Chapter Text
Maloi sat by the window, watching the rain streak down the glass like tears tracing invisible paths. The world outside was a haze of gray, the kind of weather that pulls old memories from places you thought you'd buried them. Her fingers rested on the rim of a half-empty mug of coffee, the warmth long since gone cold. She didn’t drink it. She just held it, as if it could tether her to the present.
But her mind wasn’t here. It hadn’t been for a while.
Her thoughts were with Colet.
It wasn’t the first time, and she hated that it never felt like the last. Colet had a way of sneaking into her mind at the quietest moments — not when things were loud and bright, but when the world slowed just enough for the ache to be heard. Maloi didn’t know if it was nostalgia or some more stubborn kind of grief, but the weight of it felt the same. Familiar. Unwanted. Impossible to shake.
She leaned her head against the window, the cool glass pressing against her temple. Her eyes fluttered closed, and there she was again — Colet, grinning like she’d just done something impossible. Maloi could see her so clearly it almost hurt. The sharp edges of her jawline, the wildfire glow in her eyes whenever she talked about her dreams, the way her hands moved as if she could pull the future toward her with sheer will alone.
“You’ll see, Maloi,” Colet had said once, eyes full of untamed certainty. “We’re gonna have everything. Just you wait.”
Maloi hadn’t believed her back then. Not because she doubted Colet's ambition, but because she knew what ambition could do to people. It devours them from the inside out. It asks them to sacrifice too much. And in the end, it always demands one thing more.
Maloi was that “one thing more.”
Her chest tightened at the thought, and she pressed her eyes shut harder, like it could block it all out. It didn’t. Nothing ever did. The truth was that Colet had been right. She had done it. She’d built the life she dreamed of. Maloi had seen it from a distance — interviews, articles, photos of Colet standing on stages she used to point at on magazine covers. It should have made Maloi proud. It should have.
But all it did was remind her that she hadn’t been invited to stand there, too.
Her phone buzzed on the table beside her. Just a soft sound, but in the quiet of the room, it felt like thunder. Her eyes opened slowly, her body not quite ready to face the world again. Another message from work, probably. Or a delivery notification. The world had a way of continuing to move no matter how still her heart felt.
She glanced at the screen and froze.
Her name was there. Colet.
For a moment, Maloi didn’t breathe. She sat as still as the rain on the glass, eyes locked on the notification like it might vanish if she moved. Her fingers hovered over the screen, hesitant, as if touching it would make it real in a way she wasn’t ready for.
Ma. Nicolette Vergara
My Dearest, Maloi
I’ve written and erased this message too many times to count. Every version felt too raw, too heavy with words I didn’t know how to say without sounding like...
Her heart started to thud in her chest — slow at first, then faster, each beat more certain than the last. She told herself not to open it. Don’t do this, Maloi. Leave it alone. Let it stay unread. Let it stay in the past where it belongs.
But she couldn’t.
Her fingers moved before her mind caught up, swiping across the screen and opening the message with a single tap. Her breath hitched as the words unfolded in front of her, line by line, like a letter she wasn’t supposed to see.
Her eyes moved down the screen slowly, each word a thread tugged loose from something she thought was already unraveled. Her heart ached in places she didn’t know could still hurt. She read it once, then again, slower the second time, tasting every syllable like it might dissolve if she wasn’t careful.
Tears filled her eyes before she even realized it. She blinked fast, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her sweater, but the tears kept coming, slow and quiet, the kind that don’t announce themselves. She hated crying like this. Not the loud, gasping kind, but the kind that leaves you defenseless. The kind that lets you know something inside you is still breaking.
Colet's words weren’t sharp, but they cut just the same. Every sentence was a reminder of everything they could have been. Everything they almost were.
From: [email protected]
Subject: My Dearest, Maloi
I’ve written and erased this message too many times to count. Every version felt too raw, too heavy with words I didn’t know how to say without sounding like I was still waiting for you. But tonight, something is different. There’s a stillness in me — the kind that comes after you’ve been carrying something for too long and finally set it down. I think it’s time I let this go.
I did it, Loi. I became everything I told you I would be. Remember those wild, reckless dreams we stayed up mapping out like cartographers of a world only we could see? They’re real now. The things I said I’d chase, the heights we whispered about as if saying them too loud would make them disappear — I reached them. Sometimes I still can’t believe it. I look around and think, This is it. This is the life I was dreaming of.
But do you want to know the truth? It doesn’t feel how I thought it would.
Because you’re not here.
I thought success would feel like euphoria, like that lightness you get at the top of a hill after a long climb. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels quiet. It feels like standing in a big, empty house after everyone’s left. I should be celebrating, but instead, I’m counting all the people who aren’t beside me. And somehow, I always count you first.
I still remember the way you used to look at me when I talked about my dreams — that mix of pride and patience. Like you were already proud of me, even before I did anything to earn it. I wonder if you’d still look at me like that now. I wonder if you’d see me on this side of everything and think, Yes, that’s who I always knew you’d become. I think about that more often than I should.
But that’s the thing, Maloi — I didn’t want to become it alone. I wanted you here, right in the middle of it all. I wanted to be able to turn to my right at every milestone and see you there, grinning like you always did when you were too proud to hide it. I wanted to hear you say, “I knew you would do it,” because you were always so sure of me, even when I wasn’t sure of myself.
I still catch myself searching for you. At events, in crowds, in places you have no reason to be. My eyes scan faces like muscle memory, like my heart still believes you might appear if I just look long enough. Silly, I know. But love leaves you with little ghosts like that — shadows that follow you no matter how far you go.
