Chapter 8 — The Boy Who Writes in the Dark
Milo had a secret habit.
He didn't write in notebooks. He didn't keep journals that anyone could read. He wrote in the dark. On scraps of paper hidden under his mattress, on the margins of old textbooks, even on the backs of envelopes meant for bills. Words were safer there. No one could take them, no one could judge them.
That night, he sat on his bed with the lights off, only the faint glow of his phone screen illuminating the page. The rain outside tapped gently on the window, a quiet rhythm he had grown to love.
He wrote:
I met someone who listens. Not just listens — hears me. And it scares me because I don't know what to do with someone like that.
He paused and read the words over and over, as if the repetition could make them less fragile, less new.
Mara's last message floated in his mind: "I'm afraid of being known and forgotten at the same time."
He imagined her small apartment, the way the steam from her tea might curl like tiny ghosts. He imagined her folding herself into corners the way he folded his thoughts into scraps of paper. He wanted to reach her, to tell her: "You don't have to hide. I see you."
But he didn't.
He never reached out with more than a message.
And maybe that was the point. Maybe this quiet, careful exchange was safer for both of them.
Yet something was changing. The walls Milo had built around himself — careful, unbroken, invisible — were beginning to tremble.
He thought about the boy he had been. The boy who had been lonely in school, who had spent hours staring at the ceiling, wondering why no one understood the weight of his chest. Milo had learned to survive by pretending, by hiding, by becoming small in spaces too big for him.
Mara didn't ask him to be small.
She didn't ask him to hide.
She just… listened.
He wrote another line:
I want to tell her everything, but I don't know if she wants it.
Outside, the city sighed. A car honked, a dog barked, a child somewhere laughed. And in that quiet, dark room, Milo realized that someone had already entered his world without asking permission.
Her words, her presence through the small screen, had made a crack in the walls he had built around himself.
It was frightening.
And it was beautiful.
He typed a reply to her last message, fingers trembling:
Milo:
I think… I think I might not want to hide from you anymore.
Mara, miles away, read the message and felt her heart twist. She had been careful all her life. She had learned to disappear. She had learned to fold herself into silence so no one could hurt her.
And now, someone was asking her to stay.
She didn't know if she could.
She didn't know if she should.
But something deep in her chest — something that had been quiet for too long — wanted to say yes.
R.:
Then don't.
The words were simple.
They were dangerous.
They were the first thread weaving two fragile hearts together.
And somewhere between the dark, the rain, and the tiny glow of her screen, Milo smiled for the first time in a long while, not because the world was kind, but because someone had chosen to be there.
And for the first time, it felt enough.