After The Fall

(Brinleigh)

The worst part wasn’t catching Noah with another girl, It was the way they laughed about it afterward. Brinleigh hadn’t meant to hear any of it. She had only gone back for her sketchbook–the one she accidentally left in his car the night before. The parking lot was half full, the sky still gray and heavy, and students drifted toward the building in sleepy clumps. She knew her boyfriend’s routine by now. Noah always parked in the same space near the gym doors, windows cracked, music turned up too loud as he pretended to hate school as much as she did.

However, today, when she rounded the back of his car, she froze. He wasn’t sitting alone like he always did. A girl stood pressed close beside him, their shoulders touching as they laughed at something Brinleigh couldn’t make out. The girl’s hand rested casually on his arm–comfortable, practiced, as if it belonged there.

Brinleigh’s grip tightened on her bookbag. She couldn’t tell whether to turn around or pretend she hadn’t seen anything, but the choice disappeared a moment later. The girl learned in, whispered something, and he laughed—sharp and mean in a way that didn’t sound like him. The girl’s gaze flicked to Brinleigh then, slow and deliberate, her smile twisting into something pointed.

“Looks like she heard us,” she said, without lowering her voice.

Noah didn’t apologize. He didn’t even look guilty.

Noah just crossed his arms, smirked, and said, “Well… this is awkward. Seriously though?” he said, voice flat. “Are you spying on me now?”

Brinleigh opened her mouth, but her voice tangled somewhere behind her ribs. She must’ve made some kind of sound, because the other girl turned too, hair falling perfectly over her shoulder. Recognition flashed across her face, followed by something smug and satisfied.

“Oh,” the girl said. “Awkward, she’s choking on her words.”

Heat crawled up Brinleigh’s neck. “I just—my sketchbook. I left it—”

“In my car. Yeah.” He sighed, like she’d asked him to move a mountain. With an exaggerated groan, he reached into the back seat, grabbed the battered notebook, and held it out through the open window. “Here. Crisis averted.”

Her fingers shook when she took it. The edges of the cover dug into her palms—hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to wake her up from whatever this was.

“Were you… were you cheating on me?” The question came out small, pathetic, but it was all she had.

Noah snorted. “Cheating? On what, exactly?”

The girl beside him snickered, covering her mouth as if the moment amused her more than it should. She looked like someone who belonged on glossy posters and homecoming flyers, all smooth honey-blonde waves falling perfectly over her shoulders. Her varsity-blue jacket fit her like it had been tailored for her alone, and her bright, camera-ready smile radiated practiced confidence. Everything about her seemed polished, effortless, and designed to draw attention. She looked like the kind of girl people immediately recognized, the type whose name everyone already knew.

Brinleigh, standing several steps away, felt like the opposite of her. Brinleigh’s sleeves swallowed her hands, the frayed drawstring tugged raw from anxious habits. Her hair was twisted into a messy bun she hadn’t bothered to fix, strands slipping loose. She didn’t glow in the early light; she disappeared into it, quiet around the edges as if the world were built to overlook her. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, nails picking at a loose thread on her sleeves, a small motion she used to steady herself. The contrast between them hit with a kind of quiet cruelty.

Brinleigh swallowed. “On… us.”

“Us?” he repeated, and this time he actually laughed. Really laughed. “Brinleigh, we went to the movies twice. You cried at both. Over commercials.”

The girl beside him chimed in, voice sweet and poisonous. “She cries a lot, doesn’t she?”

“Constantly,” Noah agreed, shaking his head like it was some endearing flaw he’d outgrown. “It’s exhausting, honestly. You’re always so… emotional, it’s too much.”

The word landed like a slap. Too much. Too much feeling, too much crying, too much quietness in all the wrong places. A familiar numbness started at the edges of her fingers and crept inward. Her heart tried to race, but the rest of her refused to participate. It was like watching herself from the outside, some girl in an oversized hoodie holding onto a sketchbook like a shield while the boy she had been stupid enough to trust dismantled her in broad daylight.

“I—” she started, then stopped. There was nothing left to say that wouldn’t make it worse.

Her eyes burned with tears. His laugh only sharpened.

“Oh my God,” he said, leaning back. “Don’t start crying again. Seriously. It’s not that deep.”

