Summery: All I want is to be seen. But I've forgotten how to ask.
Note: Since some people said they wanted a sequel, this is a story that continues directly from Last on the List. I hope you enjoy this 😊.｡.:*♡
masterlist
You've made your peace with it.
That's a lie. You've just gotten better at saying it.
Loneliness doesn't arrive all at once. It moves in quietly, takes up space, rearranges things while you're sleeping. By the time you notice, it's already everywhere—in the way you answer I'm fine before anyone finishes asking, in the way you've stopped expecting the phone to ring for you.
You know what you are to people. The one who holds things. The one who doesn't spill.
What they don't see: the nights you sat on the bathroom floor and wanted, with your whole body, to just stop. Not dramatically. Just—stop. The wanting so sharp it had a taste.
You got up. You always get up.
You're still not sure if that's strength or just another thing you do to survive.
---
Three years ago, someone left.
You deleted her contact instead of blocking her. That was your first mistake—or maybe your oldest one, the habit of leaving doors open that should stay closed.
When the message came in, your fingers hovered. A string of digits where a name used to be. You put the phone down. Picked it up again. You already knew.
Hey, how are you?
Four words. And still, everything you'd spent three years building—the distance, the quiet, the being okay—went thin as paper.
You stared at it for twelve minutes. You know because you watched the clock, waiting to feel nothing. It didn't work.
I'm fine. Is something wrong?
Safe. Neutral. A door left open just wide enough.
Her reply came fast—too fast, like she'd been holding it.
Can we talk?
You knew what that meant. You'd always known what that meant. It meant: I need something. It meant: you'll give it to me. It meant: I already know you'll say yes.
You took a breath. Two. Three.
Yeah.
One word. And with it, three years of distance folded up like it had never existed.
The phone rang before you'd put it down. She called. You answered on the second ring. That distinction matters, somehow.
Her voice was the same. That was the first thing. Three years, and it was exactly the same—a little unsteady at the edges, the way it got when she was trying not to cry.
She told you everything. He left. It didn't work out. She was lonely.
You lay back on the bed and closed your eyes and listened. You asked the right questions. You said that sounds really hard and you didn't deserve that and you're going to be okay. All of it true. All of it costing you something you couldn't name.
At some point she exhaled—long, slow, the sound of someone setting down something heavy.
"I feel better," she said. "I always forget how easy it is to talk to you."
Easy.
You held the word in your mouth for a moment. Turned it over.
Easy. Not: you matter to me. Not: I missed you. Easy—like a chair that's always in the same place. Like a door that never locks.
You wanted, just once, to be difficult. To cost something. To be the kind of person someone has to work to keep.
"I'm glad," you said.
Your voice came out steady. It always does.
That's the thing about swallowing things whole: after a while, you stop tasting them. You just feel the weight, sitting somewhere below your ribs, and you learn to breathe around it.
---
The call ended at 11:47 p.m.
You know because you looked. Some part of you needed to account for it—the time spent, the exact cost.
And now it was in you. And there was nowhere to put it.
You got up. Found the cigarette you'd told yourself was your last one. Lit it by the window, not quite outside, not quite in.
The first time had been curiosity, mostly. Someone had left a pack on the table and you picked it up the way you pick up anything that might explain something about the people who need it. It tasted like burning. Obviously. But behind that, something else—a kind of weight in the chest that was almost, almost like having something to hold onto.
Afterward your throat felt raw for two days. You coughed into a tissue and there was blood in it. Not much. Enough. You told yourself it was a one-time thing. It wasn't.
Tonight, years later, was one of those nights. You coughed until your eyes watered. Held the cigarette anyway.
The smoke drifted out past the sill. You stayed there longer than you meant to. Outside, the city kept going.
---
Ten names in your contacts. A routine that held. Mornings that were just mornings.
You almost believed it was enough.
You'd kept going to the knitting circle. It gave you somewhere to be on the third Thursday of the month, and you'd stopped needing more reason than that.
Wanda Maximoff hadn't been. A few months, then more—her chair stayed empty. You didn't ask where she'd gone. You knew—and had decided, somewhere along the way, that knowing was enough. That you didn't need to think about it more than that.
You were used to that.
Then one Thursday, the door opened late—it was always late—and there she was.
