STILL | EPILOGUE
CW: lots of drinks, sad goodbye, the end of this season.
8.2K words
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Epilogue
We’re late by almost two fucking hours. And Pedro was smiling like a teenager when we arrived at the party. He was too charming without even trying.
It took me forever to fix my makeup and my hair, my lipstick had been reapplied badly in the Uber, Pedro’s curls had lost whatever battle he’d tried to win in the bathroom mirror, and the left strap of my dress kept slipping down my shoulder like it had private knowledge of what happened before we left the apartment.
The second we walked into the venue, Craig looked at us from across the room.
One look. That was all it took for my face to go bright red.
He lifted his drink in our direction with the slow, devastating expression of a man who knew too much and had chosen mercy.
Pedro leaned close to my ear. “Craig knows.”
“I told you.” I said, giving his shoulder a playful tug.
The party had taken over the entire back room of this bar production rented out in Calgary. Low lights with music loud enough to make conversation bend around it. Cast and crew packed shoulder to shoulder, no call time waiting in the morning for most of them now, which made everyone reckless in a way they hadn’t been all year.
People were loose and emotional, mixed with the fact that they were already drunk enough to say things they’d been saving for months... This was a dangerous mix.
There were speeches happening in one corner and a group of grips dancing terribly near the speakers. Somebody from makeup was crying into a plastic cup. A producer had both arms around two camera assistants, telling them they were geniuses with the grave seriousness of a man three whiskeys past his limit.
The Last of Us season one was done. And everybody was acting like if they kept drinking, laughing, dancing, touching shoulders, yelling over music, maybe morning wouldn’t come collect all of us.
Pedro’s hand settled on the small of my back as we moved through the room. His palm was warm through the open back of my dress, fingers spread in a way that made my stomach tighten even after everything that had already happened back at his place. He guided me between people with that protective ease he got in crowds, smiling at everyone, stopping for hugs, laughing when people screamed his name from three feet away.
Bella spotted us in the middle of the mess of people. They were sitting in a booth with their feet tucked beneath them, hoodie somehow back on despite the heat inside the bar. Kate sat beside them, cheeks flushed, already holding a drink that looked like a bad decision in a cup.
Bella narrowed their eyes at us the second we approached.
“You’re late.”
Pedro pointed at them. “No.”
“You are literally late.” They throw their hands up, as if the information is too obvious.
“We’re fashionably late.” I reply already sitting in front of both of them.
Kate’s eyes moved from Pedro’s hair to my mouth, then back to Pedro.
“Oh my God,” she said.
I kicked her foot under the table.
She grinned into her drink. “I said nothing.”
“You said it with your whole face.”
“My face has copyright, stop looking at me.”
Bella leaned forward, delighted. “Wait. Why are we suspicious?”
“We’re not,” I said quickly.
Pedro, because he was Pedro and allergic to helping me survive anything, sat down beside me and said, “We did the nasty.”
Kate almost spit out her drink, laughing loud at how ridiculous he made it sound. I was definitely killing him after this.
Bella slammed both hands on the table. “I knew it!”
“It’s his fault,” I rolled my eyes.
“I didn’t see you complaining” Pedro shoot back, very pleased with himself.
I gave him my exclusive look of you better stop now.
He slid an arm across the back of the booth behind me and looked entirely too amused with the chaos. “This is bullying.”
“Nah, just consequence,” Kate corrected.
He eyed her, already laughing at what he was going to say “Big word for someone drinking blue alcohol.”
Kate glanced at her glass. “I trust it.”
“You don’t even know what’s in it.” I looked at the bright blue concoction.
“She’s blue and she’s brave.” She gave us a little shrug.
I laughed after she took a sip and winced as if the burn went inside her chest to collect her words, that laugh made me lean back until my shoulder brushed Pedro’s chest. His hand found my bare upper arm almost immediately, thumb moving once over my skin.
That touch made my skin caught on fire. We were past subtle by a long shot, and for once, I didn’t care.
The night kept moving around us.
People came by the booth every few minutes. Some stopped to talk to Bella, bending down with drinks in their hands and voices too loud from the music. Some came for Pedro, pulling him into hugs that lasted longer than usual, clapping his shoulder with both hands, saying things into his ear that made his face change for a second before he smiled again. Others reached for Kate and me, grabbing us by the shoulders, squeezing our arms, telling us the stills were beautiful, that the photos had carried something, that they couldn’t wait to see where we went next.
Each compliment landed strangely, because all year, I had wanted to be seen as good enough. I had worked with that need sitting somewhere under my ribs through night shoots, frozen fingers, and every time I pretended I knew exactly what I was doing, terrified that someone would called me out. Now that people were saying their pretty words out loud, I wanted to bottle it and hide from them at the same time.
Pedro noticed because of course he did. Those brown, warm eyes scanning every small reaction I had.
After a locations guy left our table with one arm around a woman from production, Pedro leaned closer until his shoulder brushed mine. His fingers circled the rim of his glass, but his eyes stayed on my face.
