Chapter 2 Nothing Left Behind
POV: Millie
Other than Chasity, I'm leaving nothing behind in this city. I tape down the last box and glance at the window, taking one last look at the skyline during golden hour. All glass and light, like the whole place is showing off for an audience that already left. The buildings catch the sun and throw it back, defiant and beautiful, but the beauty feels hollow now.
L.A. is gorgeous. Full of gorgeous people who shine like they're lit from the inside. People like Chasity and Rod. People who belong here, who move through this city like they were born knowing its rhythm. I'm not one of them, and we both know it. I've always been half a beat behind, stumbling when I should glide.
"You're really doing this," Chasity says from the doorway, her voice tight with something she won't name. It's not really a question anymore.
"I'm really doing this." I sit back on my heels and look around the empty room, feeling the weight of finality settle over me. I prefer quiet to noise, open fields to packed sidewalks, the kind of silence you can actually hear instead of traffic that never stops outside. The constant hum of the city has always felt like static in my brain, wearing me down bit by bit. I've never belonged in Los Angeles, and even Chasity's stopped arguing with me about it. Wherever I'm going, it has to be better than this apartment. Maybe I'll even find somewhere I actually belong, a place where I don't have to pretend to be someone I'm not.
Accidents happen every day. I never bothered learning the statistics, how many people die in car crashes every year. Not until the day the number stopped being abstract and became my parents. Not until I became a statistic myself - one of those people left behind.
They were people like Chasity and Rod too, once. Golden. Easy to love. The kind of people who lit up a room just by walking into it. I loved this city because they loved it, because their enthusiasm was infectious and made everything seem possible. After they died during my junior year of college, I stayed put out of nothing but stubbornness. Like leaving would mean losing them twice, erasing the last traces of who they were.
I pick up the last photograph off the dresser - my parents squinting into the sun on some beach years ago, their faces bright with joy. I wrap it in a t-shirt before setting it in the box, my hands gentle with this fragile piece of the past. It's the only picture I have where my dad's missing half his face, because my mom couldn't stop laughing long enough to hold the camera steady. I can still hear that laugh sometimes, when I'm not expecting it.
It's been three years since the accident. Some days I still feel like an orphan, the word sitting heavy and strange on my tongue. Twenty-four and parentless, like the word doesn't expire just because time passes, like I should have outgrown this grief by now. I tried for a while to live up to whatever legacy I thought they left behind, to be the daughter they would have been proud of. But the harder I tried to pin it down, the more I realized that legacy only existed in my head, a ghost I'd been chasing through empty rooms. The house I grew up in is gone, sold off years ago to pay for things I can barely remember now. My parents were cremated. Their ashes went into the ocean, scattered on a gray morning that felt too ordinary for goodbye. There's nothing left except what's packed into a few cardboard boxes and whatever memories I've held onto, worn smooth by repetition like stones in a river.
I'm not miserable here. I want to be clear about that, to be fair to this city that tried its best with me. I'm just not entirely happy either, caught in that liminal space between contentment and discontent. There isn't a single real reason left for me to stay in this city, other than the fact that saying goodbye to Chasity is going to wreck me. She's been my anchor, the one person who kept me tethered when I felt like drifting away.
Chasity sniffs like she heard that thought out loud, even though I definitely didn't say it. Her eyes are suspiciously bright. "I hate you for leaving, by the way."
"I know." I almost smile, my throat tight with unshed tears.
It's not even like I'm walking away from some big dream job, abandoning a career I've built or a future I've planned. The closest I ever got to being an actual librarian was working at a used bookstore three blocks from here, surrounded by the musty smell of old pages and other people's abandoned stories. As of last week, even that's gone, another loss in a long line of them.
"You're going to miss that place?" Chasity asks, wrinkling her nose in that way she does when she's trying not to cry.
"I'm going to miss the free coffee and the employee discount," I tell her, keeping my voice light. "Beyond that, not really." The lie tastes bitter. I'll miss the quiet corners, the regulars who knew my name, the way time seemed to slow down between the shelves.
The store closed. My schedule's wide open now, in the worst possible way - empty hours stretching ahead with nothing to fill them.
I was barely scraping by before that happened, paycheck to paycheck, watching my bank account hover just above zero. Nothing about an apartment in the shiny golden land of opportunity comes cheap, especially not when you're trying to survive on minimum wage and tips. That's the real reason I'm leaving, if I'm being honest with myself. The practical one, the one that doesn't involve grief or belonging or any of the messy emotional reasons. My pride won't let me stay and mooch off Chasity and Rod while I look for another job and try to save enough to move out on my own. They need their privacy, their space to be a couple without a third wheel haunting their living room. This place is barely big enough for two people, let alone three, and I've felt like an intruder for months now.
"You know you could just stay until you find something," Chasity says, her arms crossed defensively over her chest. We both already know how this conversation ends, have played it out a dozen times before.
"I can't, Chas." I shake my head and reach for the last unopened envelope sitting on top of the dresser, the one with the attorney's letterhead stamped in the corner. The paper feels heavy in my hands, weighted with possibility.
The truth is, I've got other options now besides living off Chasity and Rod's kindness. If I look at it the right way, I guess I should call it incredibly unexpected luck, though it feels more like fate playing a cosmic joke. The letters. The phone calls from some attorney with the most annoying, nasally Midwestern twang I've ever heard, each conversation more surreal than the last. Turns out, I own land now - an inheritance from a great-aunt I met exactly twice in my entire life. One hundred and seventy-seven acres of it. Woods and rolling farmland, complete with cows, chickens, horses, and an actual farmhouse sitting in the middle of absolutely nowhere. A place so far removed from this concrete jungle that it might as well be another planet.
"You, on a farm," Chasity snorts, like it's the funniest thing she's heard all week, though her laughter sounds forced. "You can't even keep that succulent I gave you alive."
I tuck the letter into my back pocket without reading it again. I already know what it says by heart, have memorized every word like a prayer or a curse. The succulent sits brown and shriveled on the windowsill, a testament to my inability to nurture anything.
She's not wrong, though. What's someone like me supposed to do with a place like that? Someone who can't keep a houseplant alive, who's never owned so much as a goldfish, who considers the city park the great outdoors, and who's never seen more than an inch of snow in her entire life. Someone who doesn't know the first thing about farming or animals or what to do when the nearest neighbor is miles away. The truth is, I really don't have a clue. But maybe that's exactly why I need to go - to figure out who I am when I'm not trying to be the person this city expects me to be.
