"You may be his world, but you're the only thing that ever felt like home to me."
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Some people never get second chances. Lilah never thought she'd get one with her brother's best friend.
She's quiet...
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year! It's been awhile since I updated, but that's mostly because of the holidays and then recovering from the flu 🥲 But I hope you guys enjoy this updated chapter!
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I wake up with the dull throb of a headache pulsing behind my eyes and a heaviness in my chest that sleep didn't fix, despite it being Saturday—the day I have no classes or football practice and get to sleep in.
For a few seconds, I lie there staring at the ceiling of my apartment, trying to convince myself that the tension in my body is just leftover exhaustion from the game. That it's normal—earned, even. We won and I played well. My muscles ache in that familiar, grounding way that usually settles me.
But the feeling won't loosen this time.
Instead, it sits there, coiled tight beneath my ribs, humming with something sharper than fatigue.
The locker room comes back in fragments before I can stop it—the sound of laughter echoing off metal lockers, the careless way her name was thrown around like it didn't belong to a real person. Like she was just an object.
I rub a hand down my face and let out a breath through clenched teeth in frustration.
It shouldn't still be bothering me. It shouldn't even have mattered from the start. I handled it, I shut it down and no one said her name again after that.
And yet—
My jaw tightens, the muscles aching from being clenched so often recently, as I roll onto my side, staring at the blank wall instead. I try to busy my mind with anything else than last night, but the silence of the apartment presses in, amplifying every thought I don't want to entertain instead.
For once, my mom isn't the first thing weighing on me when I wake up—but she's not far behind.
My thoughts wander back to when she called on Wednesday. Or, more accurately, when she called back after I tried calling her earlier in the week. The conversation was short, like they always are, filled with half-updates and carefully avoided questions. However, I decided to ask when she was coming home, even though I already knew the answer from the hundreds of previous times I asked.
"Not yet."
Three years, and it still lands like an iron punch to the stomach.
I know why she stays gone. I know the reasons, the fear, the ghosts she refuses to name, but understanding it doesn't make it easier to live with. Some nights, when too much time passes between calls, my mind spirals anyway—running through worst-case scenarios I can't shut off no matter how hard I try.
I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed, elbows resting on my knees as I stare at the ashy-brown, wooden floor of my bedroom.
And then, uninvited, Lilah slips into my damn thoughts again.
