I should’ve known something was wrong the moment my phone buzzed with a one-line text: “Come outside.”
No jokes. No emojis. No heart. Just his name flashing on my screen like a warning I didn’t know how to read until it was already too late.
I didn’t even grab a jacket. Just slipped on my sneakers and sprinted out the door, hoping he was waiting with some dramatic apology or maybe a surprise plan to fix everything. What I got instead was Luca—arms crossed, face unreadable, like someone had hit “mute” on every emotion he used to wear so loud.
He didn’t say hi. Didn’t smile. Didn’t touch me. Just looked.
Something inside me twisted. “Hey,” I said, voice already shaky. “What’s going on?”
He shrugged, like this wasn’t a big deal. “We should break up.”
I blinked so hard it hurt. “What?”
His gaze stayed fixed somewhere past my shoulder, like if he didn’t look at me directly, he could pretend this wasn’t happening. “It’s not working.”
“Not working?” My voice cracked on the second word. “What are you even talking about? Last week, you were literally saying I was your everything. Onstage. In front of everyone.”
He didn’t flinch. “Things change.”
I stared at him, trying to find the Luca I knew under the ice. “Did your dad put you up to this?” I asked. “Is this about the scholarship? Because if it is—”
“It’s not,” he said quickly. Too quickly. Still flat. Still cold.
My heart pounded so hard I could barely breathe. “So this is just… what? You randomly decided we’re over? Just like that?”
“I think it’s better this way.”
“For who? You?” I snapped. “Because it’s definitely not better for me.”
He didn’t respond. Didn’t look at me. Didn’t move. I took a step forward. He stepped back like I’d just burned him.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “After everything… why now?”
“I have to go,” he said, like we’d just finished a casual errand and not detonated the relationship we’d nearly died protecting.
He turned.
I didn’t chase him.
I stood on the sidewalk long after his car disappeared down the street, fists clenched, chest hollow, brain screaming every question I didn’t get to ask. Every answer he was too much of a coward to give.
It rained that night. Because of course it did. Like the sky wanted to be dramatic, too. I didn’t cry at first. Just sat on my bed in the dark, hoodie over my head, knees pulled tight, trying to figure out which part of me he stopped loving first.
When the tears came, they tore through me, wild and shaking and ugly. I broke like a glass bottle hurled off a rooftop—sharp, fast, impossible to fix.
Ezra knocked around midnight. “You alive in there?”
I couldn’t answer. Not with the wreckage in my throat.
He stepped in anyway, holding a bag of chips and two sodas like that could fix heartbreak. “Okay. I brought snacks and zero judgment.”
I was curled on the bed like something extinct. Ezra didn’t try to pry. He just sat there, eyes on the ceiling, like the silence between us wasn’t screaming.
Eventually, I croaked out, “He didn’t even give me a reason.”
Ezra turned to me, confused. “Wait—what?”
“He just said it wasn’t working,” I said, my voice raw.
“That’s it?” he asked, like he couldn’t believe it. “After all that Romeo-on-a-stage crap, he just… peaced out?”
I nodded.
Ezra rolled his eyes. “That’s bull. You don’t go full Shakespeare and then dip with a line straight out of a Hallmark breakup montage.”
“I keep thinking maybe I missed something,” I whispered. “Maybe I was too much.”
“Noah,” he said gently. “You weren’t too much. He’s just a coward.”
We sat there in silence, the kind that fills a room like smoke. Ezra opened the chips but didn’t eat them.
Then he stood. “Hey, uh… this was in your mailbox.”
He handed me a folded piece of paper. No name. Just a single sheet, creased like it had been held too tightly for too long. My heart knew what it was before my eyes did.
I opened it.
Black ink. One sentence.
I’m sorry I wasn’t brave enough.
That was it. No signature. No explanation. Just those seven stupid words that hit harder than the breakup itself.
Ezra leaned over my shoulder. “Seriously? That’s what he leaves you with? A sad-boy fortune cookie?”
I read it again. And again. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry again. I wanted him to look me in the eye and say it out loud.
Then I stood up, crossed the room, grabbed the lighter from my desk drawer—the one I used for scented candles I never lit—and held the letter over the flame.
Ezra’s voice was low. “Noah. You sure?”
“Yes.”