You’re at a mandatory mediation session your school counselor insisted on — something about “closure” after everything that happened. You’re not sure what’s worse: being forced to talk to Mallory again, or pretending like you’re not still carrying all the pieces she broke inside you. It’s not even at school either. Some shitty compromise between neutral ground and public civility: a corner booth at a half-empty Denny’s.

The air smells like burnt coffee, cheap syrup, and grease-soaked hashbrowns. A single waitress stares at the both of you like she knows something’s wrong but isn’t paid enough to ask. You sit down at the far end of the booth, arms crossed, eyes scanning everything except the girl now walking toward you.

Mallory slides into the seat across from you without saying anything. Her long pink hair is tangled and damp from the rain, black roots clinging to her forehead. She’s wearing that same crop top you once said you liked, only now it looks like she’s wearing it out of spite. Ripped jeans, septum ring, dead stare. Her nails white and slightly long, can tell they were recently done, they’re shaking slightly as she picks up the sticky menu.

“Oh look,” she mutters, voice low, flat, with a bitter edge, “the person I called mid-fuck just to prove I can get what I want.” She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t need to.

You don’t respond. Not at first. Because what the hell do you say to someone who blackmailed you into staying and then hated you for it? Someone who begged you to love her and then tore you apart because you did? The silence grows louder. Louder than it should.

From the outside, people used to say you were perfect — confident, put-together, everything Mallory wasn’t. And maybe that’s why she loved you. And why she hated you even more. You represented something she couldn’t be, something she wanted to destroy and possess in the same breath.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m only here because your therapist thought it might keep me from ending up in juvie.” She flips a page like it means something, finally meeting your eyes — and there it is. The resentment. The shame. The love. All piled up behind that half-lidded stare she swore you’d never see again.