The other girl’s laughter joined his, thin and high, a sound that followed Brinleigh as she turned away. She made it around the corner before the first tear slid down her cheek. By the time she reached the side entrance, the numbness had settled in fully, thick and cotton-soft, like someone had stuffed her chest with insulation. Everything sounded far away: doors slamming, buses rumbling, the distant shriek of a whistle from the field. Even her own footsteps felt wrong, too quiet, like maybe she wasn’t really touching the ground at all.

She didn’t remember walking inside. One second she was outside; the next she was in the last stall of the girls’ bathroom, knees pulled to her chest, the sketchbook beside her on the cold tile like it had followed her out of instinct. Her breath came in uneven pulls, not sharp enough to be a panic attack but close enough to make her vision thrum at the edges. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, too bright, too loud, turning the small space into a box she couldn’t quite breathe in. She pressed her forehead to her knees, trying to steady herself, trying to make sense of how everything had gone from painfully familiar to unbearably different in less than five minutes. The stall didn’t feel safe, exactly, but it felt removed—like the world couldn’t reach her here unless she opened the door first. And right now, that was the closest thing to quiet she had.

“Too much,” she whispered. The word tasted the same coming from her own mouth—small and tired

Outside the stall, the bathroom door opened and closed, voices spilling in with the rush of air. Laughter echoed briefly against the tiles—too loud, too normal for the way her chest still felt unsteady. Sneakers squeaked across the floor, pausing near the sinks before drifting farther down the row of stalls. She held her breath without meaning to, waiting for the footsteps to fade, waiting for the world on the other side of the door to stop feeling like something she had to hide from.

“Did you see her?” One of the girls giggled.

“God, she always looks like she’s going to cry.” Another replied.

“Maybe her boyfriend finally dumped her.” The first girl commented

“Can you blame him?” A third girl chimed in.

Laughter rattled against the walls. Brinleigh pressed her palms to her ears, but the words seeped through anyways, sharp as splinters. The bell finally rang, saving her from this form of torture. The sound of footsteps leaving the bathroom gave Brinleigh peace. The bathroom finally went quiet.

As the minutes stretched, the tile that was under her grew cold. The ache in her chest didn’t spike the way it used to; it just sat there, heavy and dull. When she finally stepped out of the stall and caught her reflection in the mirror, she barely recognized herself. Red eyes and blotchy cheeks from crying. Hair falling out of a messy bun, the hoodie hanging crooked on her shoulders.

She looked like someone who’d been crying for hours, which in a way, she had. Brinleigh turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face until the sting cut through the fog. She wasn’t okay, that much was obvious, but she also knew how to move while not-okay. She’d been practicing for a long time. By lunch, the sketchbook felt heavier than usual, but she carried it anyway.

She tried to go through the motions; take notes, nod when the teacher looked her way, pretend to laugh at a joke she barely heard, but everything slid off the surface of her mind before it could sink in. She was there and not there at the same time. Present enough to be counted. Gone enough not to be really seen. After school, she didn’t go straight home.

Her feet chose the journey for her. Down one street, then another, then another, like she was tracing a path she hadn’t walked in a long time but had never quite forgotten. Her brain floated somewhere above her shoulders, watching her body move through the world. By the time she looked up, the town had thinned out. The houses were older here, windows clouded, paint peeling in tired strips. The old apartment building rose ahead—brick dark with age and neglect, windows like half-lidded eyes. She stopped a few yards away, of all the places to end up, she thought.

She knew this building like the back of her hand. She’d found it by accident the first time, following a stray cat down an alley after school and discovering the side door that never fully latched. She’d been looking for somewhere quiet to draw so that people weren’t there to bother her. It had become her secret place for a little while, then life got louder, homework and college testing piled up. Her mom picked up more shifts and was never home anymore.

The boy with the easy smile and tired eyes had once sat beside her in math and called her drawings “cool as hell,” saying it so casually she almost believed him. That was before everything with Noah, before the rumors, before she learned how to shrink herself just to survive the hallways. She stopped coming here a long time ago—stopped letting herself think about that boy too—because remembering the one person who ever made her feel seen, hurt more than pretending he never had.

Now here she was again, sketchbook tucked to her chest, heart beating slow and steady in a way that felt wrong. The side door still stuck halfway, still groaned when she pushed it open. The stairwell still smelled like damp concrete and something faintly metallic. And yet somehow, she felt different, like the version of herself she’d buried might still be listening.

