relationships
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The fan whirred over me. I think it had made at least 600 laps by now. The blades wobbled slightly, and the base shifted more than it should have. I should run it on low—the landlord said as much when he showed me the house, but there was something satisfying about the noise and
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Kyle. Kyle was here. Standing in front of me. Staring down at me like he hadn’t been missing for months. I knew it was me that I was seeing reflected back in his eyes, but the shape didn’t feel like me. The me staring back was who I had always been. Kyle’s. “Hello?”
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I was sitting in the parking lot of The Watershed, the blood from my knuckles draining down the fingers still curled around the leather of the steering wheel. You can do this. My brain had been whispering those four words for the better part of five minutes, but somehow, they weren’t enough to allow
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Typing out a message to my mom proved far more difficult than I thought it would be. I was on my tenth draft of essentially a long-winded “Hello. How have you been,” when there was a knock at the door. I clicked the lock button and watched the phone screen shift to black, sucking
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Ava left the room still talking about her final three college choices. After the door shut, I sat there for another moment, staring at the clock, trying to shake the ghost of a boy who wasn’t a boy anymore. It was honestly embarrassing the hold Henry still had on me. I was a grown
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The door of the shop swung open, causing a high-pitched bell to ring out into a room filled with the deep, robust smell of coffee and sweet fragrances coming from the row of pastries lining the counter. Several heads popped up from their conversations, computers, and phones, assessing the new arrival. The woman approached
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Where was he, I thought as I skimmed the shelves of our town’s local bookstore. My eyes scanned over the titles as I ran my fingers across the top of their bindings: The Round House, Macbeth, Where the Crawdads Sing, Everything that Rises Must Converge. I tried to follow the mental gymnastics used to place
Ink & Interruptions 