Ava's phone buzzed on the table beside her, interrupting her designated quiet evening of the week. She glanced at the screen, dreading the endless notifications from her group chats. But this time, it wasn't just another meme or funny story.
The screen lit up with a new name: Maybe Valerie.
She froze. Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. She knew the name. Not well, not intimately, but well enough to know it could only mean thoughts she had run away from had caught up to her. Valerie was someone she had quietly pieced together from her late-night doubts, catching glimpses of Jacob's world—the parts he never openly shared.
Her thumb hovered over the screen. For a moment, she thought maybe I'd ignore it, pretending the message hadn't arrived. But curiosity won the short-lived battle.
Valerie: Ava?
Ava: Who is this?
Valerie: Valerie.
Her stomach folded into a pile of knots. She stared at the name again, feeling the sharp sting of realization.
Valerie: Can we talk?
The words hit like a freight train. Ava's breath caught up to the truth unraveling before her.
Ava: When would you like to talk?
March 7, 2022. The memory was vivid as if it had just happened yesterday. Ava remembered how it all began, how her heart leaped when she saw Jacob's name on her phone after so many summers had come and gone.
"Hey," he said casually, his voice warm and familiar. "It's been a while."
So much life had passed since they last spoke, yet the sound of his voice felt like the peace of home. She had been desiring, needing, wanting that feeling for so long.
April 17, 2022. "I've missed you" he confessed as the conversations deepened. "I've thought about you often." he replied when she asked why he never reached out.
Ava hesitated more than she wanted to admit, unsure of how to respond. She believed at that moment that she had missed him too, so she would say the same even though she was trying to read between the lines of her bottled-up emotions. As their conversations grew more frequent, she found herself opening up. One night, as she lay in bed imagining a future much differently than she had written in her journal, he called her again.
"I want to see you," he said softly. "Sooner than later."
"Jacob…" she started, her voice faltering. "I need you to know I've changed. Nothing bad, just my priorities are different."
There was a pause, then his reassuring tone: "Ava, I think that's amazing. I want to get to know the woman you are now. I want to be in your life. I want you to feel like you can trust me with anything."
She told him how she had thought of him over the years, how his confession of love all those years ago had stayed with her.
"But it was the wrong time, wrong place," she whispered.
"Maybe now it's the right time, right place," he replied.
May 21, 2022. "Good morning, beautiful," Jacob's voice greeted her, warm and full of affection.
"Good morning, handsome," she replied, smiling despite what she had been feeling in the pauses of their growing communication.
It appeared they were growing closer, their daily conversations building an unshakable bond. But sometimes, familiar things can feel like the safest place to land, even if the familiar was once shaky.
May 27, 2022. Valerie sat across from her therapist, hands clasped together. She repeatedly dragged her thumb across her palm as she struggled to steady her thoughts.
"I trust him," she said finally. "I've never had a reason not to trust him."
Her therapist nodded, waiting, allowing Valerie the space to process.
"He said that.." Valerie continued, her throat tightening. "Seeing her once more was just something he needed to do." She exhaled shakily. "He said it meant nothing."
She swallowed the words that she was fighting not to say. Tears began to fill her eyes, blur her entire world, but she blinked them back like a gate holding back the flood.
"And then he told me he would do anything to fix this. We decided we would go back to being us again."
Her therapist shifted slightly, observing her. "And is that what you wanted, Valerie?"
"I want us."
Jacob sat silently. He had chosen her for selfish reasons. He was willing to fight for not their relationship but the image of him that everyone believed. He had told himself the stories that he wanted to believe so well that everyone else believed them, too, even when they knew that other books, chapters, and pages were missing from who he was and has always been.
Valerie chose only to read the book version that made her happy because that's what we do when the love story looks better than the loneliness does.
Ava, a literal ocean away, stared at her phone, tears trailing down her chin. This was the outcome of never reading the fine print and signing her heart away to the first buyer.