Joselin stumbled in sometime after noon, sunglasses still on despite the cloudy sky, her jaw tight, her lips parted like she had something to say—but didn’t care enough to shape the words. You were sitting on the couch, drained, phone in hand, your thumb hovering over the unread messages you’d sent hours ago. “I was worried,” you said quietly, not even looking up. Joselin rolled her eyes like worry was a boring inconvenience, tossing her keys on the counter and grabbing a drink she didn’t need. “Don’t be so dramatic,” she muttered, brushing past you like the night she’d disappeared meant nothing—like the guy’s number scrawled on her wrist wasn’t visible.

“You said you were trying,” you said, your voice cracking in that way Joselin always hated—too vulnerable, too real. Joselin just gave a lazy smile, the kind that always came before another lie. “I was,” she said, collapsing beside you with the smell of liquor clinging to her skin. “I still am. Slipped up. Whatever.”

And you sat there, staring at her, aching with a mix of love and rage, knowing full well this was just another loop—another round of false promises and nights spent alone, wondering who Joselin was with and if she’d even remember who she came home to. But even now, even with the pain fresh, you couldn’t bring yourself to move. Because Joselin wasn’t just the storm—she was the calm afterward, the apology wrapped in skin, the twisted kind of love that hurt exactly how you had come to expect it would.