“You okay?”
I nodded too quickly. “Yeah.”
His gaze moved over me with the kind of attention that made lying feel pointless. I rolled my eyes before he could ask again, pressing my elbow gently against his side. “I’m okay.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t mm me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said an entire paragraph with that sound.”
Pedro smiled, accepting the accusation without shame, then pushed a drink into my hand as if distraction was a perfectly reasonable emotional support strategy. I looked down at the cup. Whatever was inside glowed an alarming shade of blue beneath the bar lights.
The question came in a joke tone “What is this?”
“No idea.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Bella gave it to me.”
I immediately handed it back.
Pedro laughed, his eyes creasing at the corners. “Coward.”
I shook my head “I want to survive Berlin.”
“You have three days.”
“That is not enough time to recover from Bella’s beverage crimes.”
Across the table, Bella lifted their glass without looking away from us. “I can hear you.”
“You were meant to,” I told them.
Pedro, clearly deciding he was braver than both of us, drank from the mystery cup first. His face shifted through at least four stages of regret before he laughed as if that was reason enough for me to try it. He held the cup near my mouth, one eyebrow lifting.
“Come on. Tiny sip.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I hate when you charm me into poor choices.”
“You love poor choices.” He shoot back, amused.
“I love one poor choice.”
His eyes warmed immediately. “Yeah?”
I took the cup from his hand before my face could betray me any further and drank. It tasted like sugar and cheap vodka had a threesome with a blueberry, you know, just the pure taste of bad decision in liquid form. I swallowed with great effort while Pedro watched me with infuriating pride.
“Oh, that’s disgusting.” I said with a cough.
Pedro grinned. “See? Fun.”
“You’re trying to kill me before Europe.”
“I’m building your tolerance.”
“My tolerance was fine.”
“Baby, you got emotional after two ciders last month and told a raccoon outside craft services that he had kind eyes.”
Kate bent over laughing so fast her forehead nearly hit the table. Bella pointed at me with betrayed delight, their mouth falling open.
“You never told me about the raccoon.”
“He understood me,” I said, defending myself badly.
Pedro kissed the side of my head before thinking, or maybe he did think. The room around us had softened enough for him to stop caring quite so much. That kiss was quick and warm, nearly hidden beneath the noise of the party and someone cheering near the bar.
Kate only looked down into her drink with a smile she was trying very hard to murder, while Bella pressed their lips together and stared at the ceiling like they had become the most respectful person in the room.
A song changed near the speakers, and a cheer went up from the dance floor. It was some old pop song everyone knew against their will, the kind that made people yell before the first chorus even arrived. Crew members flooded toward it with drinks raised, bodies looser than they’d been all year, months of discipline giving way to something messy and human.
Pedro stayed beside me for a while with his knee pressed against mine under the table. Every time someone handed him a drink, he found a way to make me taste it too. Champagne came first, then whiskey, then a beer someone from transport swore was local and amazing. The second shot made both of us cough so hard Bella nearly slid out of the booth laughing.
“You’re a terrible influence,” I told him, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth after another blue shot.
Pedro leaned in, smile lazier now, eyes glassier than before. “I’m celebrating.”
“You’re corrupting me.”
He rolled his eyes with that smirk taking his lips “You were corrupt before I arrived.”
Kate lifted one hand without looking up. “Can confirm.”
I turned toward her. “Excuse me.”
“You once stole my last clean pair of socks during a night shoot.”
“That was survival.”
Pedro placed one hand over his chest with impressive solemnity. “I support women’s wrongs.”
Bella nodded. “As you should.”
The laughter kept coming easier as the night went on, and for a while, it almost worked. The dread loosened around the edges. Morning became a blurry thing waiting somewhere outside the room instead of a clock pressing its thumb against my throat. Pedro laughed with his whole body, that wheezy thing he does when its real. Kate danced with Bella near the table, both of them terrible and completely shameless. Neil tried to start a toast and forgot what he was saying halfway through it. Craig hugged Pedro long enough that Pedro’s face opened into something dangerously emotional, then Craig slapped his cheek lightly and made him laugh before it could take over.
I watched everything with my drink held near my chest.
This was the ending. The real one. The chapter after the chapter. No cameras rolling. No one asking for another take. No stills I needed to catch before the moment disappeared. Around me, people were trying to leave a thing they loved without making a scene, and everyone was failing in their own way.
Pedro appeared beside me again, slightly flushed, curls falling over his forehead. He had lost a button somewhere near his collar, or maybe he had simply decided to stop caring about it. His hand found the edge of the booth near my hip as he leaned down toward me.
“There you are.”
I looked up at him over the rim of my cup. “I’ve been here.”
“I missed you.”
“You were gone for five minutes.”
“Terrible five minutes.”
I smiled down into my drink. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m sentimental.”
His hand slid into mine beneath the table, fingers threading through mine with the ease of muscle memory. I looked at our hands first, then at him. The room was too loud for soft conversations, music shaking through the floor and up into the booth, but Pedro had a way of making space anyway. Even in a crowd, even surrounded by people yelling his name and pulling at him from every direction, he could make me feel like the noise had moved back a step.
