Max hadn’t slept properly in two days.

  Not insomnia, exactly. Just… avoidance. Sleep had become a minefield. Nothing but dreams they didn’t trust and that familiar, slow-boil ache behind their sternum. Their voice was louder at night. Sophie’s silence felt heavier.

  So instead, they edited.

  The footage wasn’t new. A burial site in Gotnd, the third angle pass. The kind of thing that usually made them lose hours, adjusting audio bance and text overys until it felt like the truth. Tonight, it just looked like noise.

  They rewound the same three seconds of B-roll, then deleted it, put it back, and changed the font.

  Again.

  Off, somehow.

  Their phone y screen-up beside the keyboard. No notifications. No buzz.

  Not that they were waiting.

  There was nothing to wait for.

  They hadn’t sent anything.

  Not after the kiss. Not after running. Not after the river, or the rain, or the voice in their head that had whispered every reason Sophie would be better off with someone less… haunted.

  They had written something.

  Typed it out.Read it.Felt it sting.

  They’d deleted it.

  Because maybe no answer was better than the wrong one. Maybe Sophie deserved crity, not some fragile confession wrapped in doubt and panic.

  So the message never went out.

  The screen stayed bnk.

  And Max stayed frozen.

  Max’s hand instinctively reached for the mouse and halted, then drifted to the phone again, just for a second.

  Nothing yet.

  Sophie’s name was pinned to the top of their chat like a promise they didn’t know how to keep.

  They leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling, arms folded tightly across their chest. The room felt both too big and too small at the same time. Every sound, creaking pipes, tapping rain, and the buzz of the desk mp felt like it echoed inside them.

  Then came the knock.

  Two soft taps on the open doorframe.

  Leif.

  Max didn’t look. “Don’t start.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  He stepped inside anyway. His presence always carried gravity, like he bent the air slightly when he entered a room.

  Leif moved to the window, hands behind his back, looking out at the rain like it was an omen only he could read.

  “You’ve been pacing the story wrong,” he said finally.

  Max exhaled through their nose. “You’re going to mythologize this, aren’t you?”

  Leif turned, head tilted. “Everything becomes myth. Even silence. Especially silence.”

  Max muttered, “Tell that to my empty inbox.”

  Leif’s eyes softened.

  “When mortals flee the moments that matter...” A pause. “…the ones who don’t care don’t run. They drift.”

  Leif crossed the room and, without asking, poured them both tea from the untouched pot on the side table. Max watched his movements, slow and precise, like the tea ritual mattered more than the conversation itself.

  He handed Max a mug, then took one for himself. He always did.

  Max had never seen him drink it.

  But he always held it, cupped between his long fingers, like it grounded him, like the warmth gave him something to anchor to. It was an old trick, Max had realized. Vampires didn’t have circution. Leif’s hands ran colder than his words on a stormy night.

  But with tea in his grasp, he could pass for something close to human.

  Sophie was definitely not waiting for a message.

  She just happened to be lying on her bed in her softest leggings and a hoodie that had never technically belonged to her, phone face-up beside her like a sleeping pet. The ringer was on, the brightness turned up, and she’d absolutely not moved it three times to make sure it was in her line of sight from every possible angle.

  Coincidence.

  Totally normal.

  Across the room, Froggle the giant plush frog stared at her with the quiet judgment of a creature who knew too much. His beady eyes said, Girl. Come on.

  “I am calm,” Sophie told him. “I am a graceful beam of moonlight. I am not checking again.”

  She checked again.

  No message.

  Her room was chaos masquerading as personality. The floor held an explosion of hoodie detritus, sticker sheets, teacups, and one open bag of sugar-coated almonds she’d promised herself, she wasn’t stress-eating. Her desk mp had a feather boa around the base. Her closet door was covered in postcards, affirmations, and a drawing of Sailor Uranus kissing Sailor Neptune under falling sakura blossoms.

  Taped to the mirror: the sketch.

  Max, in three strokes of clean line art. Eyes not quite focused. One earring catching the light in graphite glint. She’d drawn it the night after the bookstore, feverishly, as if she didn’t get it on paper, she’d forget the exact angle of their mouth before they kissed her.

