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Natalie’s explaining limerence between taking hits from a blunt, high as a kite.
Her voice is loose and warm, curling at the ends like the smoke drifting from her mouth. She lies sprawled on the floor of Lottie’s room, socked feet knocking against the dresser in lazy, arrhythmic kicks. The window is cracked open, letting the cool night in, though it does nothing to erase the heavy, lived-in smell of weed, incense, and something faintly sweet—the lingering trace of Nat's shampoo, maybe.
The word rolls off her tongue like she's tasting it. Limerence. She says it slow, dragging the syllables out, laughing at how fancy it sounds in her mouth, like she’s someone who reads dictionaries for fun. She’s tucked into the corner of Lottie's massive bed, legs tangled in the sheets, one sock half-off, eyeliner smudged beneath her heavy-lidded eyes.
Lottie watches her, perched cross-legged beside her like she’s memorizing something she knows she’s going to lose.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sky is leaking pink across the edges, the way it does at the end of spring, when the days stretch long and lazy and cruel. They should be talking about graduation. About the future. About anything real. But instead, Natalie is high and waxing poetic about the obsessive phase of love—the one where you can’t breathe without someone, where you mistake infatuation for permanence.
“I read about it once,” Natalie says, tipping her head back against the headboard, smiling at nothing, passing the blunt back without looking. “Like... when you can't tell if you love someone or just love the idea of them.”
Lottie hums lowly and takes it, her fingers brushing Natalie’s. It’s a tiny touch, barely anything, but it stings like a paper cut.
She inhales until her lungs ache, lets it out in a slow, deliberate stream. Her head is already buzzing, tilting strangely on her neck, but it’s not enough to drown out the guilt gnawing under her ribs. Lottie lets the blunt burn low between her fingers. She doesn't feel anything anymore, not really. She's been floating for weeks.
She wants to tell Nat that it’s not like that. Not for her. It’s real and it’s sharp and it’s cruel, the way Natalie fills every hollow space inside her.
But she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she shovels popcorn into her mouth, just so she doesn’t say the things that are burning the back of her throat.
Things like:
I lied to you today.
I met someone who's going to Northwestern too.
I pretended they were nobody, because if you knew...
The smoke spins lazily above them, blurring the edges of the room. Lottie watches it unravel, feeling like if she stares long enough, maybe her thoughts will do the same. Maybe they’ll stop knotting themselves tighter and tighter in her chest, stop making it so damn hard to breathe.
Lottie feels the guilt like a pressure against her sternum. Like she’s full of helium and she’s being squeezed from the inside out.
Earlier that afternoon, she’d been sitting on the edge of the soccer field, still half in uniform, when she met the girl—Ellie, or Elle, or something like that. A wide, sunny smile. A Northwestern hoodie. "You're going too, right?" she'd said, bright and hopeful.
And Lottie, heart hammering, had smiled tightly and lied: "Haven’t decided yet.”
When Natalie had shown up a minute later, slinging an arm around her waist, smelling like cigarettes and sunshine, Lottie had pretended she didn't know the girl at all. Pretended it didn't matter.
Pretended she wasn't already standing with one foot out the door.
Now Natalie’s laughing again, deep and sweet, lost somewhere miles away from her.
“You’re so quiet,” she says, nudging Lottie’s knee with her toe. “You good?”
Lottie smiles around the popcorn she isn’t tasting. “I’m good.”
It’s almost funny how easy it is to lie when it’s to save yourself.
It’s not that she doesn’t love Nat. God, she loves her more than anything.
It’s just that love isn’t enough. Not here. Not now.
The thought unfurls in her mind like a poisonous vine. Lottie closes her eyes against it, but it winds itself tighter.
She thinks about the acceptance letter sitting, still unopened, in the top drawer of her desk. Thinks about the “Congratulations!” in bold letters, the promises of a future she never really chose.
Business major, her dad’s choice, because if he was paying for her education, naturally he had the right to pick, and he needed her to take over his business someday. She didn’t look forward to it.
History minor, Lottie’s choice, a compromise.
