Chapter Text
Alyanna
They say the most painful thing about love is losing the person you love.
But no one warns you about loving your best friend — someone who wouldn’t even let you.
We had grown up side by side, Maximo. She had been the one who always offered to carry my things when I was tired, the one who had known every single one of my fears and every silly dream I had dared to say out loud.
We built a thousand memories between scraped knees and late-night talks, and somewhere along the way, I had built a home in her.
But she… she built walls.
Walls so high around her heart that no matter how much I had tried to climb them, I could never reach her.
She kept me close enough to see the real her in fleeting moments, but far enough so I could never truly stay. And yet, I knew she had felt something too. I heard it in her voice when she said my name like it mattered. I felt it in the way her hand lingered on mine before she pulled away.
But she had chosen to walk away.
She told me it was to protect me from the storm she carried inside — a storm I had never been afraid of. I would have stood there, unshaken, through every flash of lightning and roll of thunder, if it meant staying by her side.
But she pulled back, thinking she was shielding me from rain I had been more than willing to stand in.
Do you know what it was like to love someone who loved you back but refused to let you love them?
It was like holding onto sand — the harder you tried to keep it, the faster it slipped away.
My love hadn’t been the problem. My love had been steady, unshaken, hers entirely. But her wounds had been too deep, her past too heavy, her scars too fresh.
She thought she was sparing me, Maximo, but all she did was leave me with a pain I couldn’t put down.
God, I had wanted to love her.
I wanted to be the place she could fall apart in. I wanted to hold her hand through the battles she fought — not as the girl next door who had grown up with her, but as the woman who chose to stay, no matter how messy it got.
But she wouldn’t let me.
She said it was better this way, that I deserved something lighter, something safer.
But tell me — how had this been good?
How had it been better to stand there with an ache in my chest for something that had never even had a chance?
She hadn’t just left me. She had left the version of us that could’ve been — the laughter and quiet mornings, the love we could’ve grown into.
She thought she was being kind, but the truth was, the worst pain hadn’t been losing her — it had been knowing she was still here, still mine in some unspoken way, just not in the way I wanted to.
I would’ve loved her. Every stubborn, broken, imperfect part of her.
But she hadn’t let me.
And that would always be the ache I carry.
Maximo
They said if you love someone, you should hold on to it, to them.
But what they don’t tell you is that sometimes you have to let it go — not because you want to, but because you are terrified you’d ruin it.
Alyanna… she had been in my life for as long as I could remember.
She had been the little girl who raced me barefoot across the street just to see who was faster. The one who had sat with me on the curb at sunset, sharing snacks we had bought with coins we found between couch cushions.
She had known me before I had even known myself — every good part, every ugly part.
And she stayed.
She always stayed.
But… that was why I had been scared.
She thought I built those walls to keep her out, but the truth was, I built them to keep her safe from me.
My storms hadn’t been small. They didn’t just soak you for a moment and pass. They uprooted. They destroyed.
I watched myself push people away, watched them walk away in pieces because they couldn’t handle the weight I carried.
And the thought of her becoming one of them? I couldn’t — God, I couldn’t watch that happen to her.
I had felt it too. The pull.
The quiet moments where everything in me wanted to stay right there with her and never move.
The nights we laid on grass, looking at the stars, and hearing her laugh — God, do you know what that did to me? Do you know how badly I had wanted to make that laugh mine for the rest of my life?
But every time those thoughts crossed my mind, it came with more:
“What if I hurt her? What if she ends up regretting me?”
She thought I was sparing her from the rain she was willing to stand in, but I wasn’t just rain.
I was the kind of storm that took down power lines and left whole towns in the dark.
I did not want her to be collateral damage.
So I told myself this was better.
That she deserved someone lighter. Someone whose hands didn’t shake from holding too much. Someone who could give her every part of themselves without making her clean up the pieces when they broke.
But here’s what I would never say out loud:
It was killing me.
It was killing me to act like I was okay being just her best friend.
To watch her fall asleep in the passenger seat when I drove her home, knowing I could’ve been the one to keep her safe for the rest of her life — and choosing not to.
To watch her walk away from me after every goodbye, wondering if she had any idea how much I had wanted to call her back.
She thought she was the only one left with the ache, Alyanna, but I carried it too.
I walked away from her every day, but my heart never did, it always stayed.
It lingered, like a shadow, hoping she’d turn around and see me still standing there.
I had loved her quietly, selfishly, from the corner of my own fear.
And maybe one day, I would be brave enough to tear those walls down.
Maybe one day, I would choose to let her in instead of pushing her away.
But until then, all I could do is watch her from here —
and hope, in some small way, that she’d always know.