  She hadn’t even meant to add the hearts around it. They’d just… happened.

  Now she couldn’t bring herself to take them off.

  It had been three days.

  Three days since the kiss, if it could be called a kiss, because it had felt like a detonation. Before Max had run, and now there was… nothing.

  No message. No “hey, sorry I melted into goo and ran like a haunted Victorian bride.” No emoji. No muffin update.

  Just silence. Sharp-edged. Careful. Scared.

  Sophie curled tighter around Froggle.

  Juno had already offered to “accidentally” text Max with the phrase ‘your frog princess misses you’, followed by seven knives and a catgirl emoji. Neen had offered to break into Max’s Google Drive and rename their project folders something emotionally devastating.

  Sophie had declined. Barely.

  Because the truth was, she wasn’t angry.

  She was just… scared. Of being too much. Of wanting too fast. Of being soft in a way that made other people flinch.

  But she wasn’t going to stop being soft.

  She’d made herself a promise after the st crash-and-burn: You can be fragile, but never invisible.

  And maybe Max wasn’t ready. Perhaps they’d never be prepared.

  But Sophie was still here.

  Still Sophie.

  Still, the girl who named her candles and wore glitter eyeliner to therapy.

  Still, the one who would choose love, even if it meant sitting in silence for a little while.

  She rolled onto her stomach, reached for her sketchbook, and flipped past several frog stickers-in-progress to a new page.

  At the top, she wrote: Operation: Maybe It Wasn’t Just a Muffin.

  Then drew a frog with a tiny crown and a banner that read Wounded But Willing To Recommit To Joy.

  She let herself smile.

  Not big.But real.

  Her phone buzzed, just the sound of an email promotion from her favorite enamel pin store. Still, her pulse jumped like it had been trained to expect them.

  Sophie took a breath.

  She wasn’t going to chase.

  But she could reach.

  She opened Max’s message thread. There were no new texts or read receipts—just the name pinned at the top of her list.

  She hesitated.

  Then typed:

  Hey. Would you still split a muffin with me sometime?

  She stared at it.

  Deleted the second sentence. Rewrote it with a comma instead of a period. Changed it back.

  Then, before she could doubt it into oblivion, she hit send.

  The message hung there. Tiny. Vulnerable. Uncertain.

  But hers.

  Sophie exhaled slowly and set the phone down, flipping it screen-down so she wouldn’t watch it like a bomb.

  She turned on her pylist, light pop, way too much Taylor Swift, soft synth, the kind of music you danced to while cleaning your apartment in fuzzy socks, and went back to sketching. This time: a frog in a tiny suit of armor, holding a sign that said Emotional Resilience Club.

  Because waiting didn’t mean weakness.

  And soft wasn’t the opposite of strong.

  And Sophie?

  Sophie was still showing up.

  It was te.

  Not te in a dramatic, cinematic way. Just the kind of hour where every sound felt louder, and every thought a little too sharp.

  Max sat on the wooden attic floor next to the door to their room, back against the wall, legs stretched across the creaky pnks. The overhead light buzzed faintly above, flickering every few minutes as if unsure whether it wanted to continue existing.

  They weren’t editing anymore, not working, not thinking clearly. Just… drifting.

  A half-drunk gss of water and a hoodie they didn’t remember putting on were beside them. Their phone y on their thigh like a weight they were trying to ignore. Every few minutes, they picked it up.

  Not to check messages.Just to hold it.Just in case.

  The screen remained bnk.

  But, here she was, lying upside-down on her bed....

  The st message on screen was from Leif, sent that morning:

  I’ve scheduled your interview for the Vanir piece. Thursday. Don’t be te. They’re from Oslo and punctual as crows.

  Max had replied with a thumbs-up emoji and nothing else. Leif hadn’t pushed.

  He’d just raised an eyebrow in passing, like he knew. As if he were watching this unfold on a higher level of narrative. Like gods always did.

  Max closed their eyes and leaned their head back against the wall. They imagined Sophie’s voice for a moment, not saying anything in particur. Just ughing. The sound of it. The texture. Bright and a little chaotic, like a soda you weren’t ready for.

