Chapter Five: The Things We Carry
Eva walked the back streets of Edgewater like a stranger moving through someone else’s memory.
She avoided Main Street that morning. Took the long way around. Past the rows of peeling white fences and wind-worn houses that looked exactly the same as they had when she was seventeen. Same cracked sidewalks. Same rusted mailboxes. Same porch swings swaying in the breeze like time had left them untouched.
Her boots scuffed the pavement as she walked with no clear destination. She told herself she was just stretching her legs. Just getting air.
But she knew the truth.
She was circling. Orbiting around the thing she still didn’t have the courage to face.
Noah.
The sound of his name in her head made her breath catch, even now. Like her heart didn’t understand time the way the rest of her did.
She passed by the elementary school, the one they used to cut through to get to the cliffs faster. The old iron gate was still half-broken on one side, tied closed with what looked like a shoelace. She almost smiled.
Almost.
It was stupid—the things that stayed the same. The things that waited.
She sat on the low stone wall outside the schoolyard and pulled her knees up, arms wrapping around them like she used to do as a girl. She hadn’t realized how tired she was. Not physically. Tired in the soul-deep way that came from pretending you were whole when you weren’t.
She stared at the cracks in the pavement.
Then at her hands.
Then at nothing at all.
And without warning, the memory came.
---
It was late fall, senior year.
The sun was already setting when she stepped into the back room of Noah’s dad’s workshop. She was cold, her fingers stiff from riding her bike across town, but she didn’t mind. Not when she knew he’d be there.
He always was.
Noah looked up from the open record player he’d been fixing, eyebrows lifted, lips curved into that quiet smile that felt like safety.
“You ran away again,” he said, wiping his hands on an old cloth.
She shrugged, trying to sound casual. “Home’s loud.”
“Come here.”
She did.
He pulled her gently to the floor beside him, handed her one of his earbuds. He never asked what she needed—he just gave it to her. Music, warmth, silence. He understood in ways no one else ever had.
They sat there, side by side, knees touching, listening to the same song on repeat for almost an hour. No talking. No pressure.
When it was time to go, he walked her outside, stood on the porch with his arms crossed like he was holding something in. She had turned to leave, but then he said it.
“I think I’m falling in love with you.”
She had stopped mid-step.
Not because she didn’t feel the same.
But because she did. And it terrified her.
She turned back to look at him. His face was all shadow and truth.
“I need to go,” she said quietly.
And she had.
She’d run.
---
Back in the present, Eva blinked against the sunlight and pushed the memory away like it was smoke in her eyes. Her throat felt thick.
She had wanted to say it back. That day. So many days.
But she didn’t know how to love someone without giving them too much. And Noah had already seen too much of her.
She stood, brushing off her jeans, heart still pounding from the weight of a moment she couldn’t undo.
The memory wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was the truth.
She loved him.
She had never really stopped.
And now that she was back, she wasn’t sure if she’d come home to fix that… or to finally bury it.
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