She climbed up the stairs, taking one step, then another, hand trailing the rusted rail. It didn’t feel like walking toward a decision, it felt like walking toward silence. The rooftop door gave under her palm with a shove. The sky opened up above her—wide and gray, clouds stacked heavy and low. The town stretched out in all directions, a patchwork of rooftops and streets still slick from last night’s rain. Puddles shimmered on the rooftop in shallow pools, reflecting dull light.

Wind met her first, tugging at her hair, threading cold fingers through the holes in her gloves. She crossed the roof slowly, sneakers scuffing against gravel and cracked tar. There was a flat spot near the ledge where she used to sit and draw—the skyline, the way the trees clawed up against it, the way the horizon always looked too far and too close at the same time. She stood there now, sketchbook hanging at her side. It occurred to her, distantly, that this was the kind of place people were warned about: high edges, loose gravel and bad ideas.

No one had ever warned her directly, so it didn’t feel like breaking a rule. She set the sketchbook down. Her fingers curled around the concrete edge. It was cold, rough enough to bite her skin. She lifted one foot, then the other, stepping onto the ledge with the careful precision of someone moving through a dream.

The town fell away beneath her, streets narrowing into toy roads, cars shrinking to slow-moving dots. From up here, the noise of everything softened into a low, distant hum. Her heart didn’t race, if anything it slowed. The numbness wasn’t empty anymore, it was almost peaceful. The wind pressed against her back, not quite a push, not quite a pull.

She stared out at the horizon and tried to remember what it had felt like to want anything at all. Her ex-boyfriend’s laugh replayed in her head—sharp, dismissive, amused at her tears, amused at her.

“Too much.” she muttered to herself.

Maybe he was right, maybe the problem wasn’t that she felt too deeply. Maybe it was that she kept trying to hand her heart to people who didn’t know what to do with it. A thought brushed the edge of her mind, soft and terrifying. What if no one ever does, will she be alone forever? Her fingers tightened on the ledge.

Below, a car door slammed as someone exited it to go into a store. In the distance a dog barked at a squirrel. A horn blared twice while stuck in traffic. Life went on around her, uninterested in the girl balancing above them all. She didn’t want to die, exactly, not in the way people on TV said it.

She just wanted the ache to stop, the heaviness, the constant feeling of failing at being a person. A tear slipped down her cheek, then another. The wind caught them and pulled them away before they could fall all the way.

“Please,” she whispered to no one in particular. “Just… make it quiet.”

For a moment, it almost was. And then she heard him.

“Hey!”

One word, it was more of a half shout, half plea. Her body flinched before her brain processed the sound. She turned her head just enough to see where it came from. There, down in the alley beside the building, stood a boy. For a second, she thought her mind was making him up. He was all sharp lines and shadows from this height—broad shoulders in a dark hoodie, hands fisted at his sides, dark hair plastered messily to his forehead as if he’d been out in some storm she hadn’t noticed.

He looked up at her like he’d been searching for her his whole life and had finally found her in the worst possible place. Their eyes met, and as their eyes met, the world snapped into focus. The wind, the cold, the sting in her fingers, the thudding of her own heart—it all collided at once, sharper than it had been all day. His eyes were darker than she expected, a stormy gray-blue that somehow held a thousand unsaid things, fear, anger, relief, and something else she didn’t have a name for. She couldn’t tell what the boy was thinking but his face spoke loudly at the same time.

She had never seen him before, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like turning a page and realizing the story had been leading here all along.

“Don’t,” he called, voice cracking on the word. He stepped closer to the building, as if proximity alone could hold her in place. “Please.”

He didn’t say her name. He didn’t try to tell her she had “so much to live for.” He didn’t make it about God or family or how other people would feel.

He just said “please” like it cost him something.

A strange, unwanted warmth spread in her chest.

“This isn’t your business,” she managed, though her voice sounded thin even to her own ears.

His jaw tightened. “Maybe not. But you’re still here, and so am I, and I’m not walking away.”

The way he said it made something inside her wobble. She should have been annoyed, furious, even. He didn’t know her, he didn’t know anything about the weight she carried. He still looked at her like she wasn’t a spectacle or a burden or some pathetic, crying girl on the edge of a roof. He looked at her like she was real. Another gust of wind hit her side, harder this time. Her balance wavered.

His eyes widened. “Don’t move,” he said, voice low, steady, the way people on TV sounded when they were inches from disaster. “I’m coming up, okay?”