“Dance with me,” he asked but it was not a question.
I laughed immediately. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely no.”
“Why?”
“Because you dance like somebody’s uncle at a wedding.”
His mouth opened in theatrical offense. “That is an attack.”
“More like a documented evidence.”
“I have rhythm.” Pedro tried to defend himself.
“You have confidence. Those are different things.”
He tugged lightly on my hand, still smiling, though there was a softened edge to his face now. “Come on.”
I looked toward the dance floor. Too many people had crowded into the middle of the room. Too many eyes. Too much alcohol in everyone’s blood to remember boundaries with any kind of grace. I could already picture Kate’s face. Bella’s face. Craig’s exhausted acceptance from across the room.
“Pedro.”
The teasing eased from him. His thumb kept moving over my knuckles, slow and patient, and his voice dropped enough that I had to lean closer to hear him.
“Everyone’s too drunk to care.”
“That’s not true.”
“Okay,” he said, adjusting his argument without missing a beat. “Everyone’s too drunk to care intelligently.”
I snorted.
He leaned closer, mouth almost brushing my ear. “One dance.”
I should have said no. A sober version of me might have managed it. But his hand was in mine, his shirt was warm beneath my fingers, and tomorrow morning had already started pressing against my ribs. Saying no felt like denying us one more memory because I was scared of witnesses.
So I let him pull me up.
Kate’s eyes widened from the booth. Bella slapped both hands over their mouth, their whole face lighting up like Christmas morning and a felony charge.
“Don’t,” I warned them.
Kate lifted both hands. “I’m an ally.”
Pedro led me into the middle of the dance floor as if we weren’t doing something completely insane. At first, I kept space between us. A careful inch, maybe two, my body close enough to dance and far enough to lie about it.
Pedro noticed immediately.
He smiled like he was going to be patient for exactly nine seconds. Then his arm slipped around my waist and pulled me closer, firm enough to end the negotiation. My hand landed on his chest, fingers spreading over the warm black fabric of his shirt.
“Subtle,” I said.
“I’m done with subtle tonight.”
The answer made my heart race against my will.
The song changed again, shifting into something slower and warmer, the bassline moving through the floor and into my legs. People cheered around us, adjusting, pairing off, laughing as they swayed with drinks still in hand. Pedro’s palm spread against my back, and mine slid up around his shoulder.
We started moving badly at first, because both of us were drunk enough to find balance funny. He stepped on my foot once and looked so offended by his own body that I burst out laughing, grabbing his arm to steady myself.
“I’m suing,” I said.
“It was the floor.”
“The floor attacked you?” I asked, letting my hands slip around his biceps.
“Hostile architecture.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Yeah, but you love me.” The words came out so easily from him.
I looked up at his flushed face, and his smile faded slightly around the edges. Morning stepped between us again without asking. His flight. My flight. New York. Ontario. Berlin. Different departures orbiting the same goodbye.
“I do,” I said finally.
Pedro’s eyes softened. Around us, people danced and screamed lyrics badly. Someone bumped into his shoulder and apologized, but he barely looked away from me.
“I love you too,” he said.
My chest tightened, and his fingers pressed gently at my back, bringing me closer until my cheek nearly brushed his. For a while, we danced like that with no joke ready to save us. His body was warm against mine, his breath near my temple, my hand holding the back of his neck because I had nowhere else to put all the feeling.
Then I became aware of people noticing.
Well, maybe they had always noticed. Maybe love had been leaking out of us for months no matter how carefully we folded it away under tables, inside trailers, behind hotel doors, between looks nobody was supposed to catch.
Pedro lifted his head enough to look at me. There was a question in his eyes, quiet and careful, even drunk. He was still giving me a choice in the middle of all that noise.
I answered by rising onto my toes.
The kiss was supposed to be a small peck on his lips. But it wasn't small at all. His hand tightened at my waist. Mine slid into his curls. The room kept moving around us, music carrying over someone’s cheer nearby, and I laughed against his mouth before he kissed me once more. When we pulled apart, Pedro rested his forehead against mine, both of us breathing through the shock of having done it.
“That was subtle,” I whispered.
He smiled, “Very.”
“Painfully private.”
“No one saw.”
I looked over his shoulder when he said it. Kate and Bella stood by the booth, both staring directly at us. Bella gave two thumbs up. Kate looked emotional and furious about being emotional, which was very Kate-y of her.
I buried my face in Pedro’s chest. “Oh my God.”
Pedro turned his head, saw them, and started laughing.
The night loosened after that. Maybe because the worst had happened and the world kept spinning. Nobody came over with questions. Nobody ruined it. A couple of crew members smiled too knowingly when we passed. One of the makeup girls squeezed my arm near the bar and whispered, “Finally,” before disappearing into the crowd.
Pedro looked smug about that for twenty minutes.
“Stop looking proud,” I told him when he handed me another drink.
