MY LOWER ABDOMEN made the inconsiderate decision to contract overnight, and I started to toss sometime around midnight. The tightness clamped down on me for several seconds at a time, and I tried hard to swallow it, but after a few rounds, I couldn't hold it in anymore.

I rolled out of Takoda's embrace to give myself space to curl up into the shape of my choosing, and with the next go, I grunted into my pillow. It was quite funny that I was barely aware of my period some months, while it hurt like hell in others. I kept my eyes closed, even when I felt Takoda stir behind me, waiting for relief. Just when I thought I'd be able to turn back over, another round of pain stabbed through me.

With my next grunt came Takoda's gentle voice and a hand on my arm. "Hey," he whispered, sweeping hair away from my face. "Hey, what's wrong?"

I attempted to respond, but only a whimper made it out.

He ran his hand up and down my arm. "What do you need?"

I had to rehearse the words in my head before I could finally bring them to life. "Heating pad. Suitcase."

"Alright." He placed a kiss on the side of my head, then his weight was gone from the bed.

Before our fallout, I'd taught him how to use the heating pad, and he clearly hadn't forgotten, because he had no trouble plugging it in and configuring it. When he returned to bed and gently placed it over my lower abdomen after asking where it hurt most, the heat was low and soothing. Just the way I liked it.

He watched me in silence for a few minutes, to make sure I was comfortable, I guessed, before gently laying down to face me. "I could make you some ginger tea if you want," he said, quietly. "I read it helps relieve cramps. Or a snack. You want a snack?"

"I'm good for now. Thank you." My eyes drifted closed, but in relief, not exhaustion. Takoda brushed a few pieces of hair off my cheek, and I swear he was even warmer than the heating pad.

"You want me to tell you a story while we wait?"

I couldn't help but smile. "What story do you have in mind?"

"I have a couple to choose from."

A laugh trickled out of me. "We could just talk."

"If you'd prefer the story, I really don't mind." I heard the smile in his voice.

"Let's just talk, Calebs."

He reached away from me for a moment, and I heard the bedside lamp click off, then he put an arm around me and snuggled close. "Alright, then. What do you want us to talk about?"

My cognitive processing was more than a little trash, but I sorted through a mental list of potential topics in the silence. At some point, I opened my eyes to stare at the ceiling, and his quiet breathing added to the comfort that was gradually spreading through my body.

I laughed when nothing occurred to me after maybe a solid minute. "I don't think I've had this much trouble thinking before."

He chuckled. "While black smoke puffed out of your ears, you know what was going through my mind?"

I wanted to laugh deeper than I did, but I was trying to fight cramps, not worsen it. "What?"

"New Moon. Birdy."

I didn't know if it was nostalgia or something else, but the quiet song almost instantly became vivid in my memory, and I let out a quiet gasp. "Oh my God. My mind blanked on that wonderful song for a hot second."

"I still remember your face the first time you listened to it." He took a pause. "Maybe we should talk about that."

Being with Takoda was the ultimate emotional experience. It took special skills for someone to be able to tether the tiniest moments in your life to something a lot grander. Like creating a map. No memory was a standalone. And he managed to add music to the mix. More than half the songs in my Spotify library were introduced to me by him. It was a love language he spoke fluently. It got so bad that when I saw specific photos of him, I thought about specific songs. A web of memories—good, bad, and all the ones in between.

We'd slow-danced to Birdy's New Moon sometime at the start of this. It was many weeks after the kiss on the roof, when lines were beginning to get muddled, when every glance held something deeper. I'd paid him a visit, and while we were enjoying a playlist in the living room, the song came on. It reminded me of couples online and how they always seemed to have the most beautiful moments, how they always seemed to do and say the right things. The relationship pedestal. Quite unreal, yet carrying with it hope.

I hadn't realized then that Takoda had been staring at me from the couch across the room, until something convinced me to look over. Thinking about it now, it was probably in that moment I knew I loved him. I just hadn't been able to put a name to it.

"You just want to make fun of me again," I said now, an ache distinct from the period cramps pulsing in my stomach.

He leaned back comically to look at me. "I never make fun of you."

"That's a freshly cooked lie."

He gave me a toothy smile, then came back forward to place a kiss on the tip of my nose. I didn't want to think about how he could be so affectionate at such a time. "You looked like you found quiet magic."

Quiet magic. What it'd been all along.

I smiled as I inhaled Takoda's scent. I was loud about it, too, because that was what my body told me to do. "Quiet magic could be a song."

"Yeah?"

I hummed, and we just remained that way, gazing into what we could make out of each other's eyes, and my bundled nerves loosened even more. Takoda's fingers found my hair, and he gently pressed them into my scalp with gentle circular motions. A massage even I didn't know I needed. When my eyes fluttered shut again, I heard him chuckle lightly, before his lips came down to the spot between my eyebrows.

"I'm sorry for waking you," I whispered after a few heartbeats.

"Hey, come on. Don't ever apologize for not feeling alright. I don't mind staying up for you."

I took the next few moments to just breathe as his hand continued to move in my hair. "I love you."

"And I love you too, princess."

I could've melted there and then, but I settled for what I knew was a dopey smile as a sudden wave of tiredness washed over me. I don't know when exactly I dozed off, but I was vaguely aware of when he took the heating pad off me and pressed yet another kiss to my forehead.

I woke up on the other side of the bed, to a calm abdomen, and the smell of pancakes and ginger. I looked over to the time displayed on the digital clock. 9 a.m. A big sleep I just knew I was going to laugh over in the next three days. I couldn't remember the last time I slept that soundly. I guess sometimes we just needed a positive influx of hormones. And a man to call us princess.

