Chapter Text
Alli doesn't even realise she's still holding her breath until her bedroom door clicks shut behind her and the air leaves her lungs in one shaky rush.
Her room looks the same as it did this morning—textbooks stacked like they've been behaving, her duvet half-draped off the bed, her desk lamp still crooked because she never fixes it properly—butshedoesn't fit inside it anymore. Like the walls have shifted an inch closer and no one bothered to warn her.
She stands there for a second with her back against the door, backpack strap digging into her shoulder, fingers curled tight around it like if she lets go she'll drop something fragile. Something that will shatter and make noise and make it real.
Outside, the evening in the Bhandari neighbourhood is too quiet. Somewhere down the street a garage door groans open and then shuts. A car passes. A dog barks once and stops. Normal life is still happening. People are still doing… people things.
Alli swallows, her throat sore in a way that has nothing to do with speaking.
She kicks off her shoes without looking, toeing them under the dresser like she does when she's trying not to get caught doing something she shouldn't. Habit. Muscle memory. Like if she's neat enough about it, the universe won't notice.
Her phone is in her pocket. She can feel it like a weight—warm, insistent, waiting to light up with a message that isn't coming.
Not from him.
Not from anyone.
The screen stays dark.
Alli drops her bag on the floor and it lands with a soft thud that makes her flinch anyway, because her body is still braced for impact. She walks to her mirror and stops, staring at herself the way you stare at a test you definitely failed but still think you might have misunderstood.
Her eyeliner has smudged at the corners. There's a faint line of dirt along her knee—she doesn't remember kneeling, but the mark says she did. Her hair is slightly frizzed from the wind and the way her hands kept worrying at it, twisting and twisting like she could braid the whole day into something else.
She looks… like Alli. Same face. Same mouth. Same big eyes that are always too expressive and always getting her in trouble.
But her eyes don't look excited. They don't look brave. They don't look like a girl in a movie.
They look like someone who got what she wanted and wishes she hadn't asked.
Alli presses her fingers to her lips. They feel chapped. There's a metallic taste in her mouth, like pennies, like fear. She thinks of the ravine—how cold the air was, how the ground was uneven, how the world felt too wide and too empty all at once. She thinks of the way the sky looked overhead, the dark cutout of bare branches like veins.
She thinks of how she'd imagined it.
Candlelight—because in her head it always has candlelight, even though she is not allowed to have candles in her room and her parents would probably call 911 if she tried. Music—something soft, something romantic, something that would make her heart feel big instead of terrified. Someone's hands—gentle, careful, reverent, like she was something worth slowing down for.
And instead there was the wind. And the dirt. And the harsh scrape of denim and the way everything happened too fast and too clumsy, like they were both trying to get it over with before the universe changed its mind.
Like they were racing a clock she couldn't see.
Alli squeezes her eyes shut.
No.
She will not cry. Not yet.
Crying feels like permission.
She turns away from the mirror and walks to her bed, sitting on the edge with the kind of carefulness you use around a skittish animal. Her jeans are still on. She should change. She should wash her face. She should do something normal, like her homework, like a person who didn't just step off a cliff and land in a life she didn't recognise.
Instead she reaches into her pocket and takes out her phone.
There are no notifications.
Her thumb hovers over his name anyway, because she has no dignity and also because she has hope, which is worse.
Johnny DiMarco.
It's stupid that his name looks the same as it did yesterday. It's stupid that her phone doesn't care that something huge happened between them. It's stupid that all it would take is one tap to send a message and she still can't do it.
Alli stares at the screen until it blurs.
She scrolls back through their messages.
Not the flirty ones—those are rare and awkward and mostly full of emojis she used because she didn't know how to say what she meant without sounding like a girl who reads too many romance novels.
She scrolls through the dumb ones. The short ones.
where r u
outside
k
Like their relationship has always been written in fragments. Like if they keep it small, it can't hurt them.
But it hurts anyway.
Her stomach rolls, not nausea exactly—just a twisting, unsettled feeling that makes her press her palm against her middle. Like her body is trying to decide whether it's going to be angry or sick or heartbroken.
Or all three.
Alli tosses her phone onto the bed and immediately regrets it because now it's out of her hands and she doesn't know what to do with her fingers.
She rubs at the faint dirt on her knee until her skin turns pink.
Her door opens without a knock, because her mother never knocks. Mrs. Bhandari believes privacy is something you earn when you move out and get married and produce grandchildren.
"Beta," her mother calls, and her voice is normal, which somehow makes it worse.
Alli swallows hard. "Yeah?"
There's a pause, and then—softer, like her mother is trying not to startle her—"Alli Nisha?"