“I’ve accomplished something.”
“You kissed your girlfriend in public at a work party.”
He smirked leaning in to steal another kiss that tasted like blueberry “Historic.”
He kept me close for the rest of the night. Sometimes with his hand in mine. Sometimes with his fingers resting at the back of my dress. Sometimes only with a quiet look across the crowded room, the kind that felt more intimate than touching because it asked for nothing and still found me.
I drank more after that than I should have. So did Pedro. Neither of us said we were trying to make the clock blur, because saying it would have made the whole thing too pathetic to survive. We let other people pour things into our cups. We danced again. We laughed too loudly. Pedro gave a small speech after enough people bullied him into it, and he made everyone laugh for thirty seconds before his voice went rough and the room went quiet.
He thanked the crew first, looking around at faces he had spent almost a year waking up beside in the cold. He thanked Bella, and the room made a sound so emotional that Bella had to cover their face with both hands. He thanked the people who froze with him, bled with him, carried the thing when it got heavy, and made it feel possible on days when it wasn’t.
At some point, Bella announced they were leaving before they did something “career-ending or deeply British.”
Kate laughed too hard at that, then immediately started collecting her things from the booth. She shoved her phone into her bag, checked for her wallet, then looked around the table like she was trying to delay the next second without admitting it.
I sobered a little.
“Wait. You’re leaving too?”
Kate looked at me, and the noise of the party seemed to slip behind glass for a second. There it was, the goodbye we had both managed to dodge all night by laughing too hard and drinking too much.
“Yeah,” she said, softer now. “Bella’s place is closer, and I’m very done being perceived.”
Bella nodded beside her. “I am transporting her to safety.”
Pedro lifted his brows. “You don’t have a car.”
“I have an Uber app and confidence.”
Kate rolled her eyes and stepped toward me. For a second, neither of us moved. Then she hugged me so hard my ribs hurt. My face pressed into her shoulder and I held onto her tighter than I meant to.
“I hate this part,” she muttered.
I closed my eyes. “Me too.”
“You better text me every fucking day.”
“I will.”
“And if anyone in Berlin is rude to you, I’ll fly over.” She muttered against my hair.
"Copy that." My answer came out choked in too much emotion.
Her arms tightened one last time before she pulled back. Her eyes were glossy again, but she pointed at me like a threat, chin lifting as if that could hold the tears in place.
“Don’t make me cry in this bar,” she warned.
I laughed, but it came out watery. “You’re already crying.”
“I said don’t make me.”
Pedro leaned down and kissed Bella’s head, which made them groan dramatically and shove him away with both hands.
“Go,” he said. “Before you both start crying again.”
Bella pointed at him. “You first.”
Pedro’s smile faltered for half a second.
Bella saw it and hugged him again, the long hug that said a lot without any words. Pedro bent around them and held tight, his eyes closing briefly over their shoulder. For a moment, the room asked nothing from him. He didn’t need to be charming or funny or grateful in a way other people could understand. He only held Bella the way someone holds a person who had changed the shape of a year.
“Text me,” he told them.
Bella’s voice came muffled against his shirt. “I will, but only because you’re old and forgetful.”
Pedro let the hug go with fake surprise at Bellas words. “I’m blocking you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” he agreed, softer. “I’m not.”
We left not longer after they did. Calgary's night air hit my face strong enough to make me gasp. Pedro laughed and pulled me against his side, his arm warm and heavy around my shoulders as we stepped away from the bar.
“You’re drunk,” he whispered against my ear.
“You’re drunker.”
His laugh came out so loose.
We were supposed to go to his apartment, then mine, then finish packing, then sleep responsibly for the terrible morning ahead. That had been the mature plan we made while sober enough to believe in ourselves. Instead, we ended up at my place because it was closer, both of us stumbling through the door with the sacred focus of people trying very hard to be quiet and failing at every step.
My apartment looked like a storm had moved through it. An open suitcase sat on the floor with clothes folded badly over the couch. Camera gear leaned against the wall. A half-empty water bottle waited on the coffee table, and Kate’s abandoned socks sat near the hallway because of course she had left socks behind as a final act of psychological warfare.
Pedro stood in the middle of the room, swaying slightly, and looked around.
“This is temporary packing chaos.” I said softly before he could joke about my mess.
Pedro just shrugged eyeing me from head to toe without a word. I looked right back at him, knowing I had to finish packing my things, and if I didn't, I would hate myself the next morning for having to pack in the mist of a heavy hangover.
The moment Pedro opened his arms to me, I knew the second option was the only one now. I walked into them without a word.
We landed on the couch badly, half sitting and half falling, laughing into each other’s shoulders as he tried to kick off his shoes and failed. I helped him with one. He helped me with both heels.
“We’re very mature,” I mumbled against his neck.
“Extremely.”
For a few seconds I tried to be the responsible one, my voice came out thick. “I need to pack.”
“In a minute.” Pedro answered with a soft voice.
