Chapter 39 Chapter 39

Chapter 39 Chapter 39
By Friday, the future had started showing up everywhere.

Not in some dramatic, cinematic way.

In forms. Deadlines. Conversations. The fellowship packet on my desk. The engineering brochures Mrs. Hargrove kept slipping into my hands like contraband. My mother asking practical questions about housing and train lines and whether I’d need a better laptop before the end of the year.

And, most dangerously, in the quiet spaces between me and Jaxon.

Because once he’d said I’d hate being the reason you stayed smaller more, I couldn’t unknow it.

I carried it with me all week.

The generosity of it. The ache of it. The fact that he had somehow become the person least likely to ask me to choose between being loved and becoming more myself.

That should have made everything easier.

It didn’t.

It just made the possibility of leaving feel more real.

Friday afternoon, I was at my locker trying to stuff an impossible amount of books into my bag when Jaxon came up beside me.

“You’re thinking loud again,” he said.

“That is still not a real phrase.”

He took the history book from my hands before I could shove it in crooked. “It is when you keep making that face.”

“What face?”

“The one where you look like you’re trying to solve grief with organization.”

I stopped.

Then looked at him.

“That’s annoyingly specific.”

“I’m annoyingly observant.”

I leaned back against the lockers and exhaled. “My mother printed out university accommodation options.”

His expression shifted. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I repeated. “That’s your response?”

He lifted one shoulder. “Do you want me to freak out?”

“Maybe a little.”

A small smile tugged at his mouth. “Liar.”

I was. Mostly.

I looked down at the floor tiles. “It just made everything feel closer.”

He was quiet for a second. Then, gently, “Maybe that’s good.”

I laughed once, but it came out thin. “You are infuriatingly evolved for a teenage boy.”

“I contain multitudes.”

“That is Lucy’s line.”

“Lucy is raising me.”

That got a real laugh out of me, which seemed to satisfy him.

He handed me back the book. “Come to the game tonight.”

I looked up. “That was not subtle.”

“I’m not subtle.”

“I’ve noticed.”

His eyes warmed. “Come anyway.”

I pretended to think about it. “Will Lucy accuse me of betrayal if I don’t?”

“Definitely.”

“Then I guess I have no choice.”

“You never did.”

That should not have worked on me.

It did.

The game was colder than the last one.

Naomi sat on one side of me in a beanie she claimed was “fashionably academic.” Lucy sat on my other side in a puffer jacket and fingerless gloves, despite repeated reminders that fingerless gloves defeated the purpose.

“They make me look tactical,” she said.

The stands were loud, the band slightly off-tempo, the field bright under the floodlights. I wrapped my hands around a hot chocolate and tried not to think too much.

Failed, obviously.

Because I kept watching Jaxon.

Not every play. Not every second. Just enough to feel it in my chest whenever he got hit too hard or stood too still after a tackle. Caring had made football significantly worse for my nervous system.

Lucy noticed immediately.

“You’re doing the worried face,” she said.

I looked at her. “I have a lot of faces, apparently.”

“This one is very specific.”

Naomi snorted into her drink. “You two are becoming the same person.”

“That is a threat,” I muttered.

Briar Ridge was ahead by seven when halftime came. The crowd surged toward the concession stand in one giant, noisy migration. Naomi went to hunt down pretzels. Lucy was intercepted by three girls from elementary school who wanted to discuss some catastrophic friendship politics involving stickers.

That left me alone near the bleachers for the first time all evening.

I was texting my mother that yes, I had remembered a jacket, when a voice beside me said, “Fancy seeing you here.”

I looked up.

Kendra.

She was wearing school colors and a composure I didn’t fully trust, but there was no sharp smile tonight. No audience clustered around her. Just her, standing with her hands tucked into her coat pockets, looking more tired than cruel for once.

“Hi,” I said carefully.

She glanced toward the field. “He looks for you constantly, you know.”

The bluntness of it knocked me off balance.

“I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” She shifted her weight. “I just… noticed.”

The noise of halftime carried around us—music, laughter, people yelling for chips. But this little patch of air felt oddly still.

Kendra looked down at the concrete for a second, then back at me. “I was awful to you.”

There it was. Not dressed up. Not deflected.

I said nothing.

Her mouth tightened. “I don’t expect that to be fixable.”

“It isn’t,” I said quietly.

She nodded once, accepting that. “Yeah.”

For a second I thought that was it.

Then she said, “I think I hated that you made him different.”

I blinked.

“He was always…” She searched for the word. “Easy with everyone. Easy to have. Easy to lose. And then you happened, and suddenly he wasn’t either of those things anymore.”

That landed strangely.

Not as triumph. Something sadder than that.

Kendra folded her arms against the cold. “I kept trying to make that your fault.”

I looked out at the field, where players were coming back for warmups. Jaxon was one of them, helmet in hand, laughing at something one of the linemen said.

Then, like he felt it, he looked up.

Found me.

Even from that distance, something in him settled when he did.

I looked back at Kendra. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“I know.” She let out a breath. “I know that now.”

The band started up again, louder this time, signaling halftime was nearly over.

Kendra gave a small, humorless smile. “Anyway. I figured you should hear at least one honest thing from me before graduation.”

Then she turned and walked away into the crowd.

I stood there for a second, stunned.

Not healed. Not suddenly freed of years. But… lighter, maybe. Because sometimes the apology isn’t enough, but the truth still matters.

“Mila!”

Lucy came sprinting back with Naomi behind her and a pretzel the size of a steering wheel.

“What happened?” Naomi asked immediately, eyes narrowing in the direction Kendra had gone.

I looked back at the field where Jaxon was pulling on his helmet.

Then I looked at my friends.

And for once, the answer didn’t feel jagged.

“Nothing terrible,” I said.

Naomi looked deeply suspicious of that phrasing, but before she could interrogate me, the second half began and the whole crowd rose to its feet.

Jaxon glanced up once more before the snap.

I smiled and lifted my hand.

He did the same.

And standing there under the stadium lights with cold air on my face and the future still uncertain ahead of me, I realized something had shifted again.

Not because the past was erased.

Because it was finally losing its claim on every good thing that came after it.