Page 29 of Midnight Between Us
I’ve learned the hard way that loving people only turns you into someone you don’t recognize.You break them, or they break you, and neither version is worth surviving.I’d never do that to her.At least, I thought I wouldn’t.
A part of me knows it’s okay because I’m leaving soon.And she’ll be fine.She always is.After all, I’ve taught her to defend herself, to be strong ...to be cold because there’s no worth in being nice or loving anyone.
“You came here with your mom once,” I say.“She made you kneel and ask for a miracle.Then lit a cigarette on the front steps.”
She huffs.Dry.Almost a laugh.“Yeah.She said Jesus was the only man who never disappointed her.”
I scoff.“She told my mom she was allergic to virtue at a PTO meeting.”
“That sounds about right.”
Silence settles once more.The warm, sharp kind that fills a room just before something is said that can’t be taken back.
“You ever think about leaving?”I ask.
She looks at me then.
Really looks.
And the whole church seems to pause with her.Even the dust remains still.The light freezes where it touches her skin.
“Would you take me with you when you do?”she asks.Her voice is small.Careful.Like she already knows the answer and that it’s going to split her open.
I want to say yes.
I want to tell her I already packed space for her beside me.That I couldn’t picture leaving without her.
But I don’t.
Because I know how this end.
I leave without a warning or even a goodbye.I vanish, and she’s left with the silence I never explained.The promise I never made, but she felt anyway.
She must hear it in my stillness.
Her jaw tightens.She looks away.
The light in the room starts to shift.The moment begins to fray at the edges.
She stands.Wipes her hands down the front of my stolen shirt like it suddenly feels wrong on her skin.“For once, I wanted you to say yes, even if it was a lie.”She doesn’t cry.She just walks.
Her footsteps echo, too loud for a place this small.
I try to call her name.“Simone.”
But the church is collapsing now.The walls stretch.The floor shifts.The ceiling spins.
She’s halfway down the aisle, then farther.Her figure fades, swallowed by something I can’t stop.
I try to follow.Try to run.But nothing moves.
I try to call out, to make her name rise in the space between us.
But my voice is gone.
She disappears into the light, and I’m left with what she always hated most—stillness.
Just dust in the air.Heat on my skin.And the sting of everything I never said.