The alcohol was still there, making him warm and heavy beneath me, but the party had faded from him. What remained was the man who had held me through too many endings already, his cheek pressed against my hair, his hand resting over my ribs as if he needed to feel me breathe.
I curled into him, letting my body go soft against his. The room was dark except for the yellow light from the kitchen. My suitcase stayed open on the floor, accusing us quietly from a few feet away. Pedro’s phone buzzed somewhere. Mine answered from inside my bag a second later.
Neither of us reached for them.
“I don’t want to do tomorrow,” I whispered.
His hand tightened slightly at my side. He didn’t answer right away. I felt him breathe in, hold it for a second, then let it out against my hair.
“I know.”
“I’m trying to be adult about it.”
“You are.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“You’re drunk on my chest with no shoes on.”
A laugh shook out of me before I could stop it. “There’s dignity in that.”
“So much.”
I tipped my head up to look at him. His eyes were tired, red around the edges, still lovely in the dim light. He looked younger like this somehow, without the room needing him to be anyone. Just Pedro on my couch, drunk and sad and stubbornly keeping one arm around me.
I smiled faintly and pressed my face back into his shirt. Pedro kissed my hair, letting his mouth rest there for a second longer than necessary.
“We’re gonna be okay,” he said.
I listened to his heartbeat, steady beneath my ear.
“I know.” The answer sounded steadier than I felt.
We fell asleep like that, my suitcase open on the floor, my dress twisted around my legs, Pedro’s arm locked around me as if sleep had taken him mid-protection. The last night in Calgary passed with both of us folded onto the same couch that held us through a year.
Morning was awful in the quietest way.
Grey light slipped through the window. My mouth was dry, my head pulsed behind both eyes, and my neck had gone stiff from sleeping half on Pedro and half against the couch cushion. For a few seconds, waking was only physical discomfort and the sour taste of too much alcohol.
Pedro was already awake. I knew from the stillness of him, from the way his hand moved slowly over my back, careful enough that he must have been trying not to wake me. The sadness had done that on its own.
I lifted my head.
He looked down at me with no jokes ready yet, no charming escape route waiting behind his teeth. Just Pedro, rumpled and tired in last night’s clothes, looking like he had spent the last hour trying to figure out how to leave without breaking us both open.
“Hi,” I whispered.
His mouth curved faintly. “Hi.”
My throat tightened immediately. I pointed at him weakly, because I needed something to do with my hand before I grabbed his shirt and refused to let go.
“No,” I said. “Don’t look like that.”
His fingers brushed hair away from my cheek. “Like what?”
“Like you’re about to be emotionally devastating.”
He huffed a quiet laugh, but it broke at the end. His hand stayed on my face after he moved my hair, thumb resting lightly near my temple.
“You started early,” he said.
“I’m vulnerable.”
“I can see that.”
We stayed there another minute, tangled on the couch while the morning kept pushing light into the room. Eventually, movement became unavoidable. My flight was later than his, but not by enough to make anything easier. He had to go back to his apartment, grab his bags, get to the airport. I had to finish packing my place, return keys, survive my own terminal, and fly toward a family fight I still didn’t know how to touch.
We moved around my apartment carefully, both hungover and too quiet.
I finished packing, hating my past self for letting me do it with the biggest hangover pressing against every nerve I owned. Pedro helped, moving like a ghost around my space. A quiet ghost, so not him at all to be this quiet.
At the door, the silence became too large.
His Uber was fifteen minutes away. Then ten. Then five...
I stood barefoot in front of him, wearing leggings and one of his shirts I owned now. My hair was a disaster, but my face was clean now, though my eyes gave away the goodbye standing in the room with us.
I was already on the verge of tears when he reached for me.
My body moved on its own. His arms wrapped around me, and mine locked around his waist. No big speech came, and I was grateful for that because I couldn’t have survived one. He held me with his face buried in my neck, breathing against my skin until I felt the exact second he started to cry.
I turned my face into his shoulder and let the tears come quietly. A little. Enough to be honest without falling apart at his feet.
“We said mature,” I whispered.
Pedro laughed under his breath, rough and wet. “This is mature.”
“We’re crying.”
“Small amount does't count."
I laughed against his shirt, and his arms tightened immediately, as if the sound made leaving worse. When he pulled back enough to look at me, his hands cupped my face with a tenderness that made my chest ache. His thumbs moved beneath my eyes slowly, catching tears before they fell too far.
“You call me when you land,” he asked.
“I will.” I promised, bringing my hands to his.
“And when you get to the hotel...”
I blinked, stunned.
I hadn’t said out loud that I booked one. Hadn’t admitted that going straight to my father’s house felt impossible while the fight was still fresh. Pedro had watched me avoid the subject all morning and read the shape of it anyway.
“I will,” I said softly.
His thumbs moved over my cheeks again.
His thumbs moved over my cheeks again. “And you eat something that isn’t airport coffee.”
“You too.”
His phone buzzed.
Uber notification cutting through the room like a sword, but neither of us looked away.
