This isn't weird.

Pointless

Millie made it as far as the elevator before the tears started to fall. No, not fall—pour. Had she ever cried this hard before? The elevator doors closed behind her, but she couldn't even see the buttons clearly enough to make out the one for the ground floor. It didn't matter. Where could she even go in this state? Her knees buckled and she slid down to the ground, hugging her legs tightly to her chest and gasping hoarsely for breath between uncontrolled sobs.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Nothing was supposed to be like this. Ben, her Ben, the most beautiful human being she had ever known—how had he devolved into this sullen, bitter shadow of a man? Was all of this her own fault? She knew her disappearance from his life had taken a toll on his mental health. She had never intended for it to be so long. A little bit of time to get her head straight—that was all she had wanted.

Three weeks. It took her three weeks of therapy, three weeks of self-reflection, three weeks of missing him with every fiber of her being. Then she was ready. Ready to see him. Ready to talk. Ready to finish what they had started. She had been so excited, so happy, so sure that he felt the same way.

She had prepared a whole speech; she spent hours writing and rewriting it, making sure it said all she wanted to say. She was so afraid that her words would fall short, that they wouldn't be able to make him truly understand the magnitude of the love she felt for him. She needed him to know how much she regretted not staying by his side the night they first met, and letting her stupid assumptions make her too afraid to tell him how much she wanted him, and all the time she wasted throwing herself into a dead-end relationship just to shield herself from the crippling fear that he would never want her back. She needed him to know how much it terrified her to love someone this much, how afraid she was of giving another person the power to hurt her the way Noah had, but she trusted him, and knew he was worth the risk.

For the entirety of Wednesday Millie had worked on that speech, practiced it over and over and over, lying flat on her back in bed, pacing around her room, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror. It was almost ready, almost perfect; the next morning, she would call him, ask him to meet her. She would wear the yellow dress. He would hug her so tightly she could barely breathe, then he would draw back, and they would look at each other, suddenly a little shy. Then she would take a deep breath, and take his hand, and tell him everything. He would begin to smile that dazzling smile, wider and wider as she spoke, until she came to the end. And then he would probably make some flippant, smart-ass remark, and she would pretend to be annoyed, and then he would kiss her so hard that it would make her head spin, and she would never want to kiss anyone else ever again.

Her speech was so close to perfect. Just one more time, she told herself, smiling at her reflection and beginning again. "Ben," she said. "I haven't stopped thinking about you for a single second since the last time I saw you. No—actually, if I'm really being honest, I haven't stopped thinking about you for a single second since the first time I saw you..."

When the front door opened, she was too focused on her recitation to notice it. She was nearing the end when she looked up at the mirror and saw Tess standing behind her in the doorway, her face stricken.

"Millie," Tess said, her voice shaking with pity and dread, "I have to tell you something. I was just at Indigo's..."

Three weeks. That was how long it had taken Millie to be ready to fully give him her heart. That was how long it had taken for Ben to decide that she wasn't worth the wait.

When Tess finished speaking, Millie vomited in the sink.

Her memory went black after that. She had vague flashes of lying in bed over the next few days, her lungs sore from heaving sobs, and Tess's voice, begging her to eat, or drink water, or at the very least, to just say something, anything.