Unscripted

CHAPTER ONE : Leaving

I didn't cry when I left Boulder.
I thought I would. I'd even prepared for it — braced myself for that cliché movie moment: pulling away, music swelling, my chest cracking open in some big, poetic flood of tears.
But no. Nothing.
I think I used it all up already.
The apartment was hollow. My footsteps echoed against bare walls. The closet stood open and empty, the mattress gone, only a pale rectangle on the carpet where it used to be. The winter light was thin and cold, slipping through the blinds in narrow, dusty stripes.
I stood in the middle of it all, waiting to feel something... anything.
My eyes landed on the one thing I hadn't packed: a chipped mug sitting on the counter.
His mug.
The one he brought back from some work trip with a bad pun printed across it. I'd rolled my eyes, but I drank from it almost every morning for two years.
I picked it up, my thumb catching on the tiny crack near the handle.
I held it too long — long enough for a thousand tiny memories to crash through me:
him sliding it across the counter with coffee just the way I liked it,
him pressing a kiss to my temple before heading out the door,
him saying he loved me like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I put it back down.
Taking it would've meant I still wanted to hold onto him. And I can't.
Not anymore.
Outside, the air had that sharp, mountain crispness that always felt like the first breath after a long cry — clean but stinging. My Malibu sat in the parking lot, packed with everything I hadn't sold or given away. The trunk shut with a heavy, final sound.
For a second, I just stood there, the keys biting into my palm.
The place looked smaller than it ever had. Or maybe I'd finally outgrown it.
The thing about heartbreak is... it doesn't just take your person.
It takes your home. Your friendships.
All the little threads that made you feel tethered.
One by one, mine had snapped.
College friends scattered like dandelion seeds after graduation. People I thought would be bridesmaids in my wedding stopped returning calls. Turns out most of them were just convenience friends — easy when we were in the same classes or at the same bars, gone when life got messy.
And him...
God, I thought he was forever. I gave him everything.
My time, my trust, my body, my plans. I built my future around him like it was the safest bet in the world.
Until the night I walked into a party and saw him across the room — hand resting low on the back of a girl I thought was my friend.
Her smile, his laugh. The way they leaned in close like they were sharing a secret no one else got to hear.
That image burned itself into me so deep I still see it when I close my eyes.
The next week was a blur of shouting, crying, bargaining with a God I wasn't even sure I believed in anymore. I'd grown up being told that love was sacred, commitment meant something. That if you gave enough of yourself, the right man would stay.
Turns out, people can still walk away. Even the ones you thought you'd die with.
I climbed into the driver's seat, the cold leather making me shiver. My phone lit up on the passenger seat — no new messages. Not that I was expecting one, but part of me... maybe still hoped.
I opened his contact.
Habit. Stupid muscle memory.
Typed out: I'm leaving. For real this time.
Then deleted it.
I shoved the phone face-down and turned the key.
The engine hummed to life, and I pulled onto the street I'd driven down a thousand times. Only this time, I didn't have a destination here. Just a playlist I made at two in the morning and a one-way trip to a city I barely knew.
No apartment yet — just a stranger's sublease for the first month.
No agent. No connections.
Just this persistent thought I'd been too afraid to say out loud until now:
What if I actually tried?
What if I let myself chase the thing I've wanted since I was thirteen — acting, maybe directing someday. Creating something that made people feel the way movies always made me feel.
I wasn't chasing fame.
I just wanted to build something real. Something that would last longer than a love story that fell apart before it even had a chance to grow old.
The mountains shrank in my rearview. The sky opened up wider the farther I went.
Boulder faded, piece by piece, until it was nothing but a memory pressed flat behind me.
Somewhere past the state line, I realized my hands had stopped shaking.
And for the first time in months, the air didn't feel like it was closing in.
I didn't know what was waiting for me in LA.
But I knew it had to be better than what I was leaving behind.
Or at least, I hoped it would be.