Release

The day blurs.

I move through it like a ghost—washed out, untethered. The hours fold into each other, dull and shapeless. I think I went for a walk. Or maybe I sat on the couch and stared at the ceiling. At some point, I answered a text from Tara and left Kira on read. I microwave something. I don't eat it.

By the time the sun sets, I'm sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, eating plain oatmeal out of the pot I cooked it in. No bowl. No spoon—just a fork I pulled from the drawer without thinking. The window is cracked open and I can hear a siren in the distance, some kid yelling, the clink of glass bottles in a trash can.

Then my phone buzzes. I glance at the screen.

Voicemail. Stefani.

I freeze.

It's not a text. Not a call I missed and could pretend I didn't see. It's a message—something she wanted to leave behind, something she needed to say without hearing my voice on the other end.

I stare at the screen, my stomach tight and coiled. My thumb hovers over the play button. I almost don't press it.

But I do.

Her voice comes through in a strained whisper, soft and ragged like it had to fight its way out of her throat. "You don't have to believe me."

She's crying already. I can hear it in the breath between her words, how it catches and shakes like something's breaking open from the inside. She's trying to keep it together. She's failing.

"About loving you. I know you don't. I know I've made it impossible to believe anything I say when it comes to you. I just—I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I'm sorry."

There's a long pause.

All I can hear is her breathing. Deep, uneven. Desperate.

"But I'm not pretending when I say I need you. Maybe it's selfish. Maybe it's fucked up. But I can't lose you—not completely. I don't care if it's not love, not what you want, not what you need. I'll take anything. Just to keep one part of you. Even if it's just... the physical stuff. Even if I only get the part of you that doesn't ask me questions."

Her voice breaks then. A sob, raw and unfiltered, cracks through the speaker and echoes in the quiet of my apartment. It cuts something in me. Something I didn't realize was still bleeding.

"You make me feel like myself. Even when I don't deserve that. Even when I'm with him. I still think about you. Every fucking time I breathe. Please don't shut me out."

Click.

That's it.

The message ends. And I just sit there—phone in hand, oatmeal forgotten, breath caught somewhere in my chest.

The weight of it presses down on me. Not just the voicemail. Not just her voice. But everything. The months. The years. The memories we've buried and the ones we keep digging up again just to bleed all over them.

What do you do when the person you wanted everything from will only give you pieces?

What do you do when they know it's not enough—and offer it anyway?

I don't replay it.

I don't delete it either.

I just sit in the silence she left behind, and let it settle over me like ash. —

I wake up on the living room floor, the wood beneath me unforgiving and cold against my cheek. The sun is already high, casting harsh slants of light across the furniture. For a moment, I don't move. My body aches—not from injury, just from existing like this for too long. Curled inward, stuck, still.

My phone is dead beside me. The voicemail still lives in the air somewhere, clinging to the walls. I don't need to hear it again. It's been burned into the inside of my skull.

I lie there and realize I've been wallowing. Fully, pathetically drowning in a grief I've let take over my entire life. And for what? A story I kept rewriting in my head, trying to turn it into something it never really was. A love I wanted so badly to believe in, even when it stopped showing up.

It would've been easier if she never asked me to choose her in that cabin months ago. If she never reached across that impossible space between us and whispered, choose me. That was the moment everything began to crumble. Because I did. I chose her. And then I waited.

When she walked away that night, telling me to let her go—I should have listened. I should have accepted it. Grieved then, like a clean break. But I didn't. I waited. Unknowingly. Pathetically. I searched for her in every crowd during curtain calls, scanned my phone in the dark for any flicker of her name. Nothing.

Until GMA. Until I was honest for the first time in months about what she meant to me. And she showed up—like a ghost who only knocks once you start speaking their name aloud again. She came to my final show and I let it mean something. I let it be something. More than a friend. More than an old chapter revisiting the stage for one last bow.

No more.

I'm done letting this unravel me.

I get up. My legs protest, my back cracks, my breath shakes, but I move. I charge my phone, plug in music, open the windows. The air smells stale, like grief and last night's breath. I strip the bed, even though her perfume still lingers faintly on the sheets like a cruel trick. I wash them anyway.

I cook. I eat something. Just eggs, toast, fruit. I shower—hot water and lavender soap—and scrub every inch of her off me, even if I know it's more metaphor than fact.

And then I walk down the street to ballet class. My first in weeks. My muscles are stiff, my posture heavy with exhaustion, but I push the studio door open and step into a space that still feels like mine.

The room is warm, mirrors fogged slightly from the bodies already moving through warm-up stretches. The piano in the corner hums softly as the accompanist plays slow arpeggios. The instructor nods at me in quiet recognition, not making a scene of my return, just gesturing for me to take my place at the barre.

