There are two kinds of silence. The one that soothes, like slipping into a bath at the end of a long day. And the one that buzzes...loud, electric, full of unspoken things you feel in your teeth. That second kind has wrapped itself around me since Kaia walked into my life uninvited and rearranged the furniture. It's the kind that lingers even when no one's in the room, that keeps you company like a ghost.
The night before the panel, I barely slept. My room is too quiet, too loud.My loud roommate is out somewhere.I keep rehearsing things I'll never say and arguments I'll never have out loud. I reread D.K.'s last message
"I'll be there. I want to hear your voice."
And it does something jagged to my chest. My body is tired, but my brain is performing emergency triage on every possible version of tomorrow. I imagine Kaia in the audience, on stage, beside him, in his life. She's an echo that won't fade.
I wonder if Kaia will be reading too. I wonder if she'll read something designed to gut me.
At 2:07 a.m., I call Amina. She answers on the second ring, groggy but alert in that best-friend way that makes me feel safe.
"It's going to be okay," she says before I say anything.
"What if it's not?"
"Then you'll still be standing. And you'll still have your pen."
Her faith in me isn't a miracle, but tonight it's enough. I fall asleep with my phone by my cheek and the sound of her steady breath anchoring me.
The venue is warm, crowded, and humming with nervous energy. I clutch the notebook I almost left at home. The kind that has corners folded from doubt, pages softened by sweat. The kind that contains too much of me.
I spot D.K. in the third row,his expression unreadable, his hair slightly damp like he ran here. He's wearing the navy-blue button-up I once said made him look like the truth. I feel both exposed and seen.
I go on first.
My hands tremble as I take the mic. I open to a piece I wrote two nights ago, somewhere between fury and longing. It's not about him. Not directly. But I know he'll hear himself in it. He always does.
"I wrote this for the girl who loved someone who couldn't make up his mind," I say. "For the girl who learned how to stop waiting."
The crowd goes still. Then comes the slow, collective exhale that means they heard it. I don't look at D.K. again. I can't afford to. The stage is a tightrope, and I'm not done walking it.
Two more writers go. Then Kaia takes the stage.
She is radiant, smooth as silk and sharp as glass. Her voice is honeyed, deliberate, and calculated like a chess player lining up her pieces. She's dressed in something simple but striking...red with gold thread. The kind of outfit you wear when you want to be remembered.
"This piece is called 'Return Policy,'" she says. "It's about second chances. About the things we leave behind and the people who leave their scent on our skin, even after they've gone."
The audience leans in. I flinch.
Her poem is beautiful. It's also a battlefield. I recognize the imagery,bookshelves with missing spines, music playing too low, the sound of rain against a window in June. She is naming pieces of D.K. in every line.
Worse, she's naming me without saying my name. The unnamed antagonist. The implied interim. The placeholder.
My face burns. I grip the edge of my seat. The crowd claps. I can't remember how to.
Backstage, I flee into the green room and lean against the wall like it's the only thing keeping me upright. The wallpaper is peeling in places. There's a half-empty bottle of water on the table. Nothing looks stable.
D.K. finds me minutes later. "Hey," he starts.
"You knew she'd read that," I say. Not a question.
"She told me she was reading something new. I didn't know what it was."
"Bullshit."
He doesn't flinch. "Okay. I had a feeling. But I didn't think she'd go there."
"She went there. With a map and a flashlight."
"I didn't ask for it."
"But you didn't stop it."
That lands. It echoes.
He sits down on the low couch, elbows on knees, head in his hands. "I haven't talked to her since the night we argued. Not really."
"That's not what it felt like from the stage."
He looks up. His eyes are glassy, too tired for lies. "She was my almost. You're my now. I didn't know how to protect that. I didn't know how to protect you."
Something in me cracks. The kind of fracture you don't feel until you're trying to move.
"I don't need a protector," I whisper. "I need someone who doesn't make me feel like I'm the side dish in my own story."
Silence. The kind that buzzes.
Then: "I choose you," he says. Plain. Bare.
It should feel like a declaration. But it feels like a surrender. Like someone trying to outrun a storm that's already passed.
I leave before the final toast. I walk home through the city like it owes me answers. It's drizzling, and every raindrop feels like punctuation on a sentence I didn't want to write.
At my desk, I light a candle, open my journal, and write:
Clarity is not cruelty. But delay is.
Then I write his name.
Then I cross it out.
Then I write mine, and circle it.
Just once.
Then again.
And again.
Until the page knows who I belong to.
Me.
And as I close the journal, I feel it...a quiet click inside me. Not closure. But something cleaner. The difference between a wound and a scar. Between wondering and knowing. Between staying in the audience and finally taking the mic again.
I don't know if tomorrow will bring him closer or push him away. But I do know this: I'm done being a question mark in someone else's sentence. I'm the author now. The pen doesn't shake in my hand anymore.
Let him figure out the rest of his story.
I'm already writing mine.