A life mapped out for her in spreadsheets and empty expectations. Her father's voice echoing in her head— You’ll thank me someday, Charlotte. His hands gripping the steering wheel a little too hard on college tours, his cheques buying her entry into spaces she wasn’t sure she wanted to belong to.
Lottie thinks about all the sacrifices she made just to be the daughter they wanted. AP classes that made her cry in the middle of the night. NHS meetings she sat through, smiling while her stomach twisted into knots. Always pushing, always performing. Always making herself into something presentable, hiding herself, the crooked corners of her mind. Trying to be normal.
And still—none of it mattered, not really.
Not when she met Nat, at the soccer tryouts.
Natalie, who wore her bruises like armor. Who kissed her like she meant it, like she saw straight through all the polish and pretense and loved her anyway.
Natalie, who made Lottie feel real, maybe for the first time in her whole fucking life.
Soccer didn’t feel like a chore, at least. It was her escape, the one thing she allowed herself to be passionate about. Thankfully, Varsity soccer looked good on applications, otherwise her dad wouldn’t sponsor the team, pay for the private plane that took them to their winning matches and brought them to a trophy at Nationals.
Lottie blinks up at the ceiling, watching the way the light from the hallway spills in crookedly through the door. She wonders, distantly, if she could live without this. Without Natalie. Without the weight of her beside her in the dark, the scratch of her voice in the dead of night saying stupid, reckless things like I love you, dumbass with no fear at all.
She’s trying to convince herself she can. That she will.
If she stays busy, maybe she’ll forget. If she throws herself into classes and parties and study groups and internships, maybe the ache will fade. Maybe she’ll go on living the life her parents want, and not feel the hollow space where Natalie used to be.
She can almost see it—her arm around the waist of a friendly acquaintance at some freshman mixer. Her laughter, too loud and too forced. Her heart, a fist clenched tight, pretending not to notice how empty it feels.
She thinks about all the ways it had been leading here.
The first time she’d really noticed Natalie—not just seen her, but noticed her—had been freshman year, when Natalie stormed into a varsity game drunk off her ass and still managed to score two goals. Lottie had sat on the bench, nursing a twisted ankle, watching Natalie burn like a small, furious sun against the green field.
She'd thought: God, she's beautiful.
And also: God, I’m doomed.
She hadn’t been wrong.
The thing was, they weren’t supposed to fall in love. Not really.
They were supposed to be teammates. Maybe friends. Maybe not even that.
But it happened slowly, then all at once—late-night phone calls that turned into confessions, long drives to nowhere, friendly (flirty?) competition, cigarettes shared under bleachers, the tender kind of bruises left by mouths that didn’t know how to say I need you .
Natalie had kissed her one night behind the 7-Eleven, hands shaking so hard it felt like Lottie was the only thing keeping her standing upright.
"I don't want to ruin this," she'd whispered.
"You won't," Lottie had lied.
They had a fight, months ago. The kind that left you hollow, stripped raw. The kind you don’t come back from the same.
It started with Lottie reaching out—desperate, clumsy, aching to build a future that didn’t terrify her. She offered to pay for Nat’s college tuition. Or just to find an apartment together, some one-bedroom walk-up with peeling walls, some life cobbled out of nothing. Somehow, some way.
She thought she was giving Natalie hope. She thought she was offering love. But Nat heard something else.
“I’m not your charity case,” Natalie had snapped, her voice low but vicious, eyes flashing like broken glass. "You don’t get to fix me."
Lottie didn’t recognize herself when she snapped back. Her mouth moved faster than her mind. She said things she didn’t mean. Or maybe things she half -meant, the ugly half she tried so hard to bury. Accusations about pride, about self-sabotage. Words sharpened by months of fear.
Nat slammed the door so hard the hinges rattled, the frame shuddering.The silence that followed wasn’t peace. It was an absence. A hollow ringing that Lottie couldn’t fill, no matter how many times she turned over the fight in her mind, finding new ways she could have said everything differently. She wanted to claw the words back from the air. She wanted to undo it.
But the damage was already done.
They didn’t speak for a week. A full week of passing each in the hallways like ghosts, brittle and aching. Lottie memorized every second of that absence, every empty glance, every slammed drawer, every late night she spent lying awake, rehearsing apologies she never said aloud.