Pedro lowered his forehead to mine, and for a few seconds all I could feel was the warmth of him, the familiar pressure of his hands, the impossible unfairness of having to let go while both of us still wanted to stay. He breathed out slowly, his nose brushing mine, eyes closing as if he needed the dark for a second.
“I hate this,” he admitted.
My fingers curled around his wrists. “I know.”
“I know it’s good. I know Berlin is good. I know your work is…” He stopped, searching for the words while his thumb pressed lightly at my cheek. His voice came out rougher when he tried again. “I’m proud of you. I need you to know that before you get on that plane.”
My chest pulled tight enough to hurt. “Pedro.”
“I am.” His eyes opened, wet and steady on mine. “I’m so proud of you, baby.”
The tears slipped out before I could stop them. He wiped them away with the same patience, but his own eyes were worse now.
“You can’t do that right before leaving,” I whispered.
“I know. Terrible timing.”
“You’re making it harder.”
“I’m aware.”
We both laughed, barely, and the sound dissolved quickly. He leaned in and kissed my forehead first, then my cheek, then finally my mouth. The kiss was gentle and slow, actually, too gentle for what it had to carry. He kissed me like someone trying to say stay safe, come back, don’t forget me, call me, sleep when you can, eat something, I love you, I love you, I love you, all without making either of us collapse under the weight of it.
When he pulled away, his fingers stayed tangled with mine.
“I love you,” he said.
My chest hurt. “I love you too.”
His hand slipped from my face to the back of my neck, holding there for one last second. Then his fingers slid down my arm, caught mine, and stayed there until distance forced them apart.
A shaky smile was the hardest thing, but I manage to make him leave. The door closed behind him, and I stood there listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway. I made it maybe five seconds before I pressed both hands over my mouth and let myself cry properly.
Then I wiped my face after a couple of minutes, turned around, and finished packing, because flights didn’t care about heartbreak.
***
After almost a year of Alberta mountains and grey-blue lakes, London looked way greener from the small plane window. Humid. Familiar enough to kick the nostalgia into reaching distance. Trees thick enough to crowd the streets below, everything swollen with summer in a way that made my body feel heavier before I even stood up from my seat. I had spent the whole flight half-awake, neck bent wrong, mouth dry from airport coffee and crying, stomach a mess, and my head pulsing with that tired ache that came from sleeping badly and holding too much in.
Airport was small enough that everything felt too close. Families waiting near the barrier. Suitcases dragging over tile. A man laughing loudly into his phone. The air carried that specific smell of home I could never explain without sounding ridiculous.
My phone started buzzing before I reached baggage claim.
The same picture to ID one of the person I loved too much. Her innocent smile reaching me like a ray of sunshine in the middle of my cloudy day. I stared at her name for a second. My suitcase hadn’t even come out yet. I had one hand wrapped around the strap of my carry-on and the other holding the phone like it might burn me.
I answered before it went to voicemail.
“Hey.”
“You landed?” Mandy’s voice came fast, already anxious.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat and looked toward the belt even though it hadn’t started moving. “I just got in.”
There was a pause on her end. Not silence exactly. I could hear movement behind her, a cabinet closing, maybe the TV low in the other room. Ordinary home sounds.
“Dad knows you’re landing today,” she said.
I closed my eyes for half a second. “I figured.”
“He’s been weird all day.”
My fingers tightened around the phone. “Weird how?”
“I don’t know.” Mandy sighed, and suddenly she sounded younger than she usually let herself sound with me. “Quiet. Annoying. He cleaned the kitchen twice.”
“That sounds like him, though.”
“Yeah, but worse.”
The baggage belt started moving with a low mechanical groan, and everyone around me shifted closer at once. I stayed where I was, too tired to fight for space.
“Mandy,” I said carefully, “I’m not coming tonight.”
She didn’t answer right away.
I watched the first black suitcase roll out and disappear into someone’s hands.
“You’re not coming home?” she asked.
The word home sat too close to the fight with our dad. Too close to his voice through the phone, to temporary people, to the way he had looked at Pedro like my life was something that needed to be corrected.
“I booked a hotel.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just for tonight.” I rubbed at my forehead with two fingers, trying to push away the headache building behind my eyes. “I’ll come see you tomorrow.”
“Is this because of Dad?”
I swallowed hard enough that she could hear it. The suitcase belt kept moving. People lifted bags, hugged, complained, checked tags. Life went on around me with brutal normalcy.
“A little,” I admitted.
Mandy went quiet again.
I hated that quiet in her. Hated being far enough away that I couldn’t see her face. I had left her in the middle of whatever shape my father’s pride had taken after losing his job, and that's not something an older sister would do.
“He misses you,” she said eventually.
I looked down at the floor because if I looked anywhere else, I was going to cry in baggage claim, and I had already given enough of myself to airports that day.
“I miss him too.”
It came out rough.
Mandy breathed in softly on the other end. “He’s being stupid.”
A tired laugh escaped me. “I know.”
“But he does love you.”
“I know that too.”
