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The clock on the bedside table reads 2:13 AM when Aiah nudges Mikha awake.
“Get up,” she whispers, fingers brushing against Mikha’s arm. “We’re going on a road trip.”
Mikha groans, burying her face deeper into the pillow. “It’s the middle of the night, Aiah.”
“Exactly.” Aiah’s voice is quiet but insistent. “Come on.”
Mikha sighs, turning onto her back, eyes barely open. She could argue—could tell Aiah that sleep is all she wants right now—but she knows how this goes. She’s always been weak for Aiah, for the quiet desperation behind her voice, for the way she asks without really asking.
So, with a reluctant sigh, she pushes off the covers, grabs the nearest hoodie off the chair, and tugs on her black Ferrari cap before following Aiah out the door.
The air outside is cool, tinged with the lingering scent of rain. Their car sits in the driveway, headlights cutting through the darkness. Mikha slides into the passenger seat, pulling her knees up against her chest as Aiah starts the engine. Neither of them speaks as the car rolls onto the empty highway, the city lights fading in the rearview mirror.
The road stretches ahead, empty except for the glow of streetlights flickering past in rhythmic intervals. Each flash of light spills through the windshield, casting fleeting patterns on Mikha’s skin, illuminating Aiah’s knuckles as they grip the wheel.
Mikha watches the road with a strange kind of detachment, as if she’s outside of herself, watching this moment from somewhere else. The streetlights make her feel nostalgic for something she doesn’t quite remember—like an old photograph of a place she’s never been, like the way childhood dreams fade into something unrecognizable but still familiar.
Aiah’s playlist hums softly through the speakers, a mix of classic love songs from the ‘80s. Mikha recognizes them, not because they’re hers, but because they remind her of Aiah’s father, who used to play them on Sunday mornings while fixing his car.
Nothing’s gonna change my love for you…
The melody drifts between them, warm and distant. It’s strange, Mikha thinks, how borrowed things can feel like home.
She shifts in her seat, pulling her hoodie tighter around her body. The wind rushes through the half-open window, cool against her cheeks, sharp and alive. It feels like the first breath of air after crying, like something cleansing yet bittersweet.
Aiah hasn’t spoken much.
Her silence isn’t peaceful—it’s heavy, thick like the scent of rain before a storm. Mikha can feel it pressing against her skin, as tangible as the cold glass beneath her fingertips when she trails them along the window.
She steals a glance at Aiah. Her eyes are fixed on the road, lips pressed together in that way she does when she’s deep in thought but doesn’t want to be pulled out of it. Mikha wonders what’s going through her mind. If she’s thinking about all the times they’ve done this before—road trips with no real destination, just for the sake of being together. Or if, like Mikha, she’s thinking about how much everything has changed.
The gas station they stop at is bathed in sickly yellow light, buzzing with the hum of old fluorescent tubes. Mikha steps out first, stretching, the pavement cool beneath her crocs.
Inside, the air smells like stale coffee and motor oil. She grabs a bottle of water, fingers brushing against the condensation as she presses it against her palm. She adds a pack of gum she doesn’t need.
At the counter, the cashier looks half-asleep, his voice slow and indifferent. “Long drive?”
Mikha exhales, rolling the water bottle between her hands. “Something like that.”
Back in the car, Aiah doesn’t start the engine right away. She sits there, hands resting against the wheel, head tilted slightly downward. The music still plays—“Every Breath You Take”—soft and haunting.
Mikha takes a slow sip of water, the coolness settling against the back of her throat.
Aiah finally speaks, voice low. “Do you remember the first time we did this?”
Mikha does. The memory is sharp, untouched by time—the way they’d left the city just to chase the sunrise, how Aiah had looked at her like she was the only thing worth looking at. The way everything had felt simple back then.
Mikha nods. “Yeah.”
The memory lingers between them, but neither of them reaches for it.
Instead, Aiah shifts the car back into drive, and they continue forward.
The wide, bright roads gradually narrow, the open highway giving way to smaller streets lined with shadows. The glow of streetlights grows sparser, swallowed by pockets of darkness. The trees on either side of the road loom taller, their silhouettes stretching against the night sky.
Mikha doesn’t feel uneasy. She knows these roads.
They’ve driven through them a hundred times before—late-night detours when neither of them wanted to go home just yet, when the city felt too loud and the silence between them felt safer than any words they could offer.
She knows where this road ends. Knows the turns before they come, knows the way the street dips near the bridge, how the asphalt feels smoother just past the old diner. There’s comfort in that familiarity.
The kind of comfort that makes her wonder why familiarity isn’t enough to keep people from falling apart.
Beside her, Aiah exhales softly. And then, for the first time that night, she hums along to the music.
“Who’s holding Donna now… who’s heart she knocking around?”
