Part 84
(Alex's POV)
Alex didn't drive far.
The road curved away from Moonlight Brew, winding through dark fields and whispering trees — but when she reached the bend where the café lights disappeared, her hands froze on the steering wheel.
The car idled.
Her reflection in the windshield was pale and wide-eyed, like someone waking from a dream.
She could have gone home.
She could have gone anywhere.
But her body refused to listen.
With a slow, quiet sigh, she turned the wheel. The tires rolled over gravel again, retracing the same path she'd taken minutes ago.
The café reappeared — small, glowing faintly in the dark like a memory that refused to die.
Alex parked where the road dipped behind a line of trees. The headlights were off. She rolled down her window just enough to hear the world breathe — the hum of distant crickets, the occasional bark of a dog, the faint ticking of the café's hanging sign as it swung in the breeze.
Her eyes never left the door.
The same door she had touched.
The same door that separated her from him.
For hours, she sat there, unmoving.
Every flicker of light inside made her heart skip — even when she realized it was only the reflection of passing cars, or the movement of curtains from the upstairs apartment where his mother lived.
Sometimes she thought she heard his laugh again, soft and low, like an echo carried by the wind. Sometimes she whispered back without meaning to.
"I'm still here."
Her hands fidgeted restlessly in her lap. She pulled out her phone, staring at the photo she had taken earlier — Adrian smiling, eyes bright, sleeve rolled up as he handed someone a drink.
The world had adored that smile once. So had she.
But the world had moved on. She hadn't.
"I'm the only one who stayed," she whispered to herself. "Even when you broke, even when you hid."
A moth fluttered against her window, pale wings catching in the glow of the streetlamp. She watched it struggle for a moment, trapped between light and glass, before it finally flew away.
Alex's lips curved faintly — a tired, almost broken smile.
Maybe that's what she was too — something that couldn't stop circling the light that burned her.
But tonight, she wasn't ready to fly away. Not yet.
She turned off her phone, leaned her head against the window, and let the quiet swallow her whole.
The last thing she saw before her eyes closed was the dim outline of Moonlight Brew, the flower she'd left inside still unseen, waiting to bloom its message in the morning light.
And even as sleep tugged at her, one thought stayed clear, soft, certain:
"He won't forget me again."