𝐋𝐎𝐌𝐋², jack champion

001, 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞

001, 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞
irl

THIRD PERSON +
october 5, 2024

It had been months since the breakup, well, ninety-four days, or two-thousand two-hundred and sixty-five hours, or one hundred and thirty-five thousand three hundred and sixty minutes.

Not that she'd been counting.

But still, every morning felt like it happened yesterday. The weight of it hadn't lifted, not really, even if the world kept moving around her.

Juniper stared out at the city of Los Angeles from her balcony, the hazy, warm light of late afternoon casting long shadows over the buildings. The hum of traffic below was steady, like her own thoughts—constant, never quiet.

She had spent most of her days here recently, away from the places that reminded her of Jack in New York. It felt safer to stay in one place, to build some kind of life without him in it. But nothing about this new life felt right, even as she pretended it did.

Los Angeles was her safe haven now, and in a way, it was also her prison. The city felt like a faraway island from the reality she used to know, the one where Jack's hand always found hers in a crowded room, where his laugh filled the quiet spaces between them. Now, the spaces were empty. And that was all she had—emptiness, pretending to be contentment.

The city below her glittered, alive with a pulse she couldn't sync with like she used to. She leaned against the balcony rail, her eyes tracing the skyline, but her mind was somewhere else.

Jack.

It was always Jack. She had hoped that, by now, the thought of him wouldn't pull at her heartstrings like a ghost playing a piano's broken chords in a haunting melody.

How many months had it been? She counted back—two? Three? They felt like both a lifetime and a blink, stretching and shrinking as if time itself couldn't decide the extent that it wanted her to hurt. Jack hadn't been gone as long as they had been together, but the weight of the time apart felt heavier, sharper than their time together.

She couldn't quite say when the grieving began, if it started the night he left her apartment for the last time, or in the days that followed when the reality sank in as her friends collected her things from his place. All she knew was that her heart had been mourning him ever since, and nothing seemed to fill the void he left behind. A constant cloak of black was over her like the darkest rain cloud that followed her everywhere.

Vinnie had tried. She gave him credit for that. He had been her constant, showing up when the world was too much, when the loneliness threatened to swallow her whole. He had this way of making her laugh, even when all she wanted to do was scream.

They'd spent late nights in his car, parked somewhere along the coast, listening to old music and talking about anything but the thing that weighed her down. It was as if he knew she couldn't handle the weight of it, so he carried it for her, in silence.

She didn't know how she would've survived without him, and for that, she was grateful. But even Vinnie couldn't change the fact that Jack was gone, that his absence was something Juniper had no choice but to live with. And she was tired of living with it. Tired of pretending that things were getting easier when they weren't.

"June?" Vinnie's voice cut through the quiet.

She turned, leaning against the railing as he stepped out onto the balcony. He had that easy smile on his face, the one that could make any bad day seem bearable. He had been with her most of the day, something she had grown used to. His presence was comfortable, secure, a lifeline she didn't know she needed until everything else crumbled.