I do.

And as the first plié begins, my body remembers. Not perfectly. Not fluidly. But enough. My breath syncs with the rise and fall of each movement, tendons pulling tight and then softening. Tendu. Relevé. Rond de jambe. There's something sacred in this discipline—something that demands presence.

I lose myself in it. For the first time in days—maybe weeks—I'm not thinking of her. Not obsessing over the way she looked at me or the way she didn't. Not replaying the sound of her voice cracking through my phone speaker.

I'm just here. Moving.

The ache in my chest doesn't disappear. But it gets quieter. Muted beneath the ache in my calves, the burn in my thighs. Pain I can control. Pain that means something.

By the time we finish the adagio and stretch at center, my forehead is damp, and my hands are trembling from fatigue. But I feel more whole than I have in a long time. Not fixed. But functional. Focused.

Maybe that's all I need right now. Just one good stretch. One hour of forgetting. One quiet reminder that I'm still mine.—The sun's dipping low by the time I leave the studio. My muscles ache in that strangely satisfying way—the kind that doesn't scream injury, just presence. I feel wrung out and clean, like the dance rinsed something out of me I couldn't reach with words or tears or sleep. There's a breeze now, not enough to be cool, but enough to rustle the sleeves of my hoodie and send the city into its usual twilight murmur.

I'm halfway down the block when my phone rings.

Tara.

I swipe to answer, already imagining the gloss in her voice—the effortless mix of concern and casual sass she somehow carries into every conversation.

"Hey, you," she says, her voice bright but layered with something softer underneath. "How you doing?"

I take a breath. A real one.

"I'm... okay," I say. "Actually okay. Tired. But I made it to ballet."

There's a pause on her end. "Wow. That's... really good, Lena." And then, carefully, "You sure you're okay?"

I could lie. I could throw out one of those deflecting yeah totallys, but there's no point. Not with her. So I try the truth. Or at least a part of it.

"I'm better than I was this morning," I say honestly. "It's been a really shitty few days. I've just been... in it. Wallowing. I don't know. But I'm trying."

She's quiet for a second. Then, "Well, I'm glad. You sound more like you."

I let that settle. I do feel more like me. Or at least like someone trying to be.

She exhales into the phone. "Did you and Stefani ever work your shit out?"

I blink. My steps slow a little.

She means that night. The party at her place. Two months ago. When everything cracked and nobody said what they meant until it was too late. When I was all over Kira after Stefani didn't speak to me for a week. Stefani found me in the bathroom, looking for something she didn't have the courage to name. When she came to my apartment in the early morning to see if I took Kira home.

Tara remembers. Of course she does. I was chaos.

"Yeah," I murmur. "We resolved it."

I don't elaborate. I don't say that we resolved it by undoing the illusion, by stripping everything down to the ugly bones and standing in the wreckage together until she finally walked away. Again.

I remember Tara calling me the morning after the party, her voice low and tense. She's a mess, she said. She's crying your name, Lena. Over and over again.

It was guilt. Or jealousy. Or both. But it doesn't matter now.

I shake the memory off like water off a coat and change the subject. "What about you?" I ask, forcing a lighter tone. "What are you up to tonight?"

"Oh my god," she says, immediately taking the bait. "We're pregaming for the club. My place. You have to come. Everyone's coming. Even Freddi's making drinks, and you know that man can mix."

I smile despite myself. "Alright, alright. I'll come."

"Good. I was hoping you'd say that. And—wait, is Ali coming?"

The question pierces me a little, quick and sharp.

"No," I say, quieter now. "Ali and Titi Camila left yesterday."

Tara's silence on the other end is instant and perceptive.

"Shit," she says. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

I nod, even though she can't see me. "It's fine. I should've gone with them to the airport but..." I trail off. What's the point in finishing the sentence? I couldn't get off the floor. I was too busy mourning something that was never mine.

Tara doesn't push. She just sighs. "I was really hoping to see Ali again. She's... cool."

"She'll come back soon," I promise, more for her than for me. "She loves New York. Loves you."

"Tell her that," Tara says with a smile in her voice. "And you better show up tonight. No excuses."

"I will."

We talk a little longer. Small things. What she's wearing. What time to show up. What vibe the night's supposed to be—low stakes, loud music, maybe a little dancing if the mood hits.

By the time we hang up, I'm already standing in front of my apartment building. The sky above is streaked with the softest pinks and blues, and my hands feel steadier than they have in days.

There's something oddly grounding about Tara. The way she reminds me that life still goes on outside the warped, emotional echo chamber I've been living in. That joy still exists, somewhere between eyeliner and tequila and dancing under colored lights.

Maybe tonight I'll let myself find a little of it. Even if it's only for a moment.

I head inside my apartment.

