This was your spot.

The place you came after bad days, after long talks, after first kisses. You used to think it was magic, the way it always made things feel okay. But tonight, it just feels like a graveyard. A final stop.

“It’s quiet tonight,” you say, your voice barely carrying over the sound of the waves.

“Yeah,” he replies.

His hands are still on the steering wheel, like he needs something to hold on to. Like if he lets go, he might break.

You don’t look at him. Not yet. Because you know the second you do, something in you might unravel.

“I didn’t think it would feel like this,” you whisper. “The end, I mean.”

He doesn’t answer right away. You can hear him swallow.

“I didn’t think we’d get here at all,” he says finally.

That part hurts.

You finally turn your head to look at him. His profile is tense, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the horizon like he can’t bear to meet yours.

“Do you think if we met now,” you ask, “not when we were kids, but now... do you think we’d still fall in love?”

He turns his head slowly. And when his eyes meet yours, it’s like a punch to the chest.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’d fall for you all over again.”

You bite the inside of your cheek. The kind of pain you choose. Something to focus on besides the ache building behind your eyes.

“But we still wouldn’t make it, would we?”

His face softens in the worst way. The way someone looks when they love you, but not enough to stay.

“No,” he says. “I don’t think we would.”

“I thought we’d get married,” you continue, and you hate how your voice shakes. “Buy that little blue house near my mom’s. Paint the porch. Name our first daughter Nora.”

That one word—Nora—nearly breaks you. You said it so many times over the years, picturing her. Imagining her laugh. Her hair matching his. The way she’d call him Daddy and wrap her arms around his leg.

He looks down at his hands. “And Oliver for a boy.”

You nod. A tear slips down your cheek and you don’t bother wiping it.

“I still think you’d be a good dad,” you say.

“I still wanted to be,” he replies quietly. “With you.”

There it is. The version of you that never got to exist. The version that made it. The version that kept waking up beside him, in a house full of warmth and noisy mornings and drawings on the fridge.

“I don’t want to hate you,” you say quietly.

“You won’t,” he replies.

“I might,” you admit. “A little. For a while.”

His hand shifts—close, not touching, resting near yours on the center console. The same hand you used to hold when the world felt too big. The same hand that used to make you feel like everything was going to be alright.

“Then hate me,” he murmurs. “But don’t forget me.”

You stare at that space between your fingers. The almost-touch. The last touch you’ll never take.

He starts the engine, and the hum of it feels wrong. Too loud. Too final.

You don’t speak. Neither does he.

The car pulls away from the beach.

You don’t look back.

But you know you’ll remember every second of this.

For a long, long time.