Page 78 of Don’t Say Mafia

The urn was heavier than it looked as I settled it into my lap, the cool metal stark against the heat of the day. I stared at the shallow trench worn into the dirt beneath my feet, carved there by years of kids dragging their shoes, slowing themselves down because flying forward felt like too much.

I pushed off gently, just enough to sway.

“It seemed fitting,” I said quietly, “to come here.”

The chains whispered with each movement, the sound pulling at something deep and tender inside me. I leaned back, letting the pale sky fill my vision.

“This was before everything,” I went on. “Before we got tired. Before hope started costing more than we could afford.”

The breeze rattled the empty swing beside me as though it was waiting for him, and I could almost see him there again, lanky and bright, swinging too high, laughing like the future was a promise instead of a gamble.

“I believed you,” I told him. “Every word.”

The swing slowed beneath me until it barely moved at all, my toes tracing faint lines through the dirt without really meaning to stop. I let it settle there, my body heavy, my chest tight in that familiar way grief took when it wasn’t sharp anymore, when it hurt because something precious had existed and then slipped out of reach.

“I don’t miss the end,” I said quietly, staring at the empty swing beside mine. “I think you know that.”

The breeze nudged the chains, warm and dry, and I closed my eyes.

The memory didn’t arrive all at once. It seeped in, the way memories always did, sound first and then sensation, pulling me under before I realized I was gone.

I was sixteen again, sitting on a swing with my shoulders curled inward and my breath coming apart in uneven pulls. My arm throbbed with every heartbeat, a deep, spreading ache that had already bloomed purple and blue beneath my skin. I’d pushed my sleeve up without thinking, needing air on it even though it didn’t help.

It hadn’t been meant for me.

She’d thrown it at my stepdad. I couldn’t even remember what it was now, only how it had left her hand and hit my arm instead, the impact knocking the breath clean out of me.

My mother hadn’t said anything afterward. She’d just turned away, already done, and I’d stood there for a second too long before realizing my hands were shaking.

Ryan found me here.

I heard him before I saw him, his footsteps quick and uneven as he crossed the park. When he dropped in front of me, his face was tight with a kind of anger I’d never seen turned outward before, not at me.

“Eden,” he said, breathless, like he’d been running. “What happened?”

I shook my head automatically, a reflex I’d learned early. “I’m fine.”

He knelt in front of me and gently took my wrist and turned my arm so he could see the bruise. “Fuck,” he muttered, quieter now. Not angry at me, but at the world . . . at them.

I started crying, and my vision blurred as I tried to swallow the tears back and failed. “She didn’t even apologize,” I said in a halting, breaking voice. “She just . . . walked away.”

Ryan didn’t say anything at first. He pulled his hoodie off instead, wrapping it carefully around my arm, cushioning the bruise like he could protect it from getting any worse. His hands were warm, and it made the shaking in me finally start to ease.

“I’m gonna get you out of there,” he said finally. “I promise.”

He’d said it before, and like all those times, I savored the promise.

Ryan leaned in, and his forehead rested gently against mine. “You shouldn’t have to be tough all the time. You shouldn’t have to get hit for someone else’s mess.”

I cried harder at that, at the way his voice cracked just enough to give him away.

“I won’t let this be your life forever,” he whispered. “I swear.”

I opened my eyes, the present rushing back in around me, the park worn and quiet and empty except for the promise I was still holding.

That was the boy I missed.

Not the man he became. Not the years that followed. The boy who wrapped my arm in his hoodie and believed that love could be armor if you meant it enough. The boy who looked at me like I was something worth protecting, even when we had nothing but cracked sidewalks and secondhand shoes. The boy who swore he’d build me something better one day and actually believed he could.