The shower runs hot—steam curling against the ceiling, fogging the mirror, washing the last of the day off my skin. I stand under the stream longer than necessary, letting the water pound against the back of my neck until the tightness in my shoulders dulls. I scrub everything—days of sweat, grief, sleep, and stillness—off my body. I even condition my hair twice, letting the scent of coconut and something sweet linger. I want to feel clean. I want to feel new. Or maybe I just want to feel anything other than the dull ache that's lived under my ribs for weeks.

When I step out, the room smells like eucalyptus and warm skin.

I towel off slowly, methodically. Lotion, then perfume—sultry, sharp, smoky. Something that feels a little dangerous. I spritz it at my neck, at the hollow of my throat, behind my ears, across my collarbone. My pulse follows the trail.

At the vanity, I keep my makeup fresh. Skin dewy. Lips neutral. But the eyes—I make them dark. Unreadable. The black liner smudged to perfection, lashes curled to look like I haven't slept in days and still somehow look better for it. There's something about making yourself look mysterious when you feel like a ruin. It gives the illusion of control.

I stare at myself a moment. Still me. Still not sure what that means.

Clothes. What to wear?

I pull out a leathery top—barely a top, really. It clings and reveals, thin enough the wind could blow it away if it tried hard enough. I pair it with dark, baggy jeans that sit low on my hips and high black boots. My stomach, shoulders, and chest are bare to the warm summer night, and I like the way I look. Like I'm not trying too hard. Like I don't give a fuck. Like maybe I really don't.

I grab a few things from the vanity drawer—papers, a little weed, my lighter—and tuck it all into my jacket pocket.

By 10:00 p.m., I'm at Tara's.

The music's already thumping through the apartment walls, some remix with heavy bass and a female vocal that melts into the rhythm. I don't bother knocking. No one does at Tara's.

Inside, it's packed. The lights are dim, everyone glowing a little under the warm bulbs strung across the ceiling and the neon flicker from the kitchen sign. It smells like alcohol, weed, and body heat. The kind of scent that only means one thing: a night about to get messy.

I slip into the kitchen. Freddi's already half-drunk and spinning around the counter, bottle in hand. His smile is crooked and lazy.

"It's a tequila night," he slurs with glee, holding out a half-made margarita.

"I can tell," I grin, taking it from him.

I hoist myself onto the kitchen counter, cross-legged, pulling the papers from my pocket. The weed's sticky and fresh—someone gifted it to me last week, I think. I roll slowly, deliberately, letting the movement distract me.

Then I feel it.

Eyes.

I glance up, joint halfway sealed.

Kira.

Leaning in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, head tilted. She's watching me like she knows something I don't.

I blink. "You're not over here harboring all the weed, are you?"

I laugh, surprised. "I always have something for you."

"Really?" she says, voice flirting with challenge as she saunters over.

She slips between my legs like she belongs there. Hands light on my thighs, thumbs brushing the inside seam of my jeans. My breath catches, just for a second.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

Her smirk grows. "Tara and I have gotten close lately. You know how I like to stay tight with my Glinda fans."

Her hair is slicked back into a low bun, a few soft strands framing her face. Her makeup is barely there—just enough to pull your eyes to hers. Her blue eyes shimmer with a warmth that feels almost golden, thanks to the subtle brown liner she's wearing. She's in a baby pink t-shirt, clearly with nothing underneath, and loose low-rise jeans that fall perfectly on her hips. Pink heels, casual and reckless.

I put the joint between my lips, inhale slowly, then lean in and blow the smoke gently into her mouth. She inhales, eyes on mine the whole time. Her hands never leave my legs.

Then I hear it—shuffling in the doorway.

I don't even need to look to know.

Tara. Stefani.

Both with drinks in hand, Tara already drunk and grinning.

"Save some of that weed for me!" she shouts, laughing as she stumbles into the kitchen.

Kira steps slightly back, but not far. One hand stays on my thigh, the other reaches to take the joint from my lips. She takes a drag, then hands it to Tara without breaking conversation.

I still haven't looked at Stefani. I'm not trying to.

But I feel her. Like a shadow against my skin.

When I glance—accidentally, instinctually—her face is a tightly wound knot of something between disdain and heartbreak. She's watching Kira's hand like it's an offense. Like it's betrayal. Like she didn't walk out of my apartment three nights ago without a word.

I pull my eyes back to Kira, let them slide down her body once more. She's telling Tara and Freddi a story about some guy at the beer shop, laughing with her whole face.

I reach up, fingers slow and soft, and place my hand on the back of her neck. Just enough pressure to feel her warmth.

Then I take another sip of my sloppily made margarita, trying not to taste Stefani in the air.

Tonight, I tell myself, is not about her.