The night the track dropped, Okza sat in her dark apartment, the glow of her laptop painting her face. The internet was already calling it her best yet. Tweets. Comments. Edits. Fans crying in the captions. They called it “the heartbreak song of the year.”

None of them knew it was a confession.

Her own voice filled the room — low, tired, cracked in places she hadn’t meant to leave unedited. She thought it would help to get it out. It didn’t. Every line just pulled her back to Diana Ellis.

Diana had been the kind of woman who didn’t fit anywhere easy. Twenty-four, brown skin glowing even under the supermarket’s dead fluorescent lights, curls pinned neat, gold chains catching every glint. Slim frame, quiet confidence. She didn’t even look at Okza the first time, just brushed past with a mumbled, “’Scuse me, you blockin’ the ice cream.”

Okza turned. That one look burned itself into her. Sharp dark eyes, a calm that could turn stormy in a blink.

They kept running into each other in that same store—first by chance, then on purpose. By the third week, they were standing in Aisle Nine, laughing over cheap snacks, pretending they weren’t both trying to memorize each other.

Diana was older, harder, someone who’d already been broken once or twice. Okza was just starting to rise—young, hungry, wearing her heart right on her sleeve. It should’ve never worked, but it did. At least for a while.

Now the whole world was singing along to their story. The hook she’d written on a night she couldn’t stop shaking. The verses pulled straight from her journals. And somewhere, maybe across town, Diana was hearing it too.

Okza leaned back, staring at the ceiling, trying not to picture her. The way she’d laugh with her head tilted, the smell of liquor on her breath, the quiet apology that never sounded rehearsed. Diana had always been cold and warm at once — a contradiction that made Okza chase her even harder.

The phone buzzed again: a new message request. She almost ignored it, until she saw the name. Diana Ellis.

Heard it. You ain’t changed, huh?

Just six words. No emoji. No period. But Okza could hear her voice in every space between them — that tired, proud, half-broken tone that always sounded like she was trying not to care.

Okza stared at the screen until her eyes blurred. Then she whispered, more to herself than to the phone, “Neither did you, D.”

Outside, the city kept humming — same as that first night in the store. She could almost smell the aisle again, cheap lights and cheap wine, and the moment she learned what it felt like to want someone who’d already decided to run.