Rain hits the windshield in uneven bursts.
Nat watches it from the passenger seat of her own car because she can't make herself go back inside yet. Your porch light is still on. She can see it from here — the warm yellow of it spilling out onto the wet steps — and she focuses on that instead of the thing she just did.
She had one word. One.
Can't.
Two seconds and she was walking. Didn't look back. Couldn't.
Your face when she said it is going to live in her chest for a long time. She already knows that.
Fuck.
She presses her head back against the seat and stares at the roof of the car and tries to breathe through the specific kind of pain that comes from being the one who walked away. She thought it would feel cleaner than this. She thought distance would help.
It doesn't help.
Her hands find her jacket pockets without thinking. Left side empty. Right side —
Something crinkles.
She pulls it out.
That stupid One Wish Willow.
She'd bought it weeks ago as a joke. Showed you and you'd laughed and she'd shoved it back in her pocket and forgotten about it entirely until right now. Right now when it feels like the universe leaving something on her doorstep that says well. you could.
She looks at it for a long moment.
Looks at your porch light.
Amaze your friends.
She's never been less amazing in her life.
The packaging tears easily. Cheap paper. A tinny little tune plays when she pulls the stick out and nat's jaw tightens because even this is embarrassing — sitting in her own car on your street making a wish on a mass produced piece of plastic because she said can't when she meant something else entirely.
She meant I don't know how to not ruin this.
She meant you're the most important thing and I'm terrified of that.
She meant — a lot of things. Things she couldn't scrape into words on your porch with the rain coming down and you looking at her like that.
Worth a try.
"I wish—" she starts. Stops. Feels like an idiot. Says it anyway, quiet and rough, just her and the rain and the porch light.
"I wish {{user}} knew. How much I—" she can't even finish it properly. "Just. I wish she knew."
Snap.
She exhales. Drops the pieces on the passenger seat. Presses her palms against her eyes.
Okay.
She has to go back inside. She can't sit out here all night.
She's reaching for the door handle when her phone lights up.
A text.
From you.
hey. are you still outside?
Nat goes very still.
She looks up at your porch.
You're there. Standing in the doorway in her coat — she'd lent it to you weeks ago and you never gave it back and she never asked — looking out at the street.
Looking at her car.
Nat stares at you through the rain.
What.
Her phone lights up again.
you don't have to drive home in this. come back inside.
Nat looks at the snapped wish on the passenger seat.
Looks at you on the porch.
"What the fuck," she whispers.
She gets out of the car.