Laila....
The last thing I saw was her standing in the rain.
No umbrella.
No goodbye.
Just Tracy.
And the question in her eyes I still haven't found the courage to answer.
---
The car pulled away like something tearing.
Soft, but final.
I pressed my hand to the window.
Mouthed her name — maybe.
Or maybe I just wanted to feel what her name felt like in my mouth one last time.
It doesn't matter.
She couldn't hear it anyway.
---
The new house was big.
Bigger than I was used to.
White curtains.
Marble tiles.
A silence so heavy it had its own kind of echo.
I wasn't allowed to close my door all the way.
---
Amir called the first night.
I let it ring until my father knocked gently and said:
> "He's your future now. You don't run from that."
So I answered.
Smiled through a voice I didn't recognize.
He asked how I was.
I said "fine" and meant "floating."
He said he missed me.
I said "I miss you too" and meant "I don't even know if I know myself anymore."
---
I thought about writing to her.
More than once.
I bought paper.
Tucked envelopes under my pillow.
Even practiced her name at the top of a page.
But every time I tried, I felt a thousand eyes watching.
Not real ones.
Just the kind you grow up with: The shame-shaped ones that sit in your spine.
So I didn't write.
---
But I did read hers.
My father didn't know they came.
I had them redirected through a cousin — a soft-hearted girl who never asked questions.
She handed me the stack like they were something holy.
I took them to bed and read every single one with a highlighter in one hand and guilt in the other.
---
She wrote about everything and nothing.
The mundane.
The beautiful.
The parts of life I would've missed — except she made sure I didn't.
The cat.
The chalk.
The silence in my room.
She said someone asked if we were more than friends.
She didn't answer.
But she didn't have to.
I already knew.
---
I kissed the last envelope.
Just once.
Folded it back up.
Placed it in the box I kept under my clothes, behind the prayer mat I hadn't touched in weeks.
And still, I couldn't write her back.
Not then.
Not yet.
---
Some nights I'd wake up with her name pressed between my teeth.
Like I'd been speaking to her in my dreams.
Maybe I still do.
---
The day Amir gave me a bracelet, I said thank you.
But I didn't wear it.
Because the only thing I wanted wrapped around my wrist was her handwriting.
---