Finis Amoris

I have always been the one who fixes the girl for the next person.

I meet an avoidant woman and turn her into someone who isn’t afraid to confront her emotions. I sit with her in the dark corners she avoids, I name the things she cannot say, I hold space for storms she never learned to weather. And then she leaves like it’s some sort of ritual, like I was never meant to stay, only to prepare her for someone else.

And I am left there.

Like some ragtag doll, stitched together poorly, missing pieces I don’t remember giving away. Looking back now, I always wondered why I felt the need to help them. Was it love or my inherent savior syndrome? Call me Captain Save a Ho if you need to, I’ve earned the title in blood and patience.

Now I stand in my room, staring at the mementos of their things. Pieces of them. Pieces of me. And I don’t feel rage. I’m not upset. I should be upset. They all left me after taking something with them—my personality, my humor, the light behind my eyes. But all I feel is this quiet, unsettling stillness.

Even now, I wonder if they’re okay.

Suppose Bella’s relationship with her mother has become better, if she can finally breathe in her own house without feeling like she’s suffocating. If Matilda finally accepts who she sees in the mirror, if she no longer looks at herself as if she were something to endure. If Sienna now understands what it truly means to love someone.

Sienna.

I remember our last conversation like it’s carved into bone.

I was begging her not to give up on us, asking her to see the possibility of what we could be. My voice wasn’t loud, but it was desperate in a way that stripped me bare.

“I’d give the moon to be with you.”

I meant every word.

And she looked at me—calm, unmoved, almost distant.

“I wouldn’t give you the sun even if I had it.”

I remember the sensation that ran through my spine—the chills. The way my stomach rumbled was like something inside me had just collapsed. She wouldn’t even love me the way I wanted, even if she could.

For a while, I wondered whether I was the issue.

And if that was the case, then I knew what had to be done.

I pick up the box of mementos. It feels heavier than it should, like it carries versions of myself I no longer recognize. I walk to the trash and dump it all without ceremony, without hesitation.

Then I set it ablaze.

The fire starts small and hesitant, then grows into something alive, something consuming. It curls around photographs, letters, and memories, devouring them without care. The fire symbolizes more than letting go of my past. It signifies my rebirth. Like a phoenix from the ashes, I tell myself I will be different.

Because if you deal with avoidant women long enough, you become avoidant yourself.

I feel it happening. The slow closing off. The instinct to withdraw, to no longer be vulnerable or endlessly understanding. I tell myself I will not excuse ill manners. I will not dress carelessness in soft words and call it harmless. I will not accept “I’m just a girl” as justification for things that cut deep.

Because if there’s anything I’ve learned at all, it’s this—people know what they are doing. And the idea that they don’t is nothing but naivety and tomfoolery.

I would no longer succumb to such notions.

And then I met Leah.

She seemed actually to enjoy my presence.

It threw me off balance in a way chaos never did. I wasn’t used to it. Being with her was not a chase. I wasn’t running after some unattainable goal, nor was I stretching myself thin trying to be enough. Instead, it felt like she wanted to be caught.

And I didn’t know how to exist in something that didn’t require me to struggle.

I remember a conversation we had, the air soft around us, the world distant.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks, her eyes narrowing slightly, amused but curious.

“Like what?” I reply, though I already know.

“Like you’re waiting for me to disappear.”

The words land more heavily than they should.

I let out a small breath, looking away for a second, gathering something I didn’t realize I was holding.

“Maybe I am,” I admit.

She leans back slightly, studying me, not with judgment, but with a quiet kind of interest. “Do people usually do that? Disappear on you?”

A bitter smile tugs at my lips.

“Yeah,” I say softly. “Usually right after I start thinking they won’t.”

There’s a pause. Not uncomfortable. Just real.

Then she reaches out, her fingers brushing against mine. Warm. Certain. Present.

“I’m not them,” she says.

Simple. Steady.

And for the first time in a long time, I don’t know what scares me more.

Believing her.

Or finding out she’s wrong.

Still, I was starting to feel it—that slow, unfamiliar opening. Like something inside me was remembering how to breathe again. Leah was patient with me in ways I didn’t understand, gentle where I expected distance. Maybe that’s why that phone call still haunts me.

She was supposed to meet me at the beach that day.

I had gone ahead early, wanting everything to be perfect. I remember adjusting things that didn’t matter, smoothing sand that would never stay still, and rehearsing nothing and everything all at once. When my phone rang, I smiled before I even answered.

But when she spoke, it was faint. Fragile. Like her voice was slipping through something I couldn’t see.

“Jordan, can you hear me?”

