The Collapse

The weeks that followed were literally the darkest of my life.

I stopped going to lunch. I stopped going to my locker between classes. I moved through the hallways with my head down, invisible, the way I’d been before Ethan and Mia had pulled me into the light.

Mia tried to talk to me. She’d appear at my side between classes, her face pleading, and I’d walk faster. She left notes in my locker, texts on my phone, voicemails I deleted without listening to. I didn’t have anything to say to her. I didn’t have anything to say to anyone.

Ethan texted too, though I’d blocked his number. He must have used a friend’s phone. Mia told me you know. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. The anger was too big, too hot. If I opened my mouth, I’d say things I couldn’t take back.

My mom noticed, of course. She’d always been perceptive. One night, she found me sitting on the floor of my closet, surrounded by old photos and ticket stubs and the hoodie Ethan had left at my house months ago.

“Oh, honey.” She sat down beside me, her hand on my back. “What happened?”

I tried to tell her, but the words came out broken, tangled. She listened without interrupting, and when I finished, she pulled me into her arms and held me while I cried.

“It’s going to hurt for a while,” she said quietly. “But it won’t hurt forever. I promise.”

I wanted to believe her. But in that moment, it felt like the pain would never end.

Therapy was my mom’s idea.

I resisted at first, because admitting you need help feels like admitting you’re broken. But after two months of barely eating, of sleeping twelve hours a day, of staring at the ceiling and feeling nothing, I realized I couldn’t do it on my own.

Dr. Reyes was patient. She didn’t push. She let me talk when I was ready, and when I wasn’t, she sat with me in the silence until I found the words.

“It’s not just about losing him,” I told her one afternoon, staring at the abstract painting on her wall. “It’s about losing both of them. My boyfriend and my best friend. And I keep wondering what I did wrong.”

“Do you think you did something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” I picked at a thread on my sweater. “Maybe I wasn’t enough. Maybe if I’d been more interesting, more fun, he wouldn’t have looked elsewhere.”

“Ava, the choices other people make are not a reflection of your worth.”

I knew she was right. But knowing and feeling are two different things.

Slowly, painfully, I started to rebuild. I joined the school’s creative writing club, something I’d wanted to do for years but never had time for. I made new friends—quiet, genuine people who didn’t care about the drama. I started running in the mornings, the rhythm of my feet on the pavement drowning out the thoughts that tried to pull me under.

I still saw Mia sometimes. Our lockers were on the same hallway, and there was no way to avoid her entirely. She’d stopped trying to talk to me after the first month, when I’d walked past her for the hundredth time without a word. Now she just looked at me with something like grief, and I looked away.

I heard she was dating someone new. Not Ethan—he was still at Northwood, two hours away, living whatever life he was living. I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know.

Mia's POV

The first time I kissed Ethan Blake, it tasted like guilt.

Not that I hadn’t imagined it. I had. Too many times. For years, actually—long before I introduced him to Ava. Long before I convinced myself that watching them together was enough.

But the actual kiss? It happened on a Tuesday night in late July. The air was thick and wet, the kind of heat that made you feel like you were breathing through a straw. Ethan had texted me around nine, saying he was at the lake and didn’t want to be alone.

Where’s Ava? I’d asked.

Didn’t ask her. Just needed a friend.

A friend. That’s what I’d always been to him. Ava’s best friend. The connector. The third wheel who smiled through every date night, every inside joke, every time he looked at Ava like she’d hung the moon.

I drove to the lake anyway. Of course I did.

He was sitting on the dock, his feet dangling over the water, his phone dark in his hand. He didn’t turn when he heard my footsteps, but his shoulders relaxed slightly.

“You came,” he said.

“You asked.”

He laughed—a short, hollow sound. “That’s what Ava always says.”

I sat down beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. “What’s going on, Ethan? You’ve been weird all summer.”

He was quiet for a long moment. The water lapped against the dock, rhythmic and soothing. Fireflies blinked in the trees along the shore.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he finally said. “With Ava. With any of it.”

My heart did something strange—a lurch, a skip, a stumble. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I care about her. I do. But I’m leaving in a month, and I keep thinking about everything I’m going to miss. And I don’t know if I can give her what she needs.”

Don’t say it, I told myself. Don’t you dare say what you’re thinking.

“What do you need?” I asked instead.

He turned to look at me then, and the expression on his face made my breath catch. It wasn’t the easy, friendly look he usually gave me. It was something else—something searching, something uncertain.

“I don’t know,” he said again. But his eyes didn’t leave mine.

The air between us felt charged, electric. I’d felt it before, in small moments—a look that lasted too long, a touch that lingered. I’d always dismissed it as my imagination, as wishful thinking.

But this time, I couldn’t.

“Mia.” His voice was low. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Have you ever…” He stopped, shook his head. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”

“Ethan.”

He looked at me, and I saw the war in his eyes—the pull toward Ava, the pull toward something else, the guilt already forming before he’d even done anything.

I should have stopped it. I should have stood up, walked away, driven home, and never looked back. I should have been the friend Ava deserved.

But I was tired of being the friend. I was tired of watching. I was tired of wanting something I couldn’t have.

So when he leaned in, I didn’t pull away.

The kiss was soft at first—tentative, like he was testing whether this was real. Then his hand came up to cup my face, and the kiss deepened, and everything I’d been suppressing for years rushed to the surface.

This is wrong, a voice screamed in my head. This is Ava. This is your best friend.

But another voice—louder, hungrier—whispered: She doesn’t have to know.

When we finally pulled apart, his forehead rested against mine. His breathing was uneven, and so was mine.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t.” I put my fingers over his lips. “Don’t say you’re sorry.”

“But Ava—”

“I know.” The guilt was already spreading through my chest, cold and heavy. But I pushed it down. I’d been pushing it down for months. “We’ll figure it out.”

He nodded slowly, and I could see him making the same calculation I was making—how to keep this hidden, how to keep pretending, how to have both things at once.

That night, when I got home, I sat in my car for an hour. I stared at my phone, at the text from Ava that I hadn’t answered: Miss you. When can we hang out?

I typed back: So busy with family stuff. Soon, I promise.

Then I deleted the thread so I wouldn’t have to look at it.

That was the night I became someone I didn’t recognize.

The weeks that followed were a blur of stolen moments and elaborate lies. Ethan and I would meet at the lake, at the diner on the other side of town, anywhere we wouldn’t be seen. We told ourselves it was temporary. We told ourselves we were figuring things out. We told ourselves we weren’t hurting anyone.

But every time Ava texted me—Ethan’s being so distant, do you know what’s wrong?—the guilt clawed at my throat. And every time I lied to her face, a piece of me broke off and floated away.

You’re a terrible person, I told myself in the mirror. She trusts you. She loves you. And you’re destroying her.

But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Because when I was with Ethan, I felt something I’d never felt before—seen, wanted, chosen. And I was terrified that if I let it go, I’d never feel it again.

The night before he left for Northwood, I drove to the lake one last time.

He was already there, sitting on the dock, waiting. When I sat down beside him, he took my hand without a word.

“I told her I needed a break,” he said quietly. “She doesn’t know. About us.”

I nodded. I’d been expecting it. We’d talked about it—how to handle the transition, how to keep things quiet until he was gone, how to protect what we had.

“Do you regret it?” I asked. “Any of it?”

He was quiet for a long time. When he answered, his voice was soft.

“I regret how it happened. I regret hurting her.” He looked at me, and his eyes were sad. “But I don’t regret you.”

It should have made me feel better. It should have been enough.

But as I drove home that night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d built something beautiful on top of something broken. And broken things, eventually, collapse.