She looked different. The clothes were quieter, more settled, like she'd stopped trying to dress for an evening that hadn't happened yet. But everything else was exactly the same. She was already mid-sentence before she'd fully walked in. She laughed at something before she'd finished saying it. The room tilted toward her without meaning to.
You watched the room do what it always did.
Some things don't change. You'd forgotten that could feel like relief.
She spotted you across the room and smiled—the kind that lands before you're ready for it.
"You're still here," she said.
"I'm always here," you said.
Neither of you said anything else. But she sat down in the chair closest to yours.
Eleven names in your contacts again. You noticed the number and didn't know what to do with it—whether to feel relieved, or careful, or something you couldn't name yet.
---
It wasn't a decision, exactly. More like something that happened while you weren't paying close attention.
Someone from outside the circle. You'd met at a mutual friend's thing—the kind of gathering you usually leave early. This time you didn't. They laughed at something you said, the real kind of laugh, and you thought: maybe.
So you tried.
It was fine, for a while. Good, even, in the way new things can be good before they become real. They texted first. They made plans. You let yourself get used to it—carefully, the way you do anything that might not last.
Six months. Give or take.
You found out the way you find out about these things—not directly, never directly. A name that appeared too often. An explanation that arrived a little too prepared. You didn't ask. You already knew, before the words came, before the conversation happened.
When it ended, you said I understand. You said it's okay. Steady, the way you always are.
---
You didn't tell anyone. Not because there was no one—but because saying it out loud would make it a thing that happened to you, and you weren't ready for that. So you filed it away, next to everything else, and kept going.
The third Thursday came around. You showed up the way you always did—a few minutes early, coat already off by the time others arrived. Wanda was late—she always was. She dropped into the chair beside yours and picked up where she'd left off the week before, mid-sentence, like no time had passed.
You listened. You said the right things. The evening moved as it always did.
It was almost over when someone across the circle looked up and said it casually, the way people say things they don't know are loaded:
"Hey, I heard you guys broke up. Are you doing okay?"
The room didn't stop. But something in it shifted.
You felt Wanda go still beside you.
"Yeah," you said. "I'm fine."
Steady. Easy. The voice of someone who is always okay.
The conversation moved on. Someone said something about a pattern. Someone laughed. The evening kept going.
You didn't look at Wanda.
But you felt it—the weight of her attention, different from usual. Somewhere between warm and cold, with no name for it.
Later, at the door, she touched your arm.
"You didn't tell me," she said.
"There wasn't much to tell."
She looked at you for a moment longer than usual. That unreadable expression—the one you'd never quite learned to translate.
Then she nodded. Let it go.
You walked home alone. The city was the same city it always was.
---
Another Thursday.
You noticed it the way you always noticed things—quietly, from a slight distance, like watching weather change through a window. A different quality to her texts. A distraction behind her eyes when she talked. The way she'd pause mid-sentence, catch herself, and smile at nothing in particular.
You knew that look. She hadn't said anything yet. Maybe she was waiting for the right moment. Maybe she didn't think it needed saying.
It didn't, really. You already knew.
Wanda showed up late—she always did—and sat beside you and talked about a project she hadn't finished, and laughed at her own joke before the punchline, and the room tilted toward her the way it always did.
You watched this happen.
And there it was. That feeling you didn't have a name for anymore—not quite grief, not quite anger. Something older than both. The specific exhaustion of a person who has been here before and knows, with their whole body, exactly how it ends.
You tried. Carefully, imperfectly, but genuinely. You texted back. You showed up. Things were allowed to matter. And every time, it ended the same way—quietly, without explanation, without anything useful to take with you. Just the same door closing softly, and you on the same side of it, with nothing to correct and no idea where to start.
Maybe some people are just built for this, and you are not. That might just be a fact. One you're still working on accepting.
Some things don't change.
You used to find that comforting.
Didn't you stay exactly where you were, the whole time, acting like that treatment was just normal? Didn't you keep showing up, keep holding things, keep saying I'm fine before anyone finished asking—practically steering things toward this outcome yourself?
Maybe.
But knowing that doesn't move you. It just sits there, below the ribs, with everything else.
And maybe that's just what this is. Not a problem to fix. Not a phase to get through. Just—the shape of your life, for now. Maybe for longer than that.