The sound is quiet, almost absentminded, but Mikha catches it. It’s the first real thing Aiah has given her all night—something small, something borrowed, but hers for a moment.
Mikha closes her eyes briefly, letting herself sink into the song, into the motion of the car, into the feel of the wind that brushes against her skin like an old friend.
The road ends where it all began.
The beach is quiet, the sky still cloaked in darkness. The waves don’t crash like they used to—they only lap against the shore, slow and soundless, as if afraid to disturb whatever lingers here.
Mikha steps out first, pulling her hoodie tighter around her body. The air is thick, heavy with salt and unsaid words. Aiah follows, moving slower, her hands buried deep in her jacket pockets.
They don’t need to search for the spot. They know exactly where it is.
Seven years ago, Mikha brought Aiah here, just before sunrise, when the ocean was a canvas of soft pinks and deep blues. When the sky had opened up to let in a new day, and Mikha, heart pounding, had asked, Be mine?
And Aiah had smiled—big and bright, like the sun cresting over the horizon—and said, I already am.
But now, the sun isn’t here. The warmth is gone. The night lingers longer than it should.
They sit where they did back then, on the same patch of sand, the grains cold beneath their fingers. For a long moment, neither of them speaks.
Aiah lets out a breath she’s been holding.
It’s soft, barely audible, but Mikha hears it. Feels it.
Her body moves before she can think—her hand reaching for Aiah’s, like it has so many times before.
But there’s something different now.
Hesitation. A pause in her movement, the barest moment of reluctance before her fingers brush against Aiah’s skin.
Because for the first time, she wonders— Is this still mine to hold?
Aiah doesn’t pull away. But she doesn’t reach back, either.
The silence stretches, vast like the ocean before them.
Mikha doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t tighten her grip either.
Her fingers rest against Aiah’s, barely touching, like a ghost of something that used to be solid.
She exhales, tilting her head back to look at the sky. Still dark. No hint of morning yet.
Seven years.
People always talked about the seven-year itch, how love starts to decay after a certain point, how the cracks begin to show if they weren’t already there.
Mikha never believed in it before. Not when she and Aiah spent whole afternoons tangled up in bed, whispering dreams into each other’s skin. Not when they spent grocery runs making inside jokes in the cereal aisle, or when they kissed in the rain just because they could.
But now, sitting here—on the same sand where their story started—she wonders.
Is this it?
Is this what people meant? This slow unraveling, this feeling of holding onto something that no longer molds to the shape of her hands?
She wants to believe it’s just a rough patch. A storm they can ride out like all the others. But storms always left something broken in their wake, didn’t they?
She finally looks at Aiah, searching for something in the shadows of her face. Does she feel it too? The slipping, the shifting, the quiet ache of something once effortless now feeling like a question neither of them dares to ask?
The ocean in front of them doesn’t stir, doesn’t offer any answers.
And neither does Aiah.
She just sits there, staring at the horizon like she’s waiting for the sun to rise.
And Mikha wonders— what if it doesn’t?
Aiah feels Mikha’s fingers ghosting over hers—barely there, hesitant.
For years, Mikha never hesitated. Her touch had always been certain, as if it belonged.
Now, it lingers like a question.
Aiah wants to close the distance. To just take Mikha’s hand the way she always has. But she doesn’t. She can’t.
Because some part of her knows—it wouldn’t feel the same.
Instead, she focuses on the horizon, even though there’s nothing to see. Just black water stretching into a black sky, no sign of light yet.
The nights have been getting longer.
Not just this one, but all of them. The ones spent lying in the same bed, backs turned away. The ones where words ran out before they even began. The ones where silence wasn’t comfortable anymore—where it sat between them like an unseen thing, something neither of them could name but both could feel.
The cold is suffocating.
Not the air, not the wind that brushes past her skin. But the cold inside her. The one that crept in slowly, so slowly she didn’t notice it at first.
Seven years.
People said that’s when love starts to itch, when it starts pulling at its seams. Aiah never believed it. Seven years used to feel like proof—like permanence.
Now, it feels like erosion.
She wonders if Mikha feels it too.
Or maybe she already knows the answer. Maybe she’s known it longer than Aiah has. Maybe that’s why her touch feels like it doesn’t belong anymore.
Aiah swallows, pressing her palms against the sand, grounding herself in something tangible.
The waves don’t crash tonight. They only drift, slow and soundless, like they’re waiting.
And Aiah wonders— how long can something drift before it disappears completely?
Mikha stares out at the water, dark and unmoving, before she finally whispers,
“I love you.”
It’s sincere. It’s true.
But the sound of it feels foreign.
Like an echo of something that used to mean more. Like an old melody played on a detuned piano—still recognizable, but no longer the same.