It took a few more beats of post-slumber limbo for me to get my bearings. Then I gently pushed myself up and out of bed. For a moment, I debated just going downstairs to say good morning first, but quickly realized I was in no mood to have any interactions before I brushed my teeth and was in fresh clothes. So I hit the shower, then let the nutrients of my facial mask seep in while I brushed my hair and moisturized my skin.

By the time I got to the kitchen, I felt considerably good and was about forty percent sure I wasn't going to have any unwarranted mood swings today.

Takoda's back was to me as he did the dishes by the sink, and the sight was just so sweet that I had to watch at the entrance for a few minutes. Steam wafted in pretty ribbons from the stack of pancakes on the counter, and together with the bottle of maple syrup and half-empty mug next to it, it gave a quiet living aesthetic that had me frothing at the mouth. So I pulled out my phone for a picture to look back on, before quietly walking over to him and wrapping my arms around his middle from behind.

He startled a little at my sudden presence, and I chuckled as I leaned my cheek against his spine. "Good morning," I said gently.

"Good morning, my love. I'd hug you back, but I'm wrist deep in soap suds." His voice pulsated through me, stirring my tender stomach at its base, and I shut my eyes to take it in.

"No, just go ahead with what you're doing. I'll be right here."

"Did you sleep okay?"

"Mhm. You made pancakes."

This time, it was him that chuckled. "I also have some ginger tea brewing for you. I also read that it's good for anxiety, too." The muscles in his back rippled as he spoke. "There's some honey in the fridge if you'd like to add that."

Hold the hormones as the primary culprit for this, but these sensations, all of them indescribable, rushed through me, and I found myself moving around him. He moved his sudsy hands when I stood in front of him, and stared down at me with a soft smile.

"Hi," he said.

I stared at him for a moment without really having anything to say, and his smile widened before he leaned forward to press his lips to my forehead.

"You should have the tea first," he told me after pulling away. "And move away before I get all this on you."

"Thank you, Takoda. Really."

"Of course." He eventually had to reach for the kitchen towel and wipe the suds from his hands. Then he lowered his hands to my lower back and gently pulled me into him. He placed his chin on the top of my head as he hugged me, and I hoped I always remembered to stay in the moment the way I was now.

I left him to finish with the dishes, and we had breakfast together in the living room, the whole of which we spent scrolling through Netflix without deciding on what to watch. I offered to drop our plates off in the kitchen, but he protested, and I let myself be designated princess of the day. He'd just disappeared into the hallway when my phone pinged five times in a row.

My response was completely subconscious, but I leaned over to check who it was, half-expecting it to be Robin, only to remember that I'd left my phone upstairs the moment I saw the name displayed on the screen.

The screen went black before I could fully process it, so I pushed the power button to get a longer, better look. Takoda had disabled his text previews, so it only showed as Alex, with a black heart, and beneath it, 5 Notifications.

I didn't need to think about which Alex that was.

I stared at the phone long after it went off again, and the longer I sat there with no tangible thought in my head, the faster my mood dampened. Why was he still talking to her, even after my obvious distaste? Why was she texting him back to back to back like that?

When I felt like Takoda would return, I nudged the phone away from myself and took the remote to continue some mindless Netflix scrolling.

"So, what would you like to do today?" he asked as he reappeared in the living room. "You want me to take you somewhere? You wanna stay in?"

"I don't know. What would you like to do?"

He lowered himself into the space next to me. "I'm okay with anything you want."

"I think that's a very risky thing to say."

"How so?"

"You might not like what I want to do."

Yet again, another notification came in on his phone, and he mumbled a sorry before picking it up to check. I keenly watched so I could see his reaction in real time, and it took a moment as he unlocked his phone, but his eyebrows furrowed slightly, a telltale sign.

"What's wrong?"

Takoda went still as he continued to stare at his phone, and when he eventually blinked, it was with a distracted, "Sorry, hold on."

I took note of his fingers flying over the keyboard. "Takoda, what's wrong?"

He didn't respond, preferring the seemingly frantic text he was typing, and I'd just started strategizing when his doorbell rang.

Takoda didn't have unannounced visitors. The number of people he'd put on Hidden Hills' approval list was very small, and even then, he usually got a call from security. There was only one person I knew who got a free pass to visit whenever she deemed it necessary, and with the realization, my cramps returned.

Takoda was still dealing with whatever it was Xandra or whoever else sent him when May, in a powder blue pantsuit and Louboutins, suddenly rounded the corner that led to the foyer.

"Well, well, well," was the first thing she said the moment she took us in, but I couldn't tell who it was directed at. If I wasn't mistaken, she sounded angry.

And that was what made Takoda put his phone down. "May, I told you not to—"

"Lie to me that you haven't seen it," she cut him off, harshly, her eyes steely and narrow. I never thought she could muster that tone.

"Seen what?" I asked, because someone in this room had to make this moment make sense.

It was then I realized that May was actually not looking at me like I thought. Her cold gaze slid over to me, and consequently, chills skipped down my spine. "Where's your phone?"

I felt my own brows furrow. "Um, upstairs. Why?"

She glanced at Takoda, and he sat up straighter in the couch. They had a moment of tense, silent communication, during which I felt like I couldn't breathe, before Takoda started to say, "May, let me—"

But she cut him off as her eyes returned to mine. "Earlier this morning, one of the most notorious celebrity gossip websites posted about some anonymous inside source informing them that the only reason Takoda and Xandra broke up is because he cheated. With you."

I saw white after that.

well. that escalated quickly. send thoughts and prayers, hehe <3