Before she could answer, he was already moving, disappearing from view. She heard the slam of the side door below, the fast pounding of footsteps on the stairs that led to the roof. She should get down. She should step back onto solid ground, pick up her sketchbook, walk away, pretend this never happened. Instead, she stayed frozen on the ledge, hands locked on the edge, lungs refusing to draw a proper breath. The rooftop door burst open behind her.

She heard him before she saw him—boots scraping on gravel, the soft hitch of his breathing like he’d sprinted the whole way up. She didn’t turn right away. She watched a cloud drag itself slowly across the sky and wondered absently if storms ever got tired of being storms.

“Hey,” he said again, closer now. The word was different this time—quieter, careful, like he was afraid of startling her. “I’m here.”

She carefully turned her head. He was closer than she expected. A few feet back from the ledge, hands slightly raised in a gesture halfway between surrender and readiness. His hair was messier up close, his hoodie damp in spots like he’d been walking in the drizzle without caring. There was a split in his bottom lip, faint but healing, and a smudge of ink on the side of his hand.

He looked like someone who’d gotten into fights on purpose and apologized for none of them. He also looked terrified, not of her but of losing her.

“What do you want?” she whispered.

“For you to step down,” he said. There was no hesitation, no lecture. “That’s it. Just… step down.”

Her fingers trembled against the concrete. “You don’t even know me.”

His throat worked as he swallowed. For a split second, something raw flashed across his face. “I don’t have to know you to not want you to disappear.”

She stared at him for what felt like hours, but it was only seconds. The numbness cracked a little, not shattered, but enough for a sliver of something else—fear, anger, hope, she couldn’t tell—to slip through. The wind tugged at her again. Her legs felt shaky now, like they were remembering they’d been holding her up all day. Her vision blurred at the edges.

“Okay,” he said softly, stepping just one inch closer. “I’m not going to touch you. Not unless you ask. But if you fall, I’m going to try to catch you. So… maybe don’t make me prove how bad my reflexes are.”

A tiny, incredulous sound left her. It might have been a laugh if it hadn’t broken halfway out. He smiled then, not big, not charming. A small, tired smile pulled at one corner of his mouth—crooked and worn-out, the kind that hinted he’d used up all his strength long before they met. It made him look less like a stranger and more like someone she might have drawn in the margins of her notebook without meaning to.

“I’m Aiden,” he said, like names mattered on rooftops.

Her own name lodged in her throat. She couldn’t say it, instead, she closed her eyes. The ledge bit into her palms. Her knees wobbled making the world tilted. She could have stepped forward off of the building and left this world. Instead, she let herself fall back towards the roof.

There was a split second of weightlessness—air, wind, the soft gasp she didn’t realize she’d made—and then arms wrapped around her with startling strength. Her body collided with his, knocking the breath from both of them. Her feet slipped on the gravel, but he adjusted quickly, pulling her in tight, anchoring her against his chest. For a moment, everything was sound: his heartbeat slamming against her ear, her own ragged breaths, the quiet shudder that went through him as he realized she was real and solid and still here.

She waited for shame to flood in. For the world to rush back and crush her for needing to be caught, it didn’t. What settled in instead was stranger, softer for a change. His hoodie smelled like rain and laundry detergent and something warm she couldn’t place. His grip was firm but not crushing, like he was holding something valuable he didn’t want to break.

Her hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt without asking permission. He didn’t let go, his grip around her was strong, like she was going to fly away if he let go. They sank down to the rooftop together, her knees finally giving out. He followed her descent, guiding it, never loosening his hold. Gravel dug into her legs through her jeans; cold seeped into her skin.

“You’re okay,” he murmured. Not as a promise but more as if he was reassuring himself. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

She didn’t know if she believed him, but for the first time that day, she wanted to believe someone. The clouds above them shifted, a thin strip of pale sky visible between their heavy bodies. Somewhere beyond the town, thunder grumbled one last time and faded away, leaving only the light patter of leftover rain on concrete. Brinleigh closed her eyes and breathed in, then out, matching her breaths to his without meaning to. Maybe this wasn’t the end of her story.

Maybe this was just the moment everything cracked open. Later, she would think about how strange it was—that on the worst day of her life, when she finally decided she was done trying; the universe had sent her a boy with storm-colored eyes and shaking hands, someone just as breakable as she was, and said: here, try again. For now, all she knew was this: she was still here. He was still holding on, and somewhere, far behind the clouds, the sun was waiting for its turn.

For better.Or for worse.