It isn’t uncertain. It isn’t fake.
Just hollow.
She hears it the second it leaves her lips, how the weight of it isn’t what it used to be. She wonders if Aiah hears it too.
When she turns, Aiah is already looking at her.
Her eyes search Mikha’s, deep and knowing, like she’s not just hearing the words—she’s trying to confirm them. Trying to see if there’s still something solid beneath them, something she can hold onto.
For a moment, neither of them move.
Then, Aiah smiles.
Small. Faint. Sad.
Like she’s hearing something from a distant memory.
Like she’s remembering the first time Mikha said it—how it had been bursting at the seams, full of laughter and certainty, kissed into her skin as the sun rose.
And maybe, just maybe, she’s realizing that some words don’t carry the same weight forever.
The ocean remains still. The sky is still dark. The wind brushes past them, whispering things neither of them say out loud.
But the sun doesn’t rise like it used to.
There’s no soft pink bleeding into the sky, no streaks of orange warming the horizon. Just a dull, heavy gray swallowing everything in its path.
Aiah exhales. Mikha lets her eyes drift to the ocean one last time.
And maybe that’s their answer.
They don’t say it out loud. They don’t have to.
Instead, they decide to go home.
Because sitting here, trying to remember how it felt, is enough. And maybe that’s all they can do now—hold onto the memory, let it exist untouched, instead of trying to revive something that no longer breathes the same way.
Before they leave, Mikha moves first.
She pulls Aiah in, arms wrapping around her in a way that still feels instinctive. A way that still feels like home, even if the foundation has started to crack.
Aiah doesn’t resist.
For the first time in a long while, she lets herself melt into it. Into Mikha’s warmth, into the familiar way their bodies mold together like they were always meant to.
And for a fleeting, aching second, it almost feels like nothing has changed.
Like they are still them.
Like seven years ago wasn’t so far away.
But love isn’t just warmth. It isn’t just familiarity. It’s the choice to keep holding on, even when the edges start to fray.
And somehow, somewhere along the way, they stopped choosing.
Aiah buries her face in the crook of Mikha’s neck, breathing her in like she’s trying to commit it to memory. And Mikha holds her just a little tighter, because she knows this is the last time.
There are no final words. No grand declarations.
Just this.
Just one last thread pulling them together before it finally snaps.
When they finally step away, the space between them feels heavier than it ever has.
Mikha looks at Aiah. Aiah looks at Mikha.
And then, with nothing left to say—they go home.
Aiah leans into Mikha’s embrace, lets herself feel the warmth she’s been pulling away from for far too long.
And yet, deep down, she knows—this isn’t enough.
Not anymore.
Because love doesn’t just fall apart overnight. It erodes. Slowly. Quietly.
Like the way their fights stopped finding resolutions.
It used to be that they’d argue, then they’d fix it. They’d talk through it—sometimes through clenched teeth, sometimes through broken sobs—but always with the intent to understand each other.
But then one day, they just… stopped.
Fights ended with someone walking away instead of talking it through. Apologies came too late or not at all. Some nights, the silence stretched too long, too thick, and neither of them knew how to break it.
She remembers—
“You never listen to me,” Mikha had snapped one night, standing in their kitchen, hands clenched into fists at her sides.
Aiah had sighed, rubbing her temples. “Mikha, I’m tired. Can we just—”
“That’s always your answer.”
And Mikha had turned away, shoulders tensed, and Aiah had just let her go.
They never talked about that fight. Or the one before that. Or the one after.
They just let the hurt settle, let it become part of the furniture of their love.
And the thing about hurt is that if you don’t tend to it, it doesn’t go away. It grows.
Aiah exhales against Mikha’s shoulder, remembering all the times she should have reached for her but didn’t.
The mornings she woke up first and stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling instead of curling into Mikha’s warmth like she used to.
The nights Mikha came home late, expecting a fight, but Aiah didn’t even ask where she’d been.
The slow, creeping realization that they had stopped choosing each other in the small ways that used to matter.
And yet, she still loves her.
That’s the cruelest part.
She still loves Mikha in a way that aches, but it isn’t the same love that built them. It isn’t the same love that promised forever under the rising sun seven years ago.
It’s something else now—something bruised and fragile, something that’s been held too tightly for too long and is finally breaking under the pressure.
And maybe it was always going to end like this.
Maybe the cracks had been too deep for too long, and they were just prolonging the inevitable, hoping that love could be enough to hold the broken pieces together.
But love, Aiah has learned, is not always enough.
So when they finally pull away, when Mikha looks at her with something raw in her eyes, Aiah doesn’t reach for her again.
And this time, Mikha doesn’t either.
Because they both know.
They’ve known for a while.
The road back home feels longer than before.
But this time, it’s because it’s leading them away from each other.