I don’t blame you for walking away. I know I was difficult to love back then. I was too focused on the “becoming” to be fully present for what we already had. I thought love could wait. I thought you could wait. But time isn’t kind like that. It doesn’t pause for people to figure themselves out. It just moves. And when I finally looked back, you were already gone.
I’ve replayed that moment so many times in my head — you leaving. I used to think if I went over it enough, I’d find the exact misstep, the precise point where it all went wrong. But the truth is, there wasn’t one single moment. It was a slow unraveling, thread by thread, until one day I woke up and realized we were already too far from each other. And by then, you were too tired to hold the other end of the string. I don’t blame you for that. I never will.
I hope you’re happy now, Maloi. I mean that with every part of me. I hope your mornings are slow and gentle. I hope you’re surrounded by people who pour softness into you the way you always poured it into me. I hope love found its way back to you, and I hope it’s the kind that never asks you to dim yourself down or shrink to fit. You deserve that. You deserve a love that is wide and endless, the kind that feels like a song you never get tired of hearing.
Sometimes, I wonder if you’ve met her yet — the one you’ll stand across from in white. I wonder if she knows how lucky she is. I wonder if she looks at you the way I used to, like she’s watching the sun rise for the first time. I hope she does. I hope she knows that love like yours is rare, that it doesn’t come along twice. And if she doesn’t know it yet, I hope she figures it out before it’s too late.
I think about that day sometimes — your wedding. I think about where I’ll be when it happens. If I’ll still be in this city, or if I’ll have drifted somewhere new by then. I wonder if I’ll get an invitation. I hope I do. I hope you think of me when you’re making that list. I don’t need to be in the front row or seated at the table with people who mean more to you now. I’d be fine in the back, quietly watching, hands folded in my lap. Just knowing you’re happy would be enough. I’d smile. I’d clap at all the right moments. I’d be proud of you, Maloi. I’d be so, so proud of you.
This letter isn’t an attempt to pull you back. I wouldn’t do that to you. I’m not reaching for you, I promise. I know better than that now. This is just something I needed to say — to name what’s been unnamed for too long. You mattered to me, Maloi. You still do. You always will. I guess I just needed you to know that.
If you ever think of me — even if it’s only for a moment — I hope you remember me with kindness. I hope you think of the good things, not just how we unraveled. Because we did have good things, didn’t we? I like to think we did. I like to think that, in another life, I would have learned faster. I would have loved you better. I would have put down my ambition long enough to hold on to you. But I know this life doesn’t give us do-overs, only lessons. And I’ve learned. I swear I’ve learned.
I’ll end this here before it becomes a circle of me saying the same things in different ways. Take care of your heart, Maloi. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known. And if one day, I see your name on an envelope inviting me to your wedding, I promise I’ll show up. I won’t make it about me. I’ll clap. I’ll smile. I’ll watch you be loved the way you deserve.
With the purest love that still lingers,
Colet
Maloi’s chest rose and fell in uneven breaths. Her hand covered her mouth, trying to keep herself steady, but it wasn’t working. She felt that sentence crack something open in her — the place where she’d stored all the “what-ifs” she’d been trying not to think about for years. She’d buried them, stuffed them into the quiet corners of her mind, but here they were now, laid bare in Colet’s voice.
Her lips quivered as she read it, and for the first time in years, she let herself wonder what it might have felt like — to still be at Colet’s side. To have been part of all those victories instead of watching them from afar. To have been the person Colet called when she finally “made it.”
The tears came harder when she read the part where Colet wanted to go to her wedding in the future, it was sharp and bitter. She let out a short, broken breath, like something caught in her throat and wouldn't come loose. Maloi pressed her palm to her eyes, squeezing them shut. But the words had already found a home inside her.
The one you’ll stand across from in white.
And for some reason, that line hurt more than all the others.
Colet had always been the person Maloi imagined waiting at the end of that aisle. For years, she’d pictured it without even meaning to. The thought had come quietly, the way all the most dangerous thoughts do. It was always Colet at the end of that long walk, standing there with that wild grin, eyes full of certainty, hands waiting to pull her forward.
But now Colet was telling her, in the softest, saddest way, that she hoped it would be someone else. And worse, she hoped to be invited to see it.
Maloi’s face crumpled as she clutched the phone tighter, her shoulders shaking. She didn’t sob. It wasn’t loud like that. It was quieter, rawer. It was the sound of something breaking apart slowly — wood splintering, rope fraying, the last note of a song fading into silence.
She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, curled into herself, the screen dimming to black but the words still burned into her mind. The room smelled like cold coffee and rain, and she sat there, motionless, feeling the weight of it all.
Her fingers hovered over the screen again, thumb resting on the edge of the reply button. She stared at it for a long, long time. She thought about what she could say. I’m happy for you. I miss you too. I wish you were here. I wish we’d learned faster. I wish we’d had more time.
But none of it felt right. None of it felt like enough.
So, she closed the email instead.
She set the phone down slowly on the table, face-down, like she couldn’t bear to see Colet’s name again. Her hands stayed in her lap, fingers clasped tightly, squeezing until it hurt. She sat like that for a while, eyes on the rain-streaked glass, watching the world blur behind it.
The coffee was cold. Her heart was tired.
And Colet was still gone.
But somehow, for the first time in a long time, it didn’t feel like she’d been forgotten.
It felt like an ending. Or maybe, it felt like a beginning.
Maloi leaned her head against the glass again, eyes closed, letting herself exist in the quiet weight of it all. She stayed there, still as the rain, not ready to move just yet.
Not ready to answer. Not ready to let go.
But maybe ready to heal.