Alli's fingers curl into the blanket. That name—her name, the one her mother uses when worry has teeth—lands heavier than it should.
"I'm here," Alli says, and she hates the way it sounds like she's admitting something.
Her mother appears in the doorway, brows knitting together the moment she looks at Alli's face. Mothers always know. It's horrifying.
"Alli Nisha," her mother says, stepping closer now, her voice lower, careful. "Look at me."
Alli forces her mouth into something like a smile and lifts her eyes. "I'm fine."
Her mother doesn't look convinced. "Are you feeling well?"
Alli keeps the smile, like it's a shield. "Yeah. I'm just… tired."
"Tired," her mother repeats, suspicious. "From what? You should not be tired. You are young. You should have energy."
Alli gives a little laugh that sounds wrong. "School."
Her mother's eyes narrow like she's doing mental math. "You had tutoring today."
Alli's stomach flips, hard.
She did have tutoring. Technically.
She had walked out of it.
She had texted Johnny.
She had done something else entirely.
"I—yeah," Alli says, because lying is easier than explaining. "It was… a lot."
Her mother steps closer, and Alli braces instinctively, because the last thing she wants is to be touched. Not by anyone. Not right now. Her mother reaches out anyway, pressing the back of her hand against Alli's forehead like she's checking for fever.
"My little night," her mother murmurs automatically, the way she always does when she's worried, thumb brushing gently at Alli's temple. "You're cold."
Alli's throat tightens around something sharp. She stares at her mother's hand like it doesn't belong there, like affection is suddenly too bright to look at.
"You're cold," her mother declares again, as if being cold is a moral failing. Then her expression softens, just a fraction. "Go put on a sweater. And wash your face before dinner. Your eyes look…"
Like what?Alli wants to ask. Like she's been crying? Like she's been foolish? Like she's been brave in the wrong direction?
But her mother doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't have to.
"All right," her mother says, the edge returning because parents are scared and they don't know how to say it. "Dinner in twenty minutes."
She turns, then pauses in the doorway like she wants to say something else—something kinder, something that would make it safe to confess whatever it is her mother can sense pulsing under Alli's skin.
Instead, quietly, like a benediction, she adds, "Come down soon, beta."
The door closes.
Alli sits there, listening to her mother's footsteps fade down the hall, to the muffled sounds of the house. The clink of dishes. The low drone of the evening news. Her father's voice in the living room, reading something in that calm tone he uses when he's trying to pretend everything is stable and safe and under control.
Alli presses her hand to her chest.
Her heart is still beating like it's trying to escape.
In her head, the scene replays, because of course it does. The ravine is like a bad song stuck on repeat, except she can't turn it off.
Johnny's face in the dim light. The way he wouldn't quite look at her at first, like eye contact would make it too intimate. Like intimacy would make it real.
The way he asked, "You sure?"
And she said yes.
She said it like she meant it.
She did mean it.
She meant:Please choose me. Please want me. Please make me matter.
But that's not what she said. Because she's Alli Bhandari, and she has always been too good at pretending she's fine.
After, he'd been quiet. Not cold—just… gone somewhere in his head. He'd pulled his hoodie back on, hands shaking slightly as he tied the strings, and Alli had watched him like he was a stranger, like she didn't know this version of him.
"You okay?" she'd asked, because she didn't know what else to say.
Johnny had nodded too fast. "Yeah."
Then, after a beat, like he couldn't stop himself, he'd added, softer, "I'm sorry."
Alli's stomach clenches again, remembering it.
"I'm sorry" is not a love confession.
"I'm sorry" is what you say when you broke something.
Alli had forced a laugh then, too. Same fake laugh. Same desperate need to make things feel normal.
"It's fine," she'd said. "It was… fine."
And Johnny had looked at her like he didn't believe her, like he knewfinewas a lie and didn't know how to fix it.
Then he drove her home.
The car ride had been worse than the ravine, somehow. Because there were streetlights. Because there were houses and people and the normal world pressing in around them like a crowd.
Because the silence was loud enough to bruise.
They'd pulled up in front of her house. He didn't come to the door—of course he didn't. He couldn't. He sat there with both hands on the steering wheel like if he let go, the whole car would float away.
Alli had reached for the door handle.
"Ali," he'd said, and her name sounded wrong in his mouth. Too gentle. Too careful.
She'd looked back at him, hoping—hoping for anything. A smile. A joke. A promise. A text later that night sayingI can't stop thinking about youorAre you okay?or evenThat was stupid, we're stupid, but…
Johnny's eyes were dark. Tired. Guilty.
