❝everything is grey.
his hair, his smoke, his dreams.
and now he's so devoid of color
he don't know what it means.❞

❘❘

CREO QUE ES DICIEMBRE, y creo que estoy solita.

I don't know how long I cried, and I don't know why I cried. I just... did. Maybe it was guilt, or disgust, or loneliness.

Because without Julian, I didn't know what to do.

When the sirens bled into the night, lo dejé. When a haze of red and blue fluttered across the sidewalk in a watery glaze, painting him into a still silence, lo dejé. When the icy reality of stolen snow caught up to us, lo dejé.

Fuck ride or die. Survival is single-minded. It's every woman for herself in this world.

"It's a harsh world out here, Neva. If you wanna be on top, you've got to be fucking cold."

I never wanted to be on top; I just wanted to stop feeling, stop breathing, stop existing.

So why was it him and not me?

"Please, please, please," I sob, my nails digging under the sheet of metal desperately. With another shaky cry, I fall back, numb fingertips prying at the license plate. I just need to get it off.

Hace demasiado frío, y estoy sola.

When I scramble onto my knees on the concrete, it isn't a violent memory; it's distant, dizzy, fluttering faintly beneath a sheet of thick ice. There's nothing hot in the motion anymore, no trace of midnight gravel on my tongue, no raw knees, no stinging eyes, no burning palms. All I can taste is smoke, soft and sensual, the ghost of a breathless, bloody kiss—cold lips, cold skin, cold hearts.

I can taste him, but I can't feel him. I can't really feel anything.

My fingers are numb, my cheeks are numb, my body is fucking numb. I always wanted to feel nothing, even for a few moments, but as wisps of winter air caress my cheeks and trace my veins into ice, it feels like cold chaos.

Loneliness.

The sheet of metal bends.

"Florida plates, baby. Knew we'd find you."

Grinding my teeth together, I lean closer to fiddle with the screws, to do anything about the Florida plates that will get me killed.

Nothing stops.

It took seconds, minutes, hours, days, for that truth to finally sink in. Each night surrendered to a soft sunrise; each morning sky felt sluggish, but inevitable. Like a heartless, hopeless reminder that this city keeps beating and breaking, living and breathing, even when I don't want to. As I took in the sunset behind the Brooklyn Bridge from the foggy back window of my car each day, tucked into blankets, inhaling nothing but him, I waited for it to end.

No puedo quedarme aquí. I can't stay here, sleeping in the back seat of my car, parked on Adams Street, just living off of the cocaine Julian Rivera left behind.

Pero no sé a dónde ir. I didn't know where, or what, home was.

A billowing gust of air lashes at my cheeks, freezing tears and fracturing the memories of some existential fucking crisis. Collapsing to the ground in defeat, I close my eyes and cry.

I still don't know why I'm crying. I still don't know why everything hurts. I still don't know why I can't stop.

It's a destructive pattern, but there's nothing stopping me. Loneliness is a fragile concept, something that I can twist into a tender confession that I've always known: I'm not alone. Nunca estoy sola.

Because it's not just me; it's the cunning company of uncut cocaine in an abandoned duffel bag from the trunk of my car.

It was never Julian.

"You love what Jules gives you."

I'm not a casualty of a cold war; I'm a fucking survivor.

And even if I'm chasing cocaine through chilly nights, sniffing, snorting, stripping away the sensations of sorrow, I'm alive.

Julian Rivera isn't.

An icy edge slices through my thumb. I pull back, wincing as the cold nips at the stinging stroke. Blood trickles down dry skin; it glistens like deadly diamonds, cut with shards of dim moonlight.

Maybe it's dull, but it's something. I can feel it.

A car rushes past me, shadows dance over my trembling hand, and the plate in front of me starts to... blur... or... dim. I lick my dry lips, squinting to focus on the numbers, on the little taunting message below the numbers that reads SUNSHINE STATE. It reminds me of Enzo, of mamá, of the moments of our life before everything fell apart. Me recuerda a papá.

Something dangerously close to sadness drifts through my chest. And it burns, but it isn't fierce; it's withering embers, a glow fading into a dying fire. There's nothing left of me to give to them—mi familia.

I feel lost.

Like I'm chipping away at the only things that made me... me, and eventually, paper skin will tear, and frozen veins will break, and I'll be nothing but the remnants of a harsh winter in the history of a cold, unforgiving city.

My gaze falls, finds fiddling fingers, focuses on the way they try to make sense of numbness when that's all that exists. Will I die like this? Or will I live forever alone, always reaching, reaching, reaching, just barely grasping the feelings of these wasted months?

No, no, no.

Me duele.

Standing on weak knees, I sniff, sway, sink into the side of the car. As I inch to the back door, clinging to the baggy fabric that still smells like smoke, like Julian, like... everything that's gone, lost, dead, my head spins.

"El verano ya casi termina, Julian."

"It can't last forever."

"No?"

"Nada es para siempre, Neva."

A sob melts into the night, soft and shaky, and I tear my hands through my hair, frustrated that I'm still fucking crying. Why? Why am I crying? Why won't it fucking stop?

Desperation claws beneath my skin, locks my jaw, clenches my teeth together. Dizzily, I swivel to wrench the door open and as I drop, descending into the darkness of my back seat, my breath hitches. The door swings shut, and the sound echoes between my ears, but I can't listen, I can't feel; I can only reach for the duffel bag on the floor, for my key, for a tiny plastic bag of powder that makes things... real.

This is the only thing that's real.

When I sniff, a flurry of snowflakes flutter beneath my eyelids, and I shake my head frantically, the rush attacking in breathless gasps and breathless... breathless... breathless... breath... less...

I can't breathe.

A million shadows blur, dimming, darkening, flooding the hollow space in the car, but I bleed out into the back seat, bleed out, bleed out, bleed out, let everything spill from my lips in a wasted sigh, delicately tangled into the wisps of my own breath.

I am breathing. I am.

I'm always breathing, pero a veces, it doesn't feel like it. It feels like an empty motion, a bare brush with life, a... a dead end.

Relief closes in on me as I curl into the blankets, closing my eyes slowly. It's a seductive type of solace, a trace of caustic carelessness. I don't care about anything or anyone. Everything is always free falling, but in those moments, suspended in a soft reel of sensation after sensation... after sensation... I'm not cold or hot, heartbroken, crying, lost or numb.

It's not about clawing my way back to euphoria, to the skyline of a sleepless city, to people left behind, to the fucking sunshine state. It's about just being.

Only being.

Hollow, but so fucking full.

Alone, but fucking together.

The world around us stills, stuck in a freeze frame of fleeting fucking faultlessness. Fulfillment.

We're too cold in here. We're too fucking cold.

❘❘

**Expect really quick updates for the next few days. I'm pushing out the rest of Snow so soon! ❄️