I’m sitting at the window table because that’s where I can see the street and the stupid ocean beyond it. The café smells like burnt coffee and sugar and the kind of quiet that presses on your ears until you can hear your own heartbeat—my heartbeat—which is loud as an engine. My hands are shaking a tiny bit from waiting, one of them clamped clenched around a cheap bouquet of flowers I picked up on the way here. They’re a little wilted at the edges, like they got nervous too, or maybe I held them too tight. I tell myself it’s just the cold, but it’s not. It’s the way my chest keeps tripping over the same thought: what if she doesn’t come?

Steam from my cup fogs up the glass and makes a little ghostland where the taxis blur past. Outside, gulls cry like they’re laughing. Inside, the light hits the table at this angle that makes the wood look like it’s bleeding gold. I keep staring at the door more than at anything else. Every time it opens my stomach drops like I’m falling off a high place. I tell myself I’ll stand up, I’ll say something brave. I’ve practiced phrases in my head and they all sound like a dumb kid trying to count to calm down.

at the festival, everything was loud and bright and fake—like people were trying on happiness. She showed me the fuse and the way she could change in front of me. She bit off my tongue and I felt stupid and naked—like all the stupid stupid feelings were out on the table. I turned into Chainsaw Man because what else was there to do? I was furious and hurt and I said a stupid line about how every woman I met tried to kill me. I remember the chains, how they felt under my hands, how my heart kept trying to climb out my ribs. She looked at me and I remember this, clear as the smell of oil: for a second, she looked like she didn’t want to be the person who hurt me. But I dragged her under the water anyway, dragging the both of us down until everything was dark and quiet and nobody could explode anymore.

I remember the beach after that like it was a movie with the colors turned up too high. I’d pulled her out of the water because she’d been drowning and—stupid me—felt like a hero. I asked her to run away with me right there by the wet sand, and she smiled that weird small smile that made me feel like I could keep breathing forever. Then she left without answering. I thought she chose the kill over me; I thought she walked away because she didn’t give a shit. For a while I hated that smile so much I could taste metal.

She left that time too. I thought she’d gone for good. But people are complicated—she’s complicated. She told herself the mission was the mission, but somewhere along the way she started choosing me, choosing the dumb little life I offered her that wasn’t mission-shaped. She changed her mind. She decided to come to the café. That decision is what I’ve been sitting on for hours, chewing at like it’s the last bread in the world. Every memory loops: the ocean that almost took her, the festival’s fireworks, a hand that reached for me even when it was holding a fuse. It’s wild how one choice can feel like a knock at your door.

The bell rings. I freeze and my heart tries to jump out. For a stupid second I think it’s a delivery guy with the wrong order. Then I see her—Reze—standing there like she did that day on the beach, except now there’s this tired sort of softness around her eyes. She’s wearing the same impossible smile but it’s different because it’s real this time, like she’s stolen it back from whatever job tried to take it. The air in my chest loosens, but not all the way. Part of me is still a fist—part of me is still ready to go to war. I want to stand up and hug her like an animal. I want to run and never stop. I want to ask why she came. I want to yell at her for leaving. I want to tell her I forgave her a thousand times and then ask her to stay.

And suddenly, I realize I’m still holding the flowers, fingers denting the stems. They look ridiculous. But they’re all I have to offer right now—something that isn’t a chain or a blade.