**Week One, Day One**
I don't cry.
That's the thing that surprises me most. I walk away from Aurelio's apartment on that freezing February night, count my eight hundred forty-seven steps to the bus stop, ride home in silence, and don't shed a single tear.
Maybe I'm in shock. Maybe I used up all my tears at the hospital with Grandma Rosa. Maybe I'm just empty.
I lie in bed staring at the ceiling until the sun comes up. My phone is off. The compass necklace is still on his coffee table. My chest feels hollow, like someone reached in and scooped out everything vital.
When morning comes, I get up. Shower. Get dressed. Go to school.
I don't cry.
***
**Week One, Day Two**
He's not at my locker.
Of course he's not. We broke up. But my feet still carry me there at exactly seven forty-five like they have every morning since October. My hands still expect the warmth of a coffee cup. My heart still does that stupid hopeful leap before reality crashes back.
The hallway feels too loud without him. Too bright. Too full of people who aren't him.
I open my locker. Books. Pens I've stolen from rich kids' desks. A photo of Grandma Rosa tucked in the corner. Everything exactly as I left it yesterday, except everything's different.
Poet finds me staring into my locker like it holds answers.
"Hey." Her voice is gentle. Too gentle. "You okay?"
"Fine."
"Liar."
I close my locker. Force a smile that feels like breaking glass. "I'm fine, Poet. Really."
She doesn't believe me. I don't believe me either.
***
**Week One, Day Three**
AP Literature is torture.
I feel him behind me before I see him. That awareness I developed over months of sitting in front of him—the way the air changes when he's near, the sound of his breathing, the specific way he taps his pen when he's thinking.
I don't turn around. Don't acknowledge him. Just stare straight ahead while Ms. Okonkwo talks about *Jane Eyre* and impossible choices and love that isn't enough.
The universe has a sick sense of humor.
When class ends, I'm the first one out the door. I hear him call my name—"Cassia, wait"—but I don't stop. Can't stop. Because if I stop, if I turn around and see his face, I might break.
And I can't break. Not here. Not in front of everyone.
***
**Week One, Day Five**
I find the note on Friday.
It's in my calculus textbook, tucked between pages two hundred and forty-seven and two hundred and forty-eight. His handwriting, slightly messy, achingly familiar:
*Remember when you said you hate math because numbers don't have stories? I think you're wrong. Every equation is a story. Every solution is an ending. Some problems have multiple answers. Some have none. But the beautiful ones—the ones worth solving—are the ones where you have to try different approaches before you find what works. Don't give up on the beautiful problems. —A*
He must have written it weeks ago. Slipped it in when I wasn't looking. Back when we were whole instead of broken.
I read it seventeen times. Smooth the creases. Put it in the pocket of my jacket.
I still don't cry.
But I want to.
***
**Week Two**
The second week is worse than the first.
The numbness starts to crack. Pain seeps through like water through stone. Small things destroy me: hearing someone order coffee with cinnamon, seeing a BMW that isn't his, passing the poetry section in the library.
I start taking different routes through school. Avoiding places we used to go. The library. The bench outside where we'd eat lunch. The hallway near his locker.
I'm creating a Cassia-sized hole in Riverside Academy, carefully cutting out any space where we used to exist together.
Poet watches me do it with increasing concern.
"You know you can talk to me," she says one afternoon. We're in the cafeteria and I'm picking at food I can't taste. "About him. About how you're feeling. About anything."
"I'm fine."
"You've said 'I'm fine' forty-seven times this week. I counted."
Of course she counted. Poet notices everything.
"What do you want me to say?" I put my fork down. "That I miss him? That I'm miserable? That every morning I wake up and for exactly three seconds I forget we broke up, and then I remember and it feels like falling?"
"Yeah. That. Say that."
"What's the point? It doesn't change anything."
"It might make you feel better."
"I don't want to feel better. I want to feel nothing."
She reaches across the table. Takes my hand. "Baby girl, you can't feel nothing forever. Eventually you're going to have to let yourself grieve."
"Not today," I whisper. "I can't do it today."
"Okay. Not today."
But someday soon, I'm going to have to break. And I'm terrified of what happens when I do.
***
**Week Two, Friday Night**
Grandma Rosa finally brings it up.
We're in the kitchen. She's doing physical therapy exercises—squeezing a stress ball with her weak left hand. I'm pretending to do homework but really just staring at the same page for twenty minutes.
"You broke up with that boy," she says. Not a question.
