AllFreeNovel
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Nova left seventeen days ago.
Our argument at the party came out of nowhere, yet somehow it felt inevitable.
A break, she called it.
But it’s more than that.
I’ve been left before. I should’ve known it wouldn’t work out. The second I wasn’t at my best, things came crashing down.
Yesterday, it hit home in a new way when she sent for her things.
Now Nova’s studio is empty, and so is her half of the dresser.
I blink my eyes open to find myself on the couch in sweatpants. The air tastes like the stale pizza still sitting in boxes on the counter.
I flex, and chip crumbs settle into the ridges of my abs.
Apparently, I ate an entire bag of Doritos while watching reality shows.
The TV is on mute, and there’s a news headline about the season starting. LA plays their first game tonight.
In the past ten years, I’ve never not started a season.
It should feel liberating. Instead, it’s as if the glass walls are pressing down on me, stifling me, but I can’t bring myself to press back.
I spent my entire life trying to be the strongest. The fastest. The best.
Now, I’m nothing.
On the corner of the coffee table is the journal Nova made me last Christmas, made from fabric with a dozen of my tattoos replicated in her steady hand across the surface.
I crack the front cover, folding it open to the first blank page.
It’s empty.
Like me.
The sound of a car door outside pulls me to the window. My knee that, during playoffs, screamed every time I put weight on it now functions with barely a whimper. I look out over the driveway and the garden with tire tracks through the daisies.
At the gate, my sister is stabbing at the keypad.
I yank open the door and step onto the mat in bare feet.
“What’s your gate code? I tried ‘baller baller bills’ already,” Kat calls.
I give it to her, and a minute later, the car pulls up the driveway.
My sister emerges with a huge handbag in tow and big, round sunglasses. Daniel shifts out of the driver’s seat with a wave, and Andy bursts from the back and makes a beeline for the basketball hoop.
Kat crosses to me, eyeing up the garden as she passes. “Can’t decide who looks worse, you or the flowers.”
I rub a hand over my jaw, remembering I haven’t shaved in days. My hair might be long too.
“Kidding. I love you no matter how much you look like a bridge troll.”
“What are you doing here?” She hasn’t been here since the move—busy with school—and she had to pick the worst time.
Kat wraps an arm around my waist. “We wanted to see you get your ring.”