My suitcase finally appeared, turning the corner with one of the tags bent backward. I grabbed the handle and almost missed it because my body felt slow and clumsy.
“You sound awful, by the way.” Mandy said while I struggled with my suitcase.
“I feel awful. Need like—I don't know. A whole week of sleep.”
“Are you hungover?”
I dragged the suitcase off the belt and steadied it beside me. “Slightly.”
“How slightly?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered.”
She laughed once, but it faded fast. “Are you alone?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause.
I could hear what she didn’t say. The question underneath. Where was Pedro? Why wasn’t he there? How bad was the goodbye?
“He had to fly to New York,” I said, saving her from asking.
“Damn.”
I adjusted the phone inside my pocket while the earbuds did all the work of the call and started walking toward the exit, the suitcase wheels catching twice against the seams in the floor.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
The automatic answer rose in my throat and died there.
I looked through the glass doors toward the wet pavement outside, the ugly almost summer afternoon, the taxis pulling up under the awning. London, Ontario waiting for me with all its familiar streets and old wounds.
“I’m getting there,” I said.
Mandy didn’t push. For once, neither of us tried to fill the silence too fast.
“Call me when you’re at the hotel?”
“I will.”
“And eat something.” She used the same voice I get when lecturing her.
I laughed faintly. “Pedro already gave me that speech, don’t worry.”
“Good. He’s useful.”
I smile even though she can’t see me “He’ll be thrilled to know you approve.”
“I approve of anyone who tells you to be heathy.”
The sliding doors opened, and humid air wrapped around me the second I stepped outside. It made the exhaustion feel physical, like something ugly and wet settling over my skin.
“I’ll call you later,” I said.
“Okay.” Her voice softened. “I love you.”
My throat tightened again. “I love you too.”
The ride to the hotel took fifteen minutes and felt longer.
I sat in the back of the Uber with my forehead almost against the window, watching London pass in pieces. Strip malls followed by some gas stations with those damn trees hanging heavy over sidewalks. A church sign with letters missing. Everything familiar enough to hurt and strange enough to make me feel like I had arrived in a place that had kept living without me.
My body kept reaching for Pedro in small, useless ways.
A turn in the road made me shift, and my hand moved toward the empty seat beside me before I caught myself. My chest went tight with the stupidness of it. He had been next to me all year. In cars, hotel rooms, trailers, airports, our kitchens, hallways. His knee against mine or his hand on my thigh. That soft voice of his near my ear every morning we could wake up in the same bed.
Now there was only my suitcase in the trunk and the driver’s radio playing low.
Hotel was just a little something I could manage on a little notice I got since my decision on not going back home. My room had beige walls, a bed too neatly made, and a view of the parking lot with a Mcdonalds sign blinking red and yellow across the street. I dragged my suitcase inside and let it fall beside the bed with a quiet thud that sounded too final in the quiet room.
For a minute, I stood there. Didn’t take off my shoes. Didn’t turn on the TV, or unzip anything.
The day had been nothing but movement. I went from Calgary to the airport, security, boarding, landing, luggage, Uber, check-in. Every step had carried me farther from him and closer to a family fight I still didn’t know how to touch.
Now there was nothing urgent left.
Only the air conditioner humming above the window and my phone heavy in my hand.
I called Mandy first, like I promised.
She answered on the second ring.
“You got there?”
“Yeah.” I sat on the edge of the bed and bent forward, elbows on my knees. “I’m here.”
“How’s the room?”
“Depressing.”
“Clean depressing or murder depressing?”
I looked around at the beige lampshade, the stiff curtains, the framed print of some blurry lake that looked like every hotel picture ever made.
“Clean depressing.”
“That’s acceptable.”
I smiled faintly, but it didn’t hold for long.
Mandy heard it somehow. “You really won’t come tonight?”
“I can’t.”
The honesty came out before I had time to soften it.
Her voice dropped. “Okay.”
“I’m too tired to fight with him. And if he says one thing wrong, I’m gonna say ten things wrong back.” I pressed my fingers against my eyes, hard enough to see little flashes of light. “I don’t want to make it worse.”
“He won’t know how to say sorry.”
“I know.” I sighed.
“He’s terrible at it.”
“I know that too.”
She paused before admiring with a guilty voice, “He asked if Pedro was coming too.”
My hand dropped from my face.
Of course he did.
My chest tightened in a different place this time, closer to anger, but I was too drained for it to turn sharp.
“What did you say?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
The room went quiet around me. On the other end, Mandy moved somewhere, maybe into her bedroom, because the background noise softened.
“He doesn’t hate you,” she said.
“I know.”
“He’s scared.”
The words should have made me patient. They should have pulled some grown, forgiving response out of me. Instead, I only felt tired. Tired of being old enough to understand people and still young enough to be hurt by them.
“I know that too,” I said. “I’m just really tired, Mandy.”
“I know.”
My eyes started burning again. I leaned back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
“I’ll come tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
We hung up with the typical I love you, and after I stayed on the bed with the phone resting on my stomach, listening to the air conditioner click and rattle above me.