“Hi, baby, where are you? I already have the place set up,” I said, my voice warm and steady, trying to anchor the moment to what it was supposed to be, my hands trembling slightly as I clasped open the ring box

“I’m sorry, baby… I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

The words hit wrong. They didn’t belong here, not in this moment, not in this version of the day I had already imagined a hundred times.

“What? Why? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” The questions came out too quickly, tripping over each other, my chest tightening with worry, confusion, and panic.

There was a pause—a fragile, breaking kind of silence.

“You know I love you, right?” she said softly. “And whatever happens… I’m glad to have known you.”

Something inside me shifted. Not fully, not clearly, but enough to make my hands start to shake.

“Baby, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

Her voice was tearing now, unraveling at the edges. “It wasn’t your fault, okay? I don’t want you blaming yourself or anything of the sort.”

“I don’t understand… why would I blame myself?” My voice felt distant to my own ears, like I was already outside of the moment, watching it happen to someone else.

“Promise me you’ll be happy.”

The words didn’t make sense. Not together. Not like this.

“Baby, I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Promise me,” she said again, softer this time, like she was slipping further away.

My throat tightened. “I promise.”

And then

Silence.

“Leah?” I called out.

Nothing.

The world narrowed into something sharp and suffocating. I used Find My iPhone, my hands shaking as I tracked her location. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I could feel it in my bones. Something was wrong.

I drove like a man chasing time itself.

And when I got there, the horror of it rooted me to the ground.

She was on the sidewalk. Blood pooling beneath her like something irreversible, something final. People stood around, watching, murmuring, saying things like “What a pity,” her life had already been reduced to commentary.

The words float above me, detached, weightless, like they don’t belong to the moment they’re describing.

“This area isn’t safe anymore. A robbery in broad daylight.”

“They apparently stabbed her over three times.”

Their voices blur together, strangers stitching together a story out of fragments, out of guesses, out of something that no longer belongs to them. They stand at a distance, careful not to get too close and careful not to let it become real.

But it is real.

She is real.

I ran to her.

Her blood is warm against my hands, too warm, soaking into my clothes like it’s trying to take root inside me. My fingers tremble as I try to hold her together, as if pressure alone can undo what’s already been done.

“Leah… hey… hey, stay with me,” I whisper, my voice breaking.

Her head rests against my chest, too still, too quiet. She is not supposed to be like this. She’s supposed to be laughing, teasing me about something small, something insignificant. She’s supposed to be walking toward me on the beach, sunlight caught in her hair.

Not this.

Never this.

“Somebody call an ambulance!” I shout, my voice tearing through the air, desperate, pleading. But the world feels slow. Muffled. Like it’s moving around me instead of with me.

“What a pity,” someone says again, softer this time.

I want to scream at them.

I want to grab them and force them to see her the way I see her. Not as a story. Not as a headline. But as Leah. As the girl who reached for my hand and said she wasn’t like the others. As the voice that told me to be happy just moments ago.

“Leah, look at me… please,” I beg, my forehead pressing against hers, my breath uneven, breaking.

But she doesn’t move. So I carried her myself. Her weight in my arms felt both real and unreal, like I was holding something I could not afford to lose. I rushed her into my car and drove toward the hospital, even though somewhere deep inside, I knew.

I knew.

But I refused to believe it.

At the clinic, they took her from me. Hands pulling her away, voices urgent, machines beeping as they could bargain with death. I stood there, useless, praying to a God I barely believed in.

Please. Please.

She cannot die.

Not like this.

The doctor came out too soon.

I already knew what he was going to say.

And the world went dark.

The days after were a blur. Faces, voices, and hands on my shoulders. I remember consoling her friends when I could barely hold myself together. I remember the candlelight vigil, flames flickering in the night like fragile attempts to keep her alive in memory.

Leah was buried later that week.

It was small. Intimate. Just Leah’s closest friends and family.

And me.

I was a wreck after her death. I tried to be strong for her, tried to continue wading through life like it still made sense. But I found more comfort at the bottom of a bottle than I ever did in daylight.

Everything spiraled.

Because when two people are loyal, life will cheat.

And it cheated me badly.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

I used to think I was the kind of person who could fix things. Fix people. That if I loved hard enough, gave enough, stayed long enough, it would mean something.

But I keep ending up here.

Alone.

Leah told me not to blame myself.

I keep hearing that.

Over and over again.

And I don’t know if I believe her.

Because if it isn’t my fault, then what is it? Bad luck? Fate? Some cruel pattern I keep walking into with my eyes wide open?

I loved her.

God, I loved her.

And for once, it felt like I was loved back the same way.

No chasing. No fixing. No proving.

Just… love.

And it still ended.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from that.

I don’t know how to keep going without turning into something cold.

But I’m tired.

So tired.

And for the first time, I’m not trying to fix anything.

I’m just writing this down…

…because I don’t know what else to do.