CHAPTER 1: My First Love

The rain fell in cold, heavy sheets over Moscow’s streets, turning the asphalt to black glass. Inside my Lada, the wipers fought a losing battle against the downpour, and I kept wiping at the fogged windshield with my sleeve, trying to make out the glow of streetlights ahead. In my jacket pocket, folded so many times the paper was thin as skin, was the letter I’d written Elaine—fourteen pages of words I’d never been brave enough to say out loud.

Elaine Nepheleas, it began, in the neat cursive she’d once teased me for practicing too hard. I know you think I’m too much sometimes. Too loud, too present, too… clingy. But you don’t understand—when I’m not near you, the world feels like it’s missing a piece. Like I’m breathing half-air.

I’d met her three years ago, when her family moved from Athens to our neighborhood for her father’s work at the embassy. I’d been leaning against the school wall, trying to look cool while my hands shook with nerves on my first day of tenth grade, when she’d tripped over my backpack and sent her Greek textbooks scattering across the concrete. Even covered in dust and ink, she’d smiled at me—wide and warm, like sunshine breaking through clouds—and said, “I’m Elaine. Sorry about your shoes.”

Since then, I’d been impossible to shake. I waited for her at the bus stop every morning, even when she took the metro with her new friends. I learned to make her favorite spanakopita from a recipe her grandmother sent from Crete, burning my fingers twice before I got it right. I sat through every one of her art exhibitions at school, even when she told me she’d rather I didn’t come. People called me obsessed. Her friends whispered behind her back about the “Russian boy who can’t take a hint.” But I didn’t care—I’d rather be too much than not enough.

Tonight, I’d gotten word she was leaving next week. Going back to Greece to study at the Athens School of Fine Arts. I couldn’t let her go without telling her how I felt. I’d driven across the city in the storm, my hands tight on the wheel, planning to wait outside her apartment until she came home. But when I pulled up to the building, I saw him through the window—Nikolas, a Greek exchange student she’d been spending time with, holding her hand as they looked at something on his phone.

The way she laughed, leaning into his shoulder… it was the way I’d dreamed she’d be with me a thousand times over.

I sat there for a long moment, watching them, before I finally turned the key and pulled away. The roads were slick, and my vision was blurred by tears I refused to let fall. Just one more chance, I thought, pressing harder on the gas. I’ll find her tomorrow. I’ll make her listen.

A horn blared from nowhere. Headlights flooded the windshield—too bright, too fast. I swerved, but the car skidded on the wet road, spinning out of control before slamming into a concrete barrier. The impact sent the letter flying from my pocket, dancing through the shattered window into the rain like a pale white bird.

The last thing I felt was not pain, but a hollow ache in my chest. Elaine, I tried to say, but there was no air left in my lungs. All I could see was her face, smiling in the dark.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***