Chapter Thirty-Six: Reentry

This is Mira’s story — part fiction, part reflection, wholly honest.
(Each chapter will end with a note from her writing, signed as your trusted friend.)

🎧 Listen while you read: “Hold You Now” by Vampire Weekend, Danielle Haim
For tender reentry, unsaid things, and the quiet kind of love that stays.

Mira’s Story: Reentry
Landing Softly

They left the island before noon, heading to the ferry to a world that suddenly felt too sharp.

The car was quiet, but not heavy. Just that soft hum of people who had laughed too hard, kissed under stars, and slept wrapped in limbs and warmth. Mira’s legs were curled under her, barefoot, her wrist resting on the open window edge, fingers trailing in the breeze. Rowan drove with one hand on the wheel and one resting on her thigh.

They didn’t talk about what had happened.

Not yet.

Some things don’t need to be processed. They just need to be.

---

Back at the ferry terminal, they hugged—arms wrapped around one another — as they watched the Island get smaller and smaller. Mira’s backpack slung over one shoulder, Rowan’s hand lingering at the small of her back, tracing lazy circles on the strip of skin between jeans and shirt.

She pressed her nose against his neck, breathing in his uniquely Rowan smell, all cedar and sunshine. But she could also smell campfire and whatever magic lived between sweat and stars. It smelled like memory. Like laughter and late-night lake water.

He smelled like hers.

“Back to the real world?” she murmured.

“Only if we take the weird parts with us.”

She grinned. “Deal.”

---

After the ferry docked, Rowan drove her back to his place so she could grab her car. Ellie and Cal were still with Paige for the rest of their summer week, which meant he’d have a rare quiet house for a few more days.

“You’ll call later?” she asked, hand still on the door.

“If you don’t beat me to it,” he said, pressing a kiss to her wrist.

She caught his hand and pulled him into her, kissing him long and deep, her arms weaving behind his neck, fingers tangling into the soft curls at the base of his skull.

When she pulled away she sighed, feeling satiated in the way that only comes from sunshine, nature, and love.

And then she was off, driving toward the familiar hum of laundry and responsibility.

Just as she was about to get out of the car, she caught a glint in the rearview mirror… a fleck of glitter tangled near her temple, stubborn, like joy that refused to wash off.

Picking up Pepper felt different.

She wondered what version of herself Pepper would see today. Would she see the woman lit up by stars, or the one trying to tuck magic back into her jeans pocket.

Paige answered the door with sand still in her hair, her own edges softened by sun and saltwater. Ellie was curled on the couch behind her in a hoodie that clearly belonged to Pepper.

“She had a good time,” Paige said, stepping back.

Mira walked into the living room to find her daughter tucked under a blanket, scrolling something mindlessly. She didn’t look up right away.

“Hey, babe.”

“Hey.” Pepper’s voice was soft. Her eyes flicked up, scanning her mother’s face.

“You okay?” Mira asked.

“Yeah. Just tired.”

As was usual for Pepper, she got into the backseat. Even now. Mira had stopped asking. It was just their rhythm. Mira wasn’t sure if it was the leg room, the habit, or the chance to be chauffeured through the world. Close, but not too close. A passenger, not a peer. For now. Whatever the reason, the backseat was hers.

The car was quiet for the first few minutes. The windows were cracked, music low, the road humming steady beneath them. Then, Pepper spoke.

“Ellie’s grandparents have, like, a separate guest beach house. Just for overflow guests. It’s bigger than our whole apartment.”

Mira glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Sounds… excessive.”

“It was beautiful. Like, out of a magazine. Everything was white and glass, and there were rules about no sitting on the furniture unless you were dry and wearing a robe. No food in the living room. They even had slippers outside every bedroom door.”

She paused. “There were new ones in my size, too.”

“Did it feel welcoming?”

Pepper shrugged. “I don’t know. It felt more like… a movie set.”

Mira stayed quiet, letting her go on.

“Ellie’s mom told me she and Rowan were married five years before they had Ellie. She said it was the plan all along. College, career, wedding, babies. Two years apart. Even had names picked out in advance.”

She hesitated. “It made me wonder…”

Mira’s hands tightened slightly on the wheel. “What did it make you wonder?”

“Oh, nothing. Never mind.” Pepper rolled the window down another inch. “Her parents are weird. Like ghosts in designer clothes. They left presents in our rooms before we got there, but it felt like costumes. Like they wanted us to look a part. I don’t think I saw her mom smile once. Just… watched Paige a lot. Like she was scanning for flaws.”

Mira nodded. “It’s probably why Paige seems so polished.”

“She was different there. Lighter, I guess. Laughing more with the kids. Still boss as hell, but… I think she was just relieved to be with us, as we were to be with her.”

Another long pause.

“She doesn’t talk about her parents, does she?”

“I don’t think I’ve heard much about them.” Mira said gently.

“That makes sense now.” Pepper pulled her legs up into the seat in front of her. “The house felt full but empty. Like you could never actually be there. I bet it felt like being a guest in your own family for Paige growing up.”