He swallowed and said, "You should go inside."
Alli blinked. "Yeah."
Then he added, barely audible, "Don't… don't tell anyone, okay?"
Alli's throat had tightened around something sharp.
"Okay," she'd said anyway.
Because she always says okay.
Because she is so good at being agreeable.
Because she thought that was what love was supposed to look like: keeping secrets, swallowing disappointment, making yourself smaller so someone else doesn't feel bad.
Now, in her room, alone, Alli curls her fingers into her duvet.
She wants to text him.
She wants to scream at him.
She wants to rewind time and grab her past self by the shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattle.
But she can't.
So she does the only thing she knows how to do when she feels powerless.
She opens her laptop.
The screen hums to life, bright against the dim of her room. Her desktop is cluttered—school files, photos, music playlists, a document titled "Science Project FINAL FINAL FINAL" that is absolutely not final.
And then there's her blog.
She clicks without thinking, the way you touch a bruise just to see if it still hurts.
Her page loads: pinks and purples and glittering fonts that make her feel like a girl who knows what she's doing. Like she isn't just a bundle of nerves and contradictions. Comments from people who think she's confident. Who think she's glamorous. Who think she has some kind of life figured out.
Alli stares at the blank post box.
Her fingers hover over the keys.
She could write about it. She could make it poetic, like girls in movies do. She could turn it into a dramatic story with metaphors and pretty sadness, something romantic and tragic, something that makes her feel like the main character instead of the cautionary tale.
But if she writes it down, it becomes real.
If she writes it down, it becomes something that happened to her, not something she can pretend didn't.
So she closes the laptop again.
She sits very still, listening to her own breathing, to the faint sounds of her family downstairs, to the steady ticking of the clock on her wall.
Time passes whether you are ready or not.
Alli reaches for her phone again.
She opens a new message.
Johnny's name sits at the top of the screen like a dare.
She types:hey.
Then she stares at it until the letters look stupid.
She deletes it.
She types:are you okay?
Deletes.
She types:i'm fine.
Deletes.
She types:i thought it would be different.
Her hands stop. Her chest tightens. She stares at the words like they've been pulled straight from her ribs.
She doesn't delete them right away.
Her thumb hovers over send.
Her heart pounds so hard she can hear it.
She imagines his phone lighting up. Him reading it. His face. His reaction. Him laughing with Bruce tomorrow like nothing happened. Him showing it to someone. Him rolling his eyes.
Or worse—him feeling sorry for her.
Alli's throat burns.
She deletes the whole thing.
The message field goes blank.
So does she.
Downstairs, her mother calls again, sharper this time. "Alli! Dinner!"
Alli wipes her face with her hands even though there are no tears to wipe.
She stands, legs a little unsteady, and pulls a sweater over her head because her mother told her to and because rules are easier than feelings.
In the bathroom, she turns on the tap and washes her face with cold water until her skin stings. She watches her reflection drip and drip, and she looks… normal.
Too normal.
She brushes her teeth even though she doesn't want to, scrubbing hard like she can erase the taste of the day.
When she's done, she stares at herself again.
Her eyes look big. Too big. Like they're trying to hold everything in.
Alli leans closer to the mirror and whispers, "It's fine."
Her reflection doesn't believe her.
Neither does she.
At dinner, her father asks about school. Her mother lectures Sav about university applications like she's reciting a prayer. Sav glances at Alli once, quick and concerned, and Alli looks away because if her brother sees her properly, she might crumble.
She eats because everyone expects her to eat.
The food tastes like cardboard.
After dinner, she claims homework and escapes back upstairs.
She closes her door softly, like her sadness might wake someone.
Then she sits on her bed and pulls her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them like a shield.
Her phone is beside her, screen dark, silent.
Alli stares at it until her eyes ache.
Still nothing.
No message.
No apology.
Noyou okay?
NoI can't stop thinking about you.
Nothing that makes it feel like she matters.
Alli presses her forehead to her knees.
She doesn't cry.
Not yet.
But she feels it—something building behind her ribs, a swell of grief and humiliation and longing that has nowhere to go.
She thinks, suddenly, with horrifying clarity:
This is what it feels like to be a secret.
Her fingers tighten in her sweater sleeves.
Outside, the streetlights flicker on.
The world keeps turning.
And Alli lies down in the same bed she's slept in since she was a kid, staring at the ceiling like it might give her answers, like it might tell her how to be a girl who survives her own choices.
Her phone stays silent.
And in the quiet, Alli realises something she doesn't have words for yet.
She realises that sometimes the worst part isn't what happened.
It's what doesn't happen after.