Eliot thought endings were supposed to feel satisfying.
Happy. Clean. Like credits rolling on a movie where the couple walks off into a sunset and everyone pretends the rent's paid and the emotional trauma's resolved in ninety minutes.
Yeah. No.
It was weird, this version of happily ever after.
He and Zoe were good. Good enough that it scared him sometimes. Not perfect — but there was laughter now, and awkward late-night voice messages, and the kind of soft honesty that didn't need filters.
But sometimes — usually when he was walking home alone, or scrolling through old messages he didn't have the heart to delete — he felt it:
That hum of unfinished business.Loose threads.Things left unsaid.
It didn't help when his phone buzzed with a notification one night:
New chapter from @inkandashes: "The Boy Who Didn't Know He Was the Villain" is now live.
The comments were blowing up.Quotes highlighted. Lines reposted out of context.A meme of his actual confused expression from that coffee shop with the caption:
"Main Character Energy: You Either Die the Protagonist or Live Long Enough to Become the Plot Twist."
Eliot stared at the screen for a long time before he finally did something dangerous:
He clicked the link.
First sentence:
"He thought he was the center of everyone's story. The truth was, he'd been a background character in their lives the whole time, just passing through on his way to someone else's scene."
Dahlia's words. Sharp. Unmistakable.
He didn't get angry.
He smiled.Of course. Of course she'd write her own ending.
And maybe — just maybe — this wasn't the end of his story after all.
Maybe it was just the end of chapter one.