Chapter 3:The Massage He Never Sent

David didn't sleep that night.

He sat on the floor of Mavia's room until the rain faded into mist and the black outside began to lighten into a dull, reluctant morning. The notebook lay open beside him, pages fluttering slightly as if the words wanted to escape. But he couldn't let them. Not yet.

His eyes kept returning to the same line, circling in his mind like smoke trapped in a sealed room.

> He was right.

It pulsed at the center of his thoughts, maddening and unfinished. What had he said? What truth had he stumbled upon that Mavia had clung to as his final tether?

It felt like a whisper with no mouth. A door he wasn't sure he wanted to open, yet couldn't stay away from.

The torn page was a wound.

And it bled in silence.

---

By midmorning, Meher stood at the doorway.

She didn't speak at first, just knocked softly on the open frame, as if asking permission to disturb the grief that had rooted itself in the room.

"You should eat," she said after a moment. Her voice wasn't firm — it was soft. A whisper of concern rather than an order.

David nodded, eyes still on the notebook, but didn't move.

She crossed the room slowly, sat cross-legged near him on the worn carpet, and looked at the open pages. She didn't ask to read. She just said, "He used to write all night sometimes. Thought I didn't know. But I heard the pen. I always did."

David looked over at her. "Why didn't he talk to anyone?"

Meher picked at the fraying cuff of her sleeve. "Because he didn't want to be fixed. He just wanted to be seen."

The words hit harder than he expected.

David exhaled. "I thought… leaving would give him space."

"It did," she said, not unkindly. "But not the kind he needed."

They didn't speak for a while. Not because there was nothing to say — but because silence, for the first time, didn't feel like the enemy. It felt shared. Held between them.

Then Meher said, "Do you remember the campfire?"

David blinked. "Which one?"

"The forest. His sixteenth birthday."

Of course he remembered.

They'd gone hiking that weekend, just the three of them — Mavia's idea. A small clearing in the woods behind town. Blankets, a too-small fire that refused to grow, burnt marshmallows that tasted like ash, ghost stories that weren't scary.

But the stars had been so clear that night. The trees had leaned in like quiet witnesses.

David remembered how Mavia looked in that flickering firelight — eyes reflecting the flames, hair messy, face open in a way it rarely was. He'd looked older that night. Or maybe just truer.

That was the night David had said something he now regretted.

> "Maybe people like us aren't meant to last."

It had been a joke. A dark little quip, tossed out between bites of marshmallow. He hadn't meant it.

But Mavia hadn't laughed.

Instead, he'd stared into the flames and whispered,

> "You might be right."

David hadn't thought much of it then.

Now he couldn't stop thinking about it.

---

Back in the present, David stood up abruptly. "I need to go somewhere."

Meher looked up. "Where?"

"I'm not sure. I just… I need to see something."

She didn't press. "Do you want company?"

David shook his head. "I think I need to go alone."

Meher nodded. "Then go. I'll be here when you get back."

---

It took him twenty minutes to get there.

Mavia's favorite place — a small overlook tucked behind the wooded trail near the outskirts of town. Not marked on maps. Not grand. Just a bench overlooking a quiet ravine where the trees opened to sky and silence.

They'd named it the quiet world. A place for things unsaid. For healing they couldn't admit needing.

The rain had softened into drizzle, mist curling over the path like smoke from an invisible fire. David's shoes squelched with every step.

When he finally reached the edge, he stopped and just stood there. Let the view speak first.

It hadn't changed.

The same rolling green hills, the same open sky. Birds wheeled overhead, and the air carried that after-rain smell — clean, earthy, unfinished.

He sat on the bench and pulled the notebook from his bag.

Flipping to the final page, he read Mavia's words out loud, for the first time.

> "He was right."

David shook his head.

"I wasn't," he said, voice raw. "Not about that."

He closed the notebook and stared into the mist, as if the truth might drift out of the trees if he waited long enough.

He didn't hear the footsteps at first.

But then he felt them — a shift in the air, the subtle sound of shoes on damp gravel.

He turned.

A boy stood there. Maybe seventeen. Skinny. Pale. Holding an umbrella that dripped steadily.

His eyes were cautious, searching.

"You're David?" the boy asked.

David's stomach clenched. "Yeah. Who are you?"

"I'm Karim," the boy said. "I… I knew Mavia. From school. We had literature together."

David stood, notebook still clutched in one hand. "You knew him well?"

Karim hesitated, then said, "Not like you. But well enough to know he didn't trust easily."

David nodded. "He didn't. But he trusted me. Once."

Karim stepped forward and pulled a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket. "He gave this to me. The week before…"

He didn't finish the sentence.

He didn't need to.

David took the note. His fingers shook.

Karim stepped back and waited.

David unfolded the paper.

It was Mavia's handwriting. His breath caught.

> If you're reading this, it means I couldn't tell him myself.

Maybe I was too afraid. Maybe I ran out of time.

Tell David: I never blamed him. I disappeared because I didn't want him to watch me fall.

But he wasn't wrong. Some of us don't last.

And maybe that's okay.

But I want him to know —

He was the only thing that made staying feel possible for a while.

That has to count for something.

— M

David sat down hard.

The bench caught him like a sigh.

He stared at the paper, at the curved letters, the weight behind each word.

It wasn't an apology.

It wasn't a goodbye.

It was something heavier.

Recognition.

The knowledge that someone had seen him, even when he couldn't see himself.

David looked up.

But Karim was already gone.

The path behind him was empty.

Just the quiet world again — birdsong, mist, and a grief that no longer wanted to be hidden.

David folded the note carefully. As if it might still crumble.

He tucked it into the notebook.

And for the first time in weeks, his breathing felt steady.

The pain hadn't left.

But it had changed shape.

Sharper now.

Cleaner.

Like the edge of a memory being brought back into focus.

---

That evening, the sky burned gold as he returned.

The clouds had parted — not fully, but enough. Like the sky was beginning to grieve too, in its own way.

Meher stood on the porch, arms crossed, hoodie sleeves bunched around her elbows.

David approached slowly.

He didn't speak. Just held out the folded note.

She took it.

Read it.

And when she looked back up at him, her eyes shimmered.

"He really loved you, you know," she said.

David nodded. "I know now."

And then, without warning, the tears came.

Not from guilt.

Not even from loss.

But from something deeper.

Because someone had left behind love in silence —

And someone else had finally heard it.

---

Chapter End