When they finally did speak again, it wasn’t with words.
It was a look—fleeting, bruised, but real. A silent agreement between two exhausted hearts.
Forget it. Move on. Pretend they had forever.
It worked, for a while. Lottie let herself believe the story she was spinning. That they could just keep living inside their fragile little bubble, if they tried hard enough. If they ignored the slow, inevitable pull of time.
But now the ruin is inevitable. Decision Day is two weeks away. Graduation is breathing down their necks, cold and certain.
Lottie can already see it—her future, polished and black-and-white, a hollow, Natalie-less picture in some glossy brochure version of life. She doesn't know how to step into it. She doesn't know if she wants to.
Every day, it gets harder to pretend.
The letter from Northwestern, heavy and official, sits buried in her desk drawer. Her father has already framed the acceptance letter in his mind, already pictured her on Wall Street in a tailored suit, conquering the world one soulless transaction at a time.
He doesn't care what she wants. He doesn't care that she wakes up some mornings and can't breathe under the weight of all the things she's supposed to be.
She loves Natalie. She loves her in the way you love a childhood home—walls full of cracks but still standing, still sheltering.
But she’s leaving.
And she knows, deep in her bones, that Natalie will not follow.
Not because she doesn’t love her back. But because some things are heavier than love. Stubborn pride. Fear. History.
Natalie will stay here—stuck between the shitty trailer park and the endless parties and the endless cycle of trying to forget.
Lottie will leave, just like her parents have always planned.
Their story will end, not with a bang, but a slow, aching fade.
Natalie passes the blunt back, blinking up at her.
“You’re thinking too loud," she says, squinting suspiciously. "What’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?”
Lottie wants to tell her. God, she wants to tell her everything.
That she’s terrified. That she’s trying to memorize every inch of her, because soon, the only place Natalie will exist is in memory. That she lied earlier. That she met someone who represents everything Lottie's about to lose.
That the stillness—the loneliness waiting for her on the other side of this—might eat her alive.
Instead, she says, "Nothing. Just tired."
Natalie yawns theatrically. “Me too.”
And she leans into Lottie’s side, pressing her forehead to her shoulder, humming under her breath.
For a long moment, they just breathe together. Lottie closes her eyes and lets herself pretend.
Pretend that there’s a version of the future where she can stay. Where Natalie wakes up one day and decides she's worthy of something better. Where they get an apartment together, Natalie gets a dog like she’s always wanted, Lottie majors in something stupid like Art History and nobody cares.
Pretend that love is enough.
Pretend that when the breaking comes, it won’t feel like severing an artery.
"I’m thinking about breaking your heart someday soon," Lottie whispers into Natalie's hair, so soft she hopes the words disappear before they reach her.
"And if I do," she breathes, tasting the salt of her own tears, "I'll be breaking mine too."
Natalie shifts slightly, mumbling something half-asleep.
Lottie presses a kiss to the crown of her head.
Outside, the sky is darkening, stars winking into place one by one. Time slipping through their fingers.
But for now—for right now —they have this.
All the time in the world.
And all that Lottie can picture is this: Nat’s socked feet nudging her knee, the smoky laughter filling the air between them, the way the dawn leaks into the room like a secret they’re not ready to tell.
Natalie tugs half-heartedly at the sheet tangled around her, mumbling something incoherent, and Lottie feels it again—the ache. A bright, raw thing, cutting through the haze. She clutches the feeling like it might anchor her, even as everything else spins out of reach.
She forces herself to smile back, even though it feels like lying too.
Because the truth is carved into her ribs now, sharp and bleeding:
She’s already leaving. She’s already gone.
And no amount of pretending will change that.
Outside, the sun finally breaks over the horizon, turning the sky a brutal, indifferent gold. Natalie shields her eyes with one hand and groans, laughing through it, beautiful and messy and so alive it hurts.
Lottie watches her and wonders if maybe limerence isn’t just mistaking obsession for love.
Maybe it’s knowing the difference—and still choosing to drown in it anyway.