossed like she'd been standing there working up the nerve for a while.

They both started talking at once.

"I'm sorry—"

"I shouldn't have—"

They stopped. Nathan almost laughed despite himself, and something in Sasha's face loosened at the same moment, like she'd been holding her breath since the treehouse door swung shut behind her the night before.

"You go," he said.

"No, you." A small, crooked smile, the kind that undid whatever argument he'd been quietly rebuilding all night. "You had a point. I didn't want to hear it, but you had one."

"You had one too," Nathan admitted. "I don't want to be the reason she gets hurt again. But you're right that doing nothing isn't actually neutral. It's still a choice. I just don't know how to make sure we're choosing right."

Sasha exhaled, some of the tension leaving her shoulders for the first time since the argument started. "So we find a way that isn't just us deciding for her. We go back to her. We ask what she wants, instead of just telling her what we found. Slower. Careful. Her choice, not ours."

"Together?"

"Together," Sasha said, and bumped her shoulder lightly against his — a small, deliberate gesture, an apology and a promise folded into the same motion. For a moment, the hallway noise around them faded into something that felt almost ordinary again — two people who had fought and found their way back to each other, standing a little closer than they had the day before.

"For what it's worth," Nathan said, "I don't think either of us is wrong. I think we're both scared of getting this wrong in different directions."

"That," Sasha said, "is annoyingly reasonable of you."

"I have my moments."

"That," Sasha said, "is annoyingly reasonable of you."

"I have my moments."

She smiled — the real one, the one he'd started, somewhere in the last month, to think of as his favorite thing about senior year. "Okay. Let's go do this the right way, then. Whatever that turns out to mean."

They stood there a moment longer, the tension of the last twelve hours finally, genuinely dissolving, replaced by something steadier than either of them had felt since finding the note in the first place.

"For what it's worth," Sasha added, "I've been thinking about what you said. About her having to live with this for the rest of her life while we just graduate and move on. That's been sitting with me all night."

"I've been thinking about what you said too," Nathan admitted. "About looking away being its own kind of choice. I don't think either of us actually disagrees about what matters here. We just disagree about how careful is careful enough."

"So we find the version that's careful enough for both of us."

"Deal."

The first bell rang somewhere down the hall, students starting to filter past them toward their first classes, but for a moment neither of them moved, both still a little too relieved by the reconciliation to rush back into the ordinary rhythm of the school day just yet.

"We should probably go to class," Sasha said eventually, not quite letting go of the small, comfortable silence between them.

"Probably," Nathan agreed, and neither of them moved for another few seconds anyway.