  They missed her.

  It was foolish to admit to yourself after just one kiss without a follow-up, but it was true.

  They missed her.

  The phone buzzed.

  Just once. A single vibration.

  Max didn’t move at first. Thought they imagined it. A phantom buzz. The kind they would get sometimes after too much coffee and not enough sleep.

  Then it buzzed again. Just once more.

  They picked it up.

  Screen on.

  One message.From Sophie.

  Sophie:

  Hey. Would you still split a muffin with me sometime?

  Max just… stared at it.

  Not blinking. Not breathing.

  They read it once. Then again. Then once more, slower.

  Their whole body didn’t react right away. It wasn’t joy, not precisely. Not relief, either. More like a shift. Like they’d been holding a weight they didn’t realize, and now something had moved beneath it.

  They opened the keyboard.Typed:

  Only if I get first bite this time

  Paused.Changed the lowercase i to a capital.Then deleted the whole thing.

  They tried again:

  I haven’t licked it yet

  That earned a soft huff of air, half a ugh, half a sigh, but they deleted that one too. Too flirty. Too bold for right now.

  Another try:

  I’m gd you asked

  Sincere. Simple. But somehow it felt too close to a thank-you note for a party that ended in emotional combustion.

  Backspace.

  The blinking cursor stared at them. Waiting.

  Then, like a tide finally deciding which way to pull, the words came. Not clever. Not guarded. Not trying to be something other than honest.

  Max:

  Yeah. I’d like that.

  They tapped send before they could overthink it again. This time, they let it go.

  The message floated away like a paper boat across a too-still ke, light, imperfect, but real. They didn’t check if she was typing back. Didn’t refresh the screen. Just let the phone rest in their hand like it belonged there again.

  Something inside Max finally let go. Not fully. Not forever. But enough.

  Enough to make the hallway feel less like purgatory.

  Enough to let them believe that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the part where the story ended.

  Just… turned a page.

  The message lit up her phone at 11:42 PM.

  Sophie wasn’t expecting it. Not really. She’d said she was done checking. She even told Froggle she was reciming her dignity. And yet, here she was, lying upside-down on her bed, legs propped against the headboard, eyes half-watching a YouTube video about moss terrariums and half-scanning her phone every 30 seconds.

  So when it buzzed, sharp and singur, her brain short-circuited for a full three seconds.

  Then she rolled upright, as if someone had hit a panic button.

  The screen’s glow felt too bright in the dark, and her thumb fumbled the lock pattern twice before finally nding on the message thread.

  Max:

  Yeah. I’d like that.

  Three short words.

  Not capitalized. Not overthought. Not filled with metaphors or muffins or Max’s usual ironic shields.

  Just there.

  Simple.

  True.

  Sophie stared and grinned.

  A slow, startled grin that bloomed like a blush from the inside out. She clutched her phone to her chest, as if it were something fragile or holy, and squealed, quietly, but with full-body conviction, into the sleeve of her hoodie.

  Then she flopped backwards onto the mattress with both arms thrown wide and legs kicking the air like she’d just nailed a gymnastics routine that ended in feelings.

  Her bnket twisted around her knees. Froggle fell off the pillow and nded on her chest like a beanbag of judgment.

  “You were right,” she whispered. “Not ghosting, just...bad at texting.”

  Froggle, who had been promoted to emotional support amphibian several weeks ago, did not reply, but she knew he approved.

  Sophie turned the phone over again. Read the message one more time.

  It still said yes.

  Not a metaphorical yes. Not a maybe. Not a ‘ghost me ter’, yes.

  A real one.

  She bit her lip, thumb already flying across the screen. Her first impulse was to go full sparkle-bst: glitter emojis, six excmation points, and a quote from The Princess Bride. But something made her pause.

  She wanted to be... real.

  Be herself, yes. But this version of herself. The one with messy feelings and courage, she was only just learning how to name them.

  She typed:

  Good. Cause i already bought two. And one of them might be cinnamon revenge.

  Paused.

  Then added:

  I’m not above muffin-themed intimidation.

