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The day Laleia came back, the heat cracked the pavement and the church bells rang late.
Seven minutes late. I counted. I always count things: the spaces between sound and silence, the number of steps between the church pews and the altar, the seconds it takes the fan in the library to make a full turn. Some people chew their nails. I measure the world in patterns.
I was in the church library, shelving hymnals for Sunday. The fan clicked and hummed, fighting the weight of the heat. I wore a cream blouse with sleeves rolled to my elbows and a navy skirt that stuck to my thighs when I knelt. My long dark hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, fine strands escaping to stick to my temples. The spines of the books were damp under my fingertips, and I could feel my blouse sticking to the small of my back.
One hymnal slipped from my hands, and I caught it, thumbing the cover. The inside bore a faded stamp: Parish of Mournell Library. The letters were nearly rubbed out, the kind you only noticed when the light hit at an angle. I traced it absentmindedly before setting the book back in its place.
The bells were supposed to ring at noon. They always did. The first chime usually falls right as the sun hits Saint Francis’s face in the glass above the altar. But that day, nothing happened. I waited. One. Two. Three. I kept on sorting books. Then⏤seven minutes later⏤there it was: a late, crooked clang that echoed like it had missed its cue.
That’s when I saw her.
Through the slats of the window, across the stretch of the blistering pavement, she passed by on a bike⏤hair wild and shorter than I remembered, cropped into waves that flared like copper when they caught the light. Her shoulders were browned, bare under the strap of a worn tank top.
A tote bag hung lazily at her side, frayed at the seams, with two sunflowers sticking out like they’d been pulled from the roadside. She was coasting down the road like she belonged to nothing⏤until her sandal slipped off the pedal. She wobbled, and my hands clenched around the hymnal. Something sharp twisted in my chest.
I hated the way my body moved before my mind caught up. It’s nothing. Nothing. Surely. She just came back to see someone else. Or to sell something. Or maybe she forgot I was ever here.
But there she was, and suddenly I was seventeen again, still terrified of wanting something I know I shouldn’t.
Of course it had to be her.
Laleia Luelle.
The name tasted like burnt sugar on my tongue.
There was a time I couldn’t say her name without flinching. Names carry echoes, and hers hold too many. Then after that came the silence. I trained myself to forget the sound of her laughter, to unlearn the shape of her in my mouth. I buried her so deeply in absence, I was almost convinced she’d never been real.
