The rain had been steady all day, draping the city in a gray hush. A dull glow from the streetlamps pooled in the cracks of the pavement, and the air smelled like damp concrete and something raw, something unsaid.

Michael stood beneath the awning of the coffee shop, his fingers clenched around the strap of his bag. She was here. Two feet away. Close enough that he could see the freckles on her nose, the way her breath left the faintest fog in the cold air.

“Why did you ask me to come?” she asked.

Her voice was gentle. Everything about her was gentle. And that was the problem.

Michael exhaled sharply, forcing out a small, breathless laugh that didn’t sound like him. “I—I don’t even know where to start.”

Her brow knit together, concerned. “Michael?”

He swallowed. The lump in his throat was a living thing, clawing its way up. He had rehearsed this a thousand times in his head, imagined every possible way this moment could unfold. But none of his practiced words came. None of them felt enough.

So he just said it.

“I love you.”

Silence.

A car passed, its headlights flashing across her face, catching the slight widening of her eyes, the way her lips parted as if she wanted to respond but couldn’t.

“I love you,” he said again, softer this time, the weight of it sinking into his bones. “And not in the way you love me. Not in the way you say my name like I’m a good memory or send me songs that remind you of us. Not as your best friend.”

She didn’t speak. She just stood there, motionless, her hands curling into the sleeves of her sweater.

Michael let out a shaky breath. “I love you in the way that ruins a person. The way that makes it hurt to breathe when I see you with him.” He forced himself to look at her, to really look at her, even though he already knew—already knew what her face would say before she did. “And I know. I know it’s not mutual. I know I should have buried this, let it rot inside me where it belongs. But I couldn’t. I just—I needed you to know.”

Her lips trembled. She opened her mouth, then closed it. The weight of what he’d said filled the space between them, thick as the rain.

“Michael…” she whispered, and it was the softest kind of devastation.

He laughed again, but it sounded like something breaking. “God, you don’t even have to say it. I know.”

Her eyes glistened, and for a moment, just a moment, he let himself believe there was another world where this ended differently. A world where she looked at him the way he looked at her. Where love didn’t feel like drowning in something that would never hold him back.

But this was not that world.

And so he smiled—because what else was there to do?—and took a small step backward, out into the rain, away from the warmth of the awning, away from her.

“This is the last time I say your name like this,” he murmured. “The last time I let myself hope.”

Then he turned and walked into the night, letting the rain mix with the salt on his face, and didn’t look back.