  She hovered for half a second. Then she tapped ‘send’ before her brain could start listing all the reasons she shouldn’t.

  The moment stretched out around her. Long and soft and weirdly electric.

  Her feet were tangled in her bnket. One of her earbuds had fallen out. The moss terrarium video had long since autopyed into a slow jazz compition. But none of it mattered.

  She flipped open her sketchbook, flipped past the doodle of “Frog Holding Emotional Baggage” and “The Candle That Smells Like Unresolved Feelings,” and found a bnk page.

  At the top, she scrawled in loopy purple marker:

  Maybe they’ll Show Up This Time

  Underneath that, she drew a muffin with a tiny angry face and a speech bubble that read “Cinnamon is not to be trifled with.”

  The space after the kiss felt less like an ending and more like the start of a chapter she actually wanted to read.

  Max had moved from the hallway to Leif’s desk, mainly because the tile floor had started to feel like purgatory and their back hated them.

  Now they slouched in the oversized leather chair, their hoodie pulled halfway up over their knuckles, a half-drunk gss of water going stale beside a stack of notes on burial rituals and Iron Age memory practices. The text was underlined and highlighted in several colors that no longer made any sense.

  The mp on the desk gave off a warm, amber light. Dust floated zily in the air, catching the glow like confetti that had forgotten the party had ended. It was quiet—too quiet.

  Outside, the city murmured in low tones, wind, stone, and something distant. Inside, Max sat still and tried not to recheck their phone.

  They’d already done it four times in the st hour.No notifications.No replies.No excuse to hope.

  Leif had passed by earlier but hadn’t said much. Just a soft gnce, a teacup set in front of them, and a muttered, ”Try to be a little kind to yourself today.”

  Max had grunted in response.

  Kindness felt... theoretical at the moment.

  They picked up the phone again, just to fidget with it. Just to have something to do with their hands.

  As if on cue, it buzzed.

  Max froze.

  Their heart did a weird hiccup, like it had gotten caught between two beats and had to catch up all at once.

  They flipped the phone over.

  A message.

  From Sophie.

  Sophie:

  Good. Cause I already bought two. And one of them might be cinnamon revenge. I’m not above muffin-themed intimidation.

  Max stared at it for a full ten seconds.

  Then, unexpectedly, unfiltered, completely real, they ughed.

  Not a snort. Not a smirk. A genuine ugh, small and stunned and warm in their chest like something fragile flickering to life again.

  They hadn’t realized how tense they were until it broke.

  It wasn’t just the message. It was her. Her being her. Sophie didn’t hedge. She didn’t withdraw. She came into the world full sparkle, tiny fists raised, daring it to make her small.

  Max hadn’t broken that, and that meant something.

  Their thumbs hovered above the keyboard. Typed:

  Max:

  Cinnamon Revenge sounds like a metal bandWhen?

  Immediately, the reply:

  Sophie:

  Tomorrow. If you’re free. If not, I’ll eat both muffins and write poetry about the one that disappeared.

  Max chuckled again. This time quieter, but no less genuine.

  They could picture her writing it, legs crossed, one sock off, sketchbook open, Froggle watching her from a mountain of pillows. They could see the exact angle of her smile.

  They typed:

  Max:

  Please spare me the sonnet. I’m free.

  This time, they didn’t delete it.

  Didn’t hover.

  Just sent.

  The message zipped off into the ether, soft and unspectacur.

  But when it was gone, Max felt… lighter.

  Like maybe tomorrow didn’t have to be a battleground.

  Perhaps showing up again, awkward and unsure, and still a little haunted, wasn’t out of reach after all.

  They leaned back in their chair, letting the mplight warm their face. The desk still smelled faintly of Leif’s ink and dried vender.

  Speak of the devil.

  Leif padded silently into the room, barefoot and timeless as ever, one eyebrow raised as he passed behind them. He didn’t say anything at first. Just looked down at the message on the phone and gave a faint, knowing smile.

  Then, without turning:

  “Told you. The story wasn’t over.”

  Max didn’t even roll their eyes this time.

  They just nodded.

  And watched the cursor blink back at them like a heartbeat.