The next morning, Aiah stared at the last message she sent to Mikha.
Technically, Mikha hadn't said yes.
There was no time. No day. Just that single, brutal word:
"Where."
It haunted her with its simplicity. Cold. Noncommittal. But not a no. And for Aiah, that was enough to give hope a foothold.
She hadn't slept.
The hours dragged in silence broken only by the occasional sounds outside of her hotel room.
Her phone was still in her hand.
She opened their chat again, thumb hesitating over the keyboard. That single word from Mikha stared back like a challenge. No affection. No punctuation. Just a door half-cracked open.
She typed slowly.
"I'll be there tonight at 8pm. Hope to see you there."
Her heart surged. She hovered—knowing she could still delete it, reword it, wait another day. But hesitation was its own kind of cowardice, and Aiah had already run out of time.
She pressed send before she could back out.
Then she set the phone down face-down on the table and stood.
The silence felt heavier now. She couldn't sit with it.
She paced.
She thought about the rooftop. The wind up there. The dead fairy lights. The echo of laughter that used to live in the corners, where Mikha once kissed her neck like it was a promise.
Eight p.m. was hours away.
But she already felt the clock ticking.
She walked to the mirror in the hallway, studied her reflection. Her eyes were ringed with fatigue. Her lips cracked at the corners. The same face Mikha once called soft and dangerous.
Now it just looked tired.
She brushed her hair back, then let it fall again.
"Don't fuck this up," she told her reflection.
But she wasn't sure what "not fucking it up" even looked like anymore.
All she knew was that if Mikha came tonight, it could be the last time.
And she couldn't afford to waste it.
/
The day passed like a whirlwind for Aiah.
She moved through work in a daze, her body present but her mind drifting somewhere else—flickering between memories she didn't give permission to surface. She laughed at the right times. Nodded when her manager passed by. Typed emails with polished grammar and dead focus. But underneath it all, every cell in her body was counting down.
She didn't eat much. Didn't need to. The nervous energy was enough to keep her going—bitter and electric.
By 6:45 p.m., she was home again, staring into her open closet like it could offer some kind of divine intervention.
What do you wear to a conversation that might never happen?
In the end, she chose black. Clean lines. A jacket Mikha once complimented offhandedly in the middle of a smoke break. The memory hit sharp and sudden: "You look like trouble in that. The expensive kind."
Aiah had smirked then. She wasn't smirking now.
At 7:25, she locked her apartment door behind her.
By 7:52, she was in the back of a Lyft, watching the lights of West Hollywood smear past the window like streaks of gold and red. Her driver made small talk about traffic and the new food truck scene on Melrose. Aiah murmured replies, barely hearing them.