Pepper paused. “Oh, and you know, Paige said she hadn’t seen her parents in over a year. And no one said,’I love you.’ Her mom just said, ‘Paige‘ in this like cool voice, eyes looking down her nose.”

Mira tried to imagine growing up never hearing your mother say, I love you. She suddenly understood why Paige never did, either. Or how foreign someone like Rowan must have felt to her. A man like him didn’t feel like a ghost.

She looked at Pepper in the backseat through the rearview mirror. “But, did you have fun? Would you do it again?”

Pepper rested her head on the back of her seat, her eyes on the roof, thinking. “I did. I liked being in that world. It felt like being a celebrity.”

She met Mira’s gaze in the mirror, voice softer. “But I’m really glad to go home now.”

Mira smiled and reached her hand back to Pepper. Pepper grabbed it without hesitation and both squeezed. A hand hug, long established when Pepper still rode in a car seat.

A language all their own.

“Me too,” she said. “So, so glad.”

---

That night, Mira brushed out Pepper’s damp hair while she sat between her knees on the couch, both of them in pajamas and the last of the sun sliding behind the buildings outside.

The apartment smelled like laundry and lavender dish soap — not starlight and firelight, but familiar. Real.

Pepper was quiet for a long moment. Mira could feel her shifting slightly, the question forming before it reached her lips.

“Would you have wanted me… if you hadn’t gotten pregnant?”

Mira stilled.

She placed the brush down.

“Yes,” she said. “I just didn’t know it yet.”

Pepper turned slightly, enough to meet her eyes.

“I wasn’t trying to get pregnant,” Mira continued. “I was scared. I wasn’t married and still figuring out who I was. But the moment I heard your name in my head? It was like I’d been waiting for you.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it’s always true.”

A long pause.

“You were a cosmic curveball, Pepper. But you were also the exact thing I didn’t know I was ready for. And every day since, you’ve made me braver.”

Pepper’s shoulders relaxed. Her head tilted back slightly to lean against Mira’s chest.

“Okay,” she whispered.

And that was enough.

---

Later in bed while Mira was journaling, she thought about the weekends like that she’d had before. Moments that felt like dreams once laundry and bills returned. But this time, something in her held firm like the glitter in her hair, refusing to wash off.

She could still hear Rowan’s voice echoing in her memory: You feel like freedom.
She’d laughed at the time. But now, wrapped in flannel sheets and quiet, she let herself believe it.

Then, her phone buzzed.

Rowan.

She answered without hesitation.

His voice was quiet.

“Didn’t want to interrupt your reentry, but got a call from my dad’s doctor today. Something’s… shifting. He’s doing okay, but there’s new imaging coming next week. They didn’t sound alarmed. But they didn’t sound casual either.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No,” he said. “But I think I should.”

So she stayed on the line.

And he talked.

And when he stopped, she was still there.

Later, Mira washed her face and caught the glint again. That same piece of glitter still clinging stubbornly near her temple. She smiled to herself. Some things weren’t meant to rinse away.

---

Letters from The Clever Confidante: “The Dialect of Love”
Not everyone learns love the same way

Sometimes the best, clearest mirror, is a child.

Not because they always say the right thing,
but because they notice what we miss.
They pay attention to the things we do without realizing.
The tone we use when we’re tired.
The way we hold stress.
The names we give to our fear.
The way we show up, or don’t, when they need us.

My daughter asked me a question recently that shocked me awake,
the way that only a child can.

She wasn’t trying to stir anything up.
She just… wondered.
And when a child wonders, it’s rarely surface-level.
It’s soul-deep.

It’s their way of asking:
Is love safe?
Was I wanted?
Is this real?

If you’re a parent, or a cycle-breaker,
or a human trying to love better than you were shown,
you know how terrifying those questions are.

Because love doesn’t look the same to everyone.

For some, it looked like schedule, appearances, and expectations.
For others, it was absence. Distance.
A ghost in designer shoes who gave gifts,
but never hugged or showed affection.

Some people grow up in houses so full of rules
they never learned how to rest.
How to ask for affection.
How to believe they were enough without achievement.

And so they grow into adults who hesitate before saying, “I love you.”
Who flinch at softness,
because they never saw it survive.

I know we can learn to love differently.
Not perfectly,
but consciously.

My dad grew up in an abusive home full of addiction, fear, and absence.
That was the love modeled for him.
But somehow, he chose another way.
He became a safe place for me.
And in doing so, he broke one cycle
and left me to heal another.

We can choose again.
We can listen to the ones we’re raising, or walking beside,
or loving late in life…
And ask ourselves:

What story of love am I telling without meaning to?

Love is more than a feeling.
It’s a language.
And if we want to speak it fluently,
we have to be willing to learn each other’s dialects.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ❤️

If you’re learning how to hold it all — the ache and the awe, the beauty and the overwhelm — you’re not alone. Share this with someone who reminds you that real love lives in the quiet.
(Or tell me below: I’d love to hear your story. Sometimes just sharing your experience is enough to share the load.)

☁️ New here? You can start Mira’s Story from the beginning with Chapter Zero.

➡️✨ Continue Mira’s Story with Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Junk Drawer

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