Pedro called a few minutes later.
His name filled the screen, and my whole body reacted before I answered. My fingers tightened. My throat closed. That little photo of him smiling up at me from my contact screen almost broke whatever fragile structure I had managed to build since landing.
I answered and held the phone to my ear.
“Hi.”
There was a second of airport noise on his end, distant voices, wheels over tile, someone announcing something in the background. Then his voice came through, tired and warm and so familiar it hurt.
“Hi, baby.”
I closed my eyes because two words was all it took.
My hand moved over my mouth, but he heard the change in my breathing anyway.
“Cariño,” he said quietly.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
I let out a small, broken laugh because there was no point lying to him. “No.”
His breath shifted on the other end, like he had stopped walking.
“Where are you?”
“Hotel.” I closed my eyes, imagining his face in front of me “You landed?”
“Yeah. New York is loud and I hate everyone.”
That pulled the tiniest smile out of me. I wiped under one eye with the heel of my hand.
“You missed her.”
“Don’t tell her that. She’ll get confident.”
I could picture him too clearly. Somewhere in his own mess of luggage, glasses low on his nose, curls ruined from the flight, trying to make me laugh while probably feeling just as hollow as I did.
“Did you eat?” I asked.
He made a sound. “Bossy.”
“Did you?”
“Airport Mcdonalds. Emotionally damaging. You?”
I glanced toward the door. The vending machine glowed faintly under the crack, cold light spilling into the hallway.
“Soon.”
He said my name as a warning of a future lecture, but there was no joke around it, he was clearly concerned. I turned onto my side, curling one arm under the pillow, phone pressed tightly to my ear like that could make him closer.
“I’ll eat.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
A pause stretched between us. It was full of things neither of us wanted to start saying yet, because if we started, the whole night might collapse.
Pedro broke it first.
“You okay?”
I opened my eyes to look around the room again. Beige walls with my closed suitcases. The city outside the window was quiet in that Canadian way I know too well.
“I’m sad,” I said.
He breathed out slowly. “Me too.”
Hearing him say it made tears slide down my face again. Softer this time. Less violent than the morning, but somehow more lonely because his voice was right there and his body wasn’t.
“I keep feeling like I forgot something,” I admitted.
“What?”
“You.”
He became silent, but then his voice came through rougher. “Baby.”
“I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not.”
“It feels stupid.”
“It’s not,” he said again, firmer this time. “I kept reaching for you in the car and got my backpack instead.”
I laughed weakly through the tears. “Was it comforting?”
“Terrible. It's a very bad substitute.”
The jokester in him got another smile from me, but it passed by quickly. Pedro stayed quiet for a second, and I heard him move somewhere, maybe sitting down, maybe finding some corner of the airport that wouldn't have too many eyes on him.
“I’m so tired,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“I feel like I left one life and landed in another one before I even had time to breathe.”
Pedro stayed quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped, low and careful.
“You don’t have to figure all of it out tonight.” He started firmly “Tonight, you eat something. Shower if you can. Sleep. Tomorrow can wait to be the awful tomorrow.”
Neither of us spoke for a while. I listened to him breathe on the other end, and he listened to mine. It was a poor replacement for his hand on my back or his mouth against my hair, but it was what we had now. The first tiny practice of the life waiting for us.
Phones.
Airports.
Time zones.
Voices trying to cross distance and land gently.
In three days, I would fly to Berlin for a new job in a new country. A life I had fought for and still didn’t fully know how to hold. A whole ocean was about to be in between us, and we're both learning the strange patience of loving someone who belonged to you and still couldn’t always be reached.
“I’m here,” he said softly, as though he could hear where my thoughts had gone before I found the words to explain them.
I closed my eyes and pressed the phone closer to my ear.
“I’m here too.”
“I love you.”
My fingers tightened around the phone. Even after all this time, hearing him say it still reached somewhere deep inside me.
“I love you too, Pedro.”
A year had passed faster than I knew how to understand. Somewhere between long days on set, hotel rooms, airports, fights, laughter, and all the moments we had stolen for ourselves, my life had changed completely.
And now another adventure was waiting for me.
There were still things I didn’t know how to fix. Pieces of my life I was afraid to let him touch. Some days, loving him felt so much bigger than anything I had ever been trusted with, and I still caught myself wondering how long it would take before he realized he deserved someone easier.
But he was there.
And so was I.
Maybe that was all love ever promised. That when the distance grew, when life became difficult and neither of us knew what came next, we would keep finding our way back to each other.
I smiled into the darkness, listening to him breathe on the other end of the line.
The next year would be easier, right?!
This should be shorter, but I got carried away, couldn't cut the party, or the good bye, or her at the hotel. Well, I'll see you guy in the next one. Thanks for every comment, every like and repost. Love you all. Taglist: @kellyxo1 ; @joelmillerpascal ; @sarahhxx03 ; @sara-alonso ; @needz1nk ; @sassyispunk ; @flow33didontsmokeagain, @alixxhere
