The text came in just after midnight.
Cleo: Are you alive or just really good at disappearing?
I stared at the screen for a long time. She hadn’t reached out in months. Hadn’t liked any of my posts. Hadn’t called when everything spiraled—when I ghosted her, when Vincent pulled me into his world and I stopped answering to anyone else.
Me: I’m sorry.
She replied almost instantly.
Cleo: Then show up. 11. Our café. Don’t make me regret it.
***
The café looked the same. Same chipped mugs. Same crooked “Cash Only” sign. Same tiny table in the back with the peeling varnish and the wonky leg we used to fix with a sugar packet.
Cleo was already there when I walked in—hair braided, fingers wrapped around a latte. She didn’t smile when she saw me. Just looked. Really looked. Like she was trying to figure out what version of me had walked in this time.
I sat.
We stared at each other for a long moment. No words.
Then she said, flatly, “You look…different.”
I shrugged. “Different how?”
“Like someone who went through some real shit.”
I huffed a small laugh. “That sounds about right.”
Her jaw tensed. “You could’ve called.”
“I didn’t know how to explain what was happening to me.”
“Try me.”
So I did.
I told her everything. The silence after Julian. The hollow days. The leash Vincent offered—not to trap me, but to tether me when I was drifting too far from myself. How I hated him. Needed him. How safety didn’t always come in soft things. Sometimes it came with rules. Boundaries. A steady hand when the inside of your skull felt like a riot.
She didn’t interrupt. Just listened. And when I finished, she nodded once. “I get it more than you think.”
I looked at her. “Yeah?”
“My dad was a drunk. Not the loud kind. The kind who forgot birthdays.” Her eyes didn’t get watery. Just sharper. “So I learned to control everything. My tone. My reactions. My outfits. If I could make the outside perfect, maybe I’d feel safe on the inside.”
I swallowed. “Same.”
“You just took it further.”
“I found someone who held the rules for me when I couldn’t.”
She nodded. “That’s the part I didn’t understand before. But I think I do now.”
“I’m not ashamed,” I said, voice steady.
“I don’t want you to be.”
We sat in silence for a bit.
Then Cleo leaned forward. “Do you love him?”
I didn’t even need to think. “Yes.”
“Does he love you back?”
“In the only way he knows how. But he’s learning.”
She gave me a long look. “Is it enough?”
I hesitated. “It’s more than I ever thought I’d have. That has to count for something.”
“It does.”
She pulled out a worn envelope and slid it across the table. “I wrote this after you disappeared. I was going to send it. Then I wasn’t. Then I got tired of waiting for closure.”
I stared at it. My name scrawled in her handwriting.
“You don’t have to read it now,” she said. “I just needed to give it to you. In person. Because even if I didn’t agree with everything… I never stopped caring.”
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I folded the letter and tucked it into my coat.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“You’re not alone,” she said. “Whatever path you’re on, just promise me it’s yours.”
“It is. For the first time… it actually is.”
Cleo smiled then. Soft and a little sad. “That’s all I needed to hear.”
***
When I got home that night, Vincent was waiting on the back patio. Black shirt. Sleeves rolled. Book abandoned in his lap. He looked up the second I stepped outside.
“Good talk?” he asked.
I walked to him, crawled into his lap like it was the only place I knew.
“She forgave me.”
“She should.”
I studied his face. “Do you think I’m strong or just self-destructive?”
He touched my jaw gently. “Both. But that’s what makes you survive.”
I leaned in. “You ever think we became who we are because we didn’t know how else to keep breathing?”
“All the time.”