Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 22

She shrugged, eyes darting down to her uneaten rice. “Like… all the stuff. The broken stuff. The heavy parts. The ugly things we don’t talk about. Do people ever really get better from that, or do they just get better at pretending they’re fine?”

I wanted to say something poetic. Or maybe hopeful. Or even a lie, just to keep the air from thinning.

But the only thing that came out of me was the truth.

“I don’t know.”

She smiled—small, tired, like she already expected that answer—and nodded. “Yeah. Me neither. We are like a mix of pecan, cashew, pistachio, almond, macadamia... different on the outside but same within... we are all nuts.”

Then she picked up her fork again like we hadn’t just touched the edge of something sharp.

But I saw it.

That look in her eyes like she was bleeding out but didn’t want to stain the table.

So I didn’t press. I just stayed.

And maybe that was the most honest thing I could do.

She laughed again, light and effortless, like nothing heavy had ever touched her tongue. But I knew better.

I watched her wipe a bit of ketchup off her chin with the back of her hand, like everything was perfectly normal. Like she didn’t just drop a question on me that still echoed inside my ribs.

And in that moment, I wanted to reach out. Not just physically, no, deeper than that.

I wanted to hold her.

Not in some high school-boy-holding-his-crush kind of way.

I wanted to carry her.

Carry her cross. Take the weight off her back and let it break me instead. Let the nails pierce my hands if it meant she’d stop cutting her own. I would’ve laid myself down like an altar, if it meant she’d stop trembling inside her own skin.

I wanted to tell her that love is the answer. That God sent His son out of love to save the world, and maybe, just maybe, if I loved her hard enough, loud enough, pure enough… she’d be saved too.

That my love could reach into the hollow corners of her mind and silence the voices that told her she isn't okay. That I could be her knight, slaying dragons with one hand and cradling her with the other. That I’d kiss the ache out of her wrists, fight the demons she didn’t dare name, give her every part of me until she remembered how to want to live again.

But I knew that’s not how life works.

Love doesn’t always save people.

Sometimes, it just sits beside them while they bleed.

And so, like every day before, I didn’t say any of that.

I just handed her a napkin.

And smiled.

Quietly. Fully. Like I meant it.

Because I did.

She looked at me from across the table, mid-sip of her juice box, and I don’t know what got into me, but I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

“Here,” I said, unspooling my wireless earbuds. “I want you to listen to something.”

She raised an eyebrow, amused. “Another Taylor Swift anthem?”

I smirked.

“Surprise me,” she teased, echoing her own dare.

I handed her one earbud and tucked the other into my own. A part of me was trembling, and I wasn’t sure why, maybe because this was the only way I knew how to say what I was feeling. Without fumbling. Without making it about me.