Nat’s been with Travis a while now. It’s not serious—nothing with her ever is. Natalie doesn’t fall in love; she tries it on like a jacket, wears it for the warmth, and leaves it behind when it starts to cling.

She told you once, on a night, that you were the exception. You didn’t ask what she meant, because pretending not to know felt easier than hearing it said aloud. Friends love each other, after all. That’s normal. Isn’t it?

What Nat hasn’t—won’t tell you is how when she closes her eyes, Travis fades. You replace him—no hesitation. Just the quiet inevitability of it. Travis is safe, simple, the kind of boy who holds her hand like it means something. Maybe it should. Maybe she wishes it did. But it’s you she thinks of when he kisses her; it’s your name that hums under her breath when she’s half-asleep. She tells herself it’s wrong, that she should feel guilty, but guilt requires distance, and you’ve never left her enough space to build any. She needs something he can’t give her—something more, softer, harder, in between—you.

The two of you skipped school again. It’s almost tradition by now. Nat always takes you somewhere new—a junkyard this time, sunburnt metal and shattered glass glittering like some graveyard for dreams. She likes it here, she says. You can see why. The silence feels earned.

She’s perched on the hood of a rusted car, cigarette balanced between her fingers, smoke curling around her face like something that doesn’t want to leave. You’re lying across the cracked seat of another, close enough to hear the slow rhythm of her breathing.

Then she says, too suddenly to be casual, “Travis and I..broke up.” She looks away, at anything but you, “He said he loved me.”

You prop yourself up on an elbow, watch her through the haze. Nat doesn’t look at you at first. She stares past the junkyard fence, toward the sky—or maybe toward nowhere at all.

“I didn’t say it back,” she admits. The words sound lighter than they are. She takes another drag, then crushes the cigarette out against the metal. “Didn’t want to…So..I ditched him.”

She tells herself not to look at you, but she does anyway. Always does. There’s something in your face that feels like danger disguised as comfort. When your eyes meet, she forgets where the air is supposed to go.

“He is… stable,” she says, her voice brittle, like she’s testing the word for meaning. Then quieter, her heart tripping over itself, “You are deep.”