I may have been born in a house packed with books, but Finch was always the more dedicated reader out of the two of us.

I had far too much trouble concentrating on things long enough to be able to read a lot, but he always managed to make up for it by reading his favorite parts from books, articles, and blogs out loud to me.

And tucked inside this unfamiliar coffee shop with a misty feeling spreading across my chest and behind my eyes; a faint ringing in my ear and limbs slowly going numb, I vaguely remember him recounting that thing he read about how there's no such thing as stopping once your life starts revolving around someone. "Even when all there's left with you is a semblance of their memory," he had quoted, "The person lingers and tiptoes around the places you visited together. The things you said to each other. The songs you listened to."

My mind grows blurry before my eyes do, and the feeling of his fingers in my hair is so, so fresh in my memories for a fleeting moment that my breath stutters in my chest. "In the end, we realize, over and over, that we've started revolving around them yet again." I had opened my eyes only after I'd heard the sound of him shutting his book, to find him already looking at my face. "And maybe," he had drawled, tips of his fingers dancing across my forehead like leaves in the wind, always a fan of dramatics, "despite what we believe at one point or the other, we never stopped."

"It didn't even occur to me," Meera says quietly, "Even though I've heard so much about you, it feels like I know you like the back of my hand but..." Her voice breaks, and I hear her suck in a sharp breath. "If I hadn't seen that picture of the two of you together in his old room today I—"

And from the sea of He Still Talks About Me, I try to desperately make my way to the shore where my thoughts are graspable instead of just minute fragments of flimsy memories, because alongside the realization, comes the numbing reminder that when the string between us was mercilessly severed, he may have received the same wounds that I did.

The mere thought of him being hurt leaves me trembling in my seat for a split second; like the world is caving in as the sky falls and the ground collapses beneath us, but I straighten my spine and ask through the haze, "How is he?"

And: "Good," she breathes, and the word is a shuddery whisper. "Good," she repeats, stabler this time. "I... we weren't together when he still —" she cuts herself off, and time, like the cruel monster I've always known it as, thickens and slows. "I don't want to be invasive, Sky," she settles with eventually, and I look up at her again for the first time since we left the park bench and dragged ourselves into this quaint little coffee shop that I would be much more appreciative of on a different day.

I shake my head at the words, squeezing my eyes shut when I hear the sound of my memories tossing together yet again — the sound of someone desperately calling my name. The sound of fists banging at my door. The sound of my own gasps and coughs.

"And I don't want you to feel like you have to tell me anything," she adds, while I struggle to leave the room back in my parents' house that was never mine, with my head leaning back against the wall and jaw clenched shut with all the force I could muster so I wouldn't respond to the voice outside my window.

My fingers instinctively reach for the spot around my wrist where my father tugged the hardest.

I am looking up at Meera but I can't see her still, because my eyes sting with the memory, and the sharp ringing in my ears is all I can hear.

The past presses into my bruises until they turn red and blue and purple all over again.

"I hated being addressed as a boy," I mutter, voice coming out scratchy and foreign to my own ears and chest feeling like it's going concave from losing the weight of the words I've carried inside it for years. "Made me miserable as hell."

That seems to make her choke up all over again but she lowers her head, and takes a deep breath. "Is that why you..."

Her words trail off, but my memories do the opposite and fall into place beside my conscious thoughts. My hands tremble; bones creaking under the weight of the past even a decade later, and the voice is back in my ear like it never left.

"Boys don't kiss boys," it jeers for what seems like the millionth time, and the twinge in my chest turns into thunder. "I've done my best to raise you," it hisses, and I dig my nails into my palms. "Me and your mother have done our best to raise you."

"Sky."

"Where did we go wrong?"

"Skylar!" A loud thud startles me out of the thoughts, and I'm not sure how many times I blink to get rid of the haze, but I realize the sound was Meera's rapping her knuckles against the table. "You weren't breathing right," she tells me, and my eyes are finally clear enough to take note of the distressed 'v' between her eyebrows where they're drawn together. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." She gently pushes the glass of water closer to me. "That's not why I asked to see you."

With the taste of the soap that my father washed my mouth with when he saw me and Finch kiss in his car still alive in my mouth, I ask, "It's... not?"

Her eyes grow a little bigger, a little more sorrowful. Like it hurts her that I would even consider that to be the reason behind why she wanted to meet today. "No. Not at all."

"Oh."

She searches my eyes for something, and I don't know what she sees there, but she gives me a little smile; a little hesitant, a little tender. "Can I sit there?" She asks after a moment, pointing at the empty space beside me on the couch.

