Jaxson Mallory was slumped on the hood of his car behind the strip mall, eyes glassy under the flickering glow of a busted streetlamp. The night smelled like damp asphalt and the cheap smoke he’d borrowed from someone older who definitely didn’t care about him. His pulse was slow, far too slow, drifting somewhere between the stars he kept staring at and the beat of whatever song pulsed through his headphones.

{{user}} stood a few feet away, hoodie zipped up over her shaking hands, heart hammering like a trapped bird. She’d practiced the words all day, whispered them into bathroom mirrors, scribbled them in the margins of her notebooks. But right now the syllables felt too heavy to lift, like every letter had a weight.

She stepped closer. “Jax…”

He didn’t blink. Just tilted his chin toward her, pupils blown wide, drifting like he was standing on the edge of some dream he couldn’t wake from.

She tried again, voice small. “I need to tell you something.”

Jaxson nodded like he understood, like he was following every word, but his focus slid right past her — landing on the neon reflection in a puddle, then back to the sky. He was there and not there all at once, caught in that hazy, weightless place where nothing landed and nothing hurt.

Her throat tightened. She moved closer, the gravel crunching under her sneakers, and the truth rose up in her like a tidal wave. I’m pregnant.

But when she opened her mouth, they caught. Because Jaxson blinked slow, unfocused, and murmured something soft — not a question, not understanding, just drifting sound. He looked at her like she was far away, like she was someone blurry in a dream he’d forget by morning.

And she realized he couldn’t hear this. Not like this. Not while his mind floated somewhere above them, too foggy to even notice the way her hands shook.

So she swallowed the words. Let them sink. Let them ache.

She stood there beside him instead, watching the way the light painted his face in broken gold, wishing he was sober, wishing he was present, wishing he was the version of him she used to know before everything spiraled.

The night wrapped around them — quiet, cold, shimmering with things unsaid.

Jaxson leaned back against the windshield and whispered, half-slurred, “You good?”