Page 105 of Never After Us
Good.Great, actually.
He’s not ours.
Definitely not mine.
Alec Hovarth is just a neighbor who wandered too close and decided to retreat before the air got too real.People leave when it gets hard.That’s a truth I learned early—when my aunt left without a goodbye, when my dad forgot birthdays like they were optional, and when my husband perfected the art of being physically present yet, emotionally vacant.Absence is familiar.It fits like an old coat I hate but still keep in the closet.
I start with the shelves Alec helped me build.His fingerprints probably still live here, hidden beneath records and the scent of dust and pine.I wipe each surface slowly, but I’m done too soon.
I open another box, expecting more of the same: albums, slips of paper, nostalgia pressed into plastic.Instead, a dull thud catches my attention—small, barely audible, but it stirs my chest in a way that makes my hand freeze midair.
There, tucked between Freeze Frame and Heaven on Earth, is a journal.It’s thin, its spine bent like someone cracked it open a hundred times.The purple cover has faded into a bruised lilac, and the corners are curling in like petals after too much sun.
It doesn’t belong with the others.This one looks like it was hidden, not just stored.I stare at it.A smarter version of me would close the box and pretend she never saw it.
But that version no longer lives here.
I slide it out carefully, sitting on the floor like the carpet might anchor me to this moment.My fingers brush the edge, and I swear it hums—like whatever’s inside has been waiting.Like I’m supposed to find this now, not before, not later.Now.
“I shouldn’t open this,” I whisper.
And then, of course, I do.
Because not opening it would mean keeping my distance.And we both know I’ve never been good at that—not with people I care about, not with feelings I don’t want, and definitely not with journals that feel like secrets left behind on purpose.
June 2,1967
He kissedme today at the riverbank, even though we swore we wouldn’t.Even though we said we should wait for the right moment, the right time, the right everything.
But time doesn’t listen.And neither did he.He looked at me like he knew a secret about us I hadn’t learned yet.
My hands won’t stop shaking.I’m afraid my sisters will notice.I’m afraid the whole world will notice.I’m afraid no one ever will.
He’ll turn eighteen soon and leave without me.And I keep thinking—what if this moment has to last us a lifetime?
My throat goes tight.
This isn’t the same as the letters.This is Lina before the world grew around her.Before she became the aunt who made lentil soup from scratch and insisted microwaves “steal flavor.”
Before decades of silence settled over this part of her life.This is a girl terrified of a love she wasn’t supposed to have.A girl already losing something she didn’t know she was allowed to keep.
I turn a few pages with careful fingers.
September 6,1967
I keep thinking:what if he never comes back?What if all I ever get of him are these afternoons by the river and the memory of his hands?
He says he’ll write.I believe him.I don’t know if that makes me brave or foolish.
My vision blurs.
No.
Not today.Not again.
Crying was yesterday’s breakdown—okay, fine, it was three days ago.Or five.Possibly every day this week if we’re counting teary sniffles over coffee as a full event.Whatever.Today was supposed to be uneventful.A tidy episode of “Mara Has Her Shit Together.”
Clearly, we’re off-script.