I avert my eyes, but nod nonetheless.

Usually, the mere idea of having anyone except River in close proximity when the panic in my chest is waiting like a volcano about to erupt would leave me feeling like someone's poking needles into my skin.

But Meera's presence... grounds me somehow. It feels a little soothing, almost. Even when she slowly shifts closer and reaches out to ease my fingers from the fist they're set in. My palm stings from where the nails dug the hardest, but then she puts her head on my shoulder and the blow-up never comes.

"I'm not here to dig into your past, Sky," she says, smoothing over the throbbing patch of skin with her thumb. "I didn't know what else to do." Her voice lowers into a murmur, and the little springs of hair from her bun tickle my neck when she shakes her head. "But I couldn't just... not tell you."

The images inside my head... they play out like a movie sometimes. It's been a while since I started feeling this way, like when I recount some of the moments all these years later, I find pieces missing. Like it wasn't really me that lived through it. Like someone chopped out the bad parts, tried to hide them away, and failed.

When the memory of my father lashing out for the first time plays inside my head next, I'm not the one whose back crashes against the wall. When the first blow comes, it's not my cheek that the backhand lands against. In the dark, I'm not the one sprawled on the kitchen floor, dizzy with pain.

"I didn't leave." The words are barely audible, my eyes staring blankly at the chair Meera was sitting in only moments ago. "Not — not by choice, anyway."

Meera doesn't say anything. She just tightens her hold and brings both of our hands to tuck them under her chin.

The tears return with the words, "I heard him yelling my name," and I shake my head because I can feel myself crumbling again. "They wouldn't let me see him, Meera." The sound of my laptop and my phone being smashed against the wall echoes inside my head and reverberates in my chest. "My f-father, he... sent me away. To his sister. And I had to start school there so she could... keep an eye on me."

Meera sucks in a sharp breath.

I leave out the gory details because the thought of saying them out loud makes my insides feel like they're crawling with maggots.

Being locked inside that closet as my mother made call after call right outside it feels like the biggest joke the universe had played on me. And when the door was thrown open so suddenly that I fell out, shaking, crying, and struggling to breathe, there was already an oppressive force so heavy weighing down on me that I could taste blood like acid in my mouth.

"Did you tell him?" I ask weakly, because I don't know what I want her answer to be. But when she shakes her head again, my chest fills with unexpected relief.

"Couldn't jeopardize your safety like that," she replies shakily. "I know you don't have to be scared of him, but it didn't..." she trails off, squeezing my fingers again like she's trying to draw strength from the gesture as much as she's trying to give it. "Didn't feel like my place. Especially when I know you don't... identify that way anymore."

When my eyes water this time, it's because of the gratefulness that slams into me with full force.

"How did you —"

"Know it was you?" she graciously finishes for me when I choke up again, her voice kind as ever.

"Yeah." I watch her bring both of our hands down to rest in her lap. She doesn't let go. "I know I can't... still look the same as I did ten years ago."

She exhales through her nose — an almost-laugh. "You don't," she assures me. "Well, not exactly."

"God, that doesn't help at all," I choke out, and the sound that leaves her is definitely a laugh this time. A small one, but a laugh nonetheless.

"You're like, fourteen. In that picture." Her voice grows softer when she adds, "I asked."

The 'Does he not hate me?' seizes in my throat alongside my breath, and my heart clenches inside my chest.

"But I didn't know it was you until I noticed that you were wearing this." She traces the bird charm hanging from the thin, dainty chain around my wrist, and the sting behind my nose shoots all the way up until the tears in my eyes spill over. "So I asked him the last name of his Skylar."

I lower my face into my hand and shake my head like that would stop the tears. When the first sob rips out of my chest, Meera laces our fingers together, her voice watery when she tells me:

"Some days, you're all he talks about."

a/n

hello, my little suns <3

i've been terribly exhausted because physical therapy has been kicking my ass, but i also wake up at like, 5 every morning so i'm hoping i start feeling like i have my shit together soon. a little, at least.

i also got some really lovely messages from you guys after the last update (and i teared up at every single one of them, obviously) so thank you so, so much for always being so patient and supportive. i honestly could never say it enough. you're all wonderful people with big, understanding hearts and i appreciate that more than i could ever put into words

i hope you have all been well and healthy! come talk to me if you want - here or dms. whatever works, really. about anything at all.

thank you so much for reading. i love all of you with my entire heart and i will see you again soon x