Page 119 of At First Flight
I left. And I didn’t just leave a man I care about—I left two small hearts who didn’t understand why.
My phone’s still on the counter inside, unanswered. I’ve turned it over more times than I can count, waiting for his name to pop up. But it doesn’t.
He’s probably angry. Maybe he’s heartbroken. He’s unquestionably realizing that he deserves someone braver than me.
I wrap my arms around myself, breathing deep, and I whisper into the night, “I’m sorry.”
And I hope—God, I hope—that somehow, that’s enough.
The silence tonight is different. It isn’t peaceful—it’s thick and pressing. It wraps around me like a wet blanket, too heavy, too warm, suffocating. I keep thinking if I just breathe deeper, it’ll lift. That my chest won’t feel like it’s shrinking every time I think about Dean’s face when I walked away.
I left. I keep saying it like it’s a fact, like repeating it might numb the truth. But it doesn’t.
I left, and now I’m sitting on my best friend’s deck in someone else’s borrowed pajama pants, sipping on tea I don’t want, staring at a sky that used to feel full of possibility and now it feels like it’s holding its breath.
What did I think would happen? That Dean would chase me? That he’d show up at Ashvi’s door with Evelyn on his hip and Oliver holding a drawing that saidWe miss you, Lilain crayon?
God, I’m such an idiot.
He has enough on his plate without chasing the woman who couldn’t even look him in the eye when she said goodbye. And that’s the thing—I didn’t. Not really. I didn’t say goodbye. Not the kind that means something. Because I didn’t want it to be goodbye.
I just wanted space. Clarity. One moment of silence away from the warmth of those kids, the way Evelyn curls into my side when she’s tired, the way Oliver saves his best rocks for me and tells me secrets he won’t even tell Dean. I wanted to feel like me again—just Lila. Not the Lila who makes pancakes and kisses bruises and falls asleep in a man’s arms with her heart too full.
I wanted space to remember who I was before all this.
But instead, all I’ve done is sit in it. The silence. The distance. And now it’s not helping. It’s hurting. Because this isn’t what I want. What I want is messy. Complicated. Full of children and dirt and love so big it scares me. What I want is Dean and I might have just broken him.
The screen door creaks behind me, and Ashvi steps out, barefoot and holding two mugs.
“Still thinking?” she asks, handing me a fresh cup that smells like cinnamon and apology.
“I don’t know how to stop.”
She sinks into the deck chair beside me. “You were scared. That’s not a sin.”
“I didn’t say goodbye.”
She hums into her mug. “That might be.”
We sit in silence for a minute, the kind that only happens between best friends and feels safe even when everything else is unraveling.
“You know,” she says after a while, “for a woman who spends all her time studying cause and effect, you’re really bad at letting yourselffeel.”
That makes me laugh, but it comes out wet and broken.
“I thought leaving would make me feel free again,” I admit. “Like maybe I’d get my edge back.”
“Did it?”
I shake my head. “It made me feel like I lost everything I didn’t even realize I’d been building.”
She watches me over the rim of her mug. “So what now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You love him?”
I nod.
