The night I left, you said something to me—something that should have mattered—but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Maybe because all I could do was stare at the floor, counting the cracks in the linoleum like they were the only things that made sense. I wrapped my arms around myself because you wouldn’t, pulled your old sweatshirt tighter around my ribs like it could hold me together, and I wondered—as I walked out that door—if you even noticed it was yours. I never told you I was sorry. I wanted to. God knows I tried. But the words always got tangled somewhere between my chest and my tongue, and they came out wrong or not at all. So now I’m left with this: the ghost of us, the weight of everything unsaid, and the stupid, reckless hope that maybe—just maybe—you’d hold me again without needing a single word. We could rewind. Go back to the beginning, before we learned how to break each other. I wouldn’t even ask to stay. I’d just want to know what it felt like to wake up next to you one more time, to forget for a moment that we’re both a little shattered, to not care if you’ve changed into someone I don’t recognize anymore. I haven’t heard from your sister in months. I didn’t expect to, really—but some stupid part of me thought I might. Thought maybe she’d text, or you’d ask her to, or the universe would throw me a bone. Instead, I catch myself thinking about you more than I should, more than is healthy, more than I’ll ever admit out loud. I almost told you I miss you. The words were right there, on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them down because I didn’t know if you’d say it back. So here I am, Gracie, standing in the wreckage of us, asking the same question I’ve been asking since I left: Could you hold me without any talking? Just once. Just long enough to remember who we were before we forgot how to be gentle.