Chapter 12 – Borrowed Time
The next eight weeks passed in a blur.
Maya and Liam carved out every second they could. Phone calls, weekend drives, quiet moments tangled up in hoodie sleeves and takeout boxes. They didn't talk about Florence again. Not really. It hung in the background like a slow sunset—beautiful, inevitable, and just out of reach.
They lived like time was borrowed.
Because it was.
They went to the drive-in theater two weekends before her flight.
Liam picked her up in his beat-up truck, the one that rattled on left turns and still smelled faintly of gas station mints and summer sweat.
"Popcorn," he declared, tossing a bag into her lap. "Extra butter, just how you hate it."
She laughed. "How romantic."
"I try."
They sat on the tailgate, wrapped in a blanket, watching some old movie neither of them cared about.
About halfway through, Maya turned to him.
"What happens to us after this?"
He didn't pretend not to know what she meant.
He looked at her—really looked—and said, "We stop pretending love doesn't evolve."
She blinked. "That's a very poetic non-answer."
"I mean it." He shifted to face her. "We'll be different. You'll come back with stories and freckles and probably a new favorite wine. And I'll be here—working, saving, building."
"That sounds lonely."
"Only if we let it."
She swallowed the knot in her throat. "So we try?"
"We always try."
In the final days before her trip, Maya packed and repacked her bags.
She cried in the shower. Laughed too hard at dumb things Zoey said. Wrote Liam letters she planned to give him the day she left—one for each week she'd be gone.
She stopped by her high school the night before departure. Just stood outside the gym where she'd first met him.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
Like another version of herself had fallen in love with a boy who kissed her forehead and promised forever.
And maybe, just maybe, they were still those kids.
But they weren't only those kids anymore.
The airport was too bright. Too loud. Too final.
Liam held her hand like he was memorizing it.
"I don't know how to say goodbye," Maya whispered.
"Don't," he said. "Just say see-you-soon."
She handed him the envelope of letters. "One per week. No cheating."
He smirked. "You think I have that kind of willpower?"
"Promise me you'll try."
He kissed her, soft and slow, like the first time and the last time all at once.
When they finally pulled apart, her heart felt like it had been torn open and sewn back together in one breath.
"I love you," she said.
"I'll love you tomorrow," he whispered. "And the day after that. And the next. Even if it hurts."
She turned, walked through security, and didn't look back.
Because if she did, she might not leave.
And she had to go.
To become.
To stretch.
To return—maybe not the same girl—but still, hopefully, his.
That night, Liam read the first letter.
It smelled like her. Like lavender and ink and a summer that wasn't quite over.
" Dear Liam, This is hard. So I'm writing instead of saying it all out loud, because words feel safer when I can hide behind paper.
I'm scared, too. Not of the trip. But of changing. Of becoming someone you won't recognize. But I hope you do.
I hope you see the girl who still dances barefoot in the kitchen and cries at movie trailers and believes in you, even when you don't.
Wait for me, if you can. I'm not asking for forever. Just… for later.
Love, always, Maya".