"Yeah."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
She keeps squeezing the ball. "You love him."
"Loved. Past tense."
"Baby, love doesn't have a past tense. Not the real kind."
I look up. She's watching me with those eyes that see everything I'm trying to hide.
"He lied to me, Grandma. About seeing his ex-girlfriend. I can't be with someone I don't trust."
"And do you feel better? Now that you've left him?"
The question hits harder than it should. "I feel... safe."
"Safe isn't the same as happy."
"Happy isn't real. Safe is real."
She sets down the stress ball. Reaches across the table with her good hand. "When I was your age, I chose safe too. Married a man I didn't love because he was stable. Respectable. Safe. You know what happened?"
I know the story. Heard it a hundred times. But I shake my head anyway.
"I was miserable. Every day for seven years until he died, I was miserable. Because safe isn't enough, baby. Not when you've tasted real love."
"Real love is scary."
"Everything worth having is."
***
**Week Three, Monday**
Three weeks after the breakup, I finally see him with Sterling.
They're in the parking lot. She's leaning against his car, laughing at something he said. He's not touching her, not standing too close, but they're comfortable. Easy.
Like I never happened.
My chest constricts. My vision tunnels. For a moment, I can't breathe.
Then Poet is there, steering me away. "Don't look. Come on. Let's go."
But I can't stop looking. Can't stop watching the boy I love existing in a world without me. Moving on while I'm still stuck.
"He replaced me," I whisper. "Just like I knew he would."
"That's not what's happening—"
"He's with Sterling. His mother's dream. Everything is back to how it should be."
"Cassia—"
I tear my eyes away. Force my feet to move. "I'm fine. I'm fine."
The lie tastes bitter.
***
**Week Three, Friday**
Twenty-one days after the breakup, something shifts.
I'm at the bookstore in Cambridge where I work weekend shifts. It's slow—February is always slow—and I'm organizing the poetry section when I hear the door chime.
I don't look up. Just keep shelving. Neruda. Plath. Dickinson. Names I know as well as my own.
Then I see the shoes.
Expensive sneakers. The ones Aurelio wore every day. My heart stops.
I look up.
It's him.
He's standing three feet away, hands in his pockets, looking at me like I'm something he's forgotten how to reach.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi."
Silence. Heavy and complicated.
"I didn't know you worked here," he finally says.
"I've worked here since sophomore year."
"Oh." He looks around. Takes in the poetry section. "Of course. Poetry."
More silence. This is excruciating.
"What are you doing here?" I ask.
"Looking for a book."
"Which book?"
"I don't know yet."
He's lying. He came here looking for me. We both know it.
"Cassia—"
"Don't." I hold up my hand. "Please. Don't."
"I just want to talk."
"There's nothing to say. We broke up. You're moving on. I'm moving on. That's it."
"I'm not moving on."
"I saw you with Sterling."
"She's just—"
"A friend. I know. You said that before." My voice cracks. "Look, Aurelio. I don't want to do this. Not here. Not now. Not ever."
He flinches. "So that's it? Three weeks and you're done?"
"You lied to me. You kept her around knowing how I felt. You chose her over honesty with me."
"I made a mistake—"
"And I made a choice. To walk away before this destroyed me completely."
"It's destroying me," he says quietly. "Every day. Being without you. It's destroying me."
My hands are shaking. I grip the bookshelf to steady myself.
"Then we're both destroyed. At least we're not destroying each other anymore."
His face crumples. For a second, he looks like he might cry. Then he straightens. Nods.
"Okay. If that's what you want."
"It is."
Another lie. But this one I have to sell. For both of us.
He turns to leave. Gets three steps toward the door. Stops.
"I still love you," he says without turning around. "That hasn't changed. Won't ever change."
Then he walks out.
The door chimes. He's gone.
I stand in the poetry section—surrounded by words about love and loss and impossible choices—and finally, finally, I break.
The tears I've been holding back for three weeks come all at once. Silent, ugly, devastating. I slide down the bookshelf to the floor, press my face to my knees, and cry like I'm grieving someone who died.
Maybe I am.
Maybe we both did.
The girl I was before him. The boy he was with me.
Maybe those versions of us are gone now. Maybe there's no getting them back.
My manager finds me twenty minutes later, still crying in the poetry section.
She sends me home early. Tells me to take care of myself.
I don't know how to do that anymore.
All I know is how to count steps and steal pens and love a boy I can't have.
Eight hundred forty-seven steps.
The number still doesn't calm me.
Nothing does.