Left Behind by zertus2

[zertus2]

Left Behind

Maya and Chloe used to be best friend in middle school. Then Chloe started dating Brandon and everything changed. Now, years later at a reunion, Maya is the one who will change it all again.

DISCLAIMER: This story was written with the help of AI tools with manual adjustments made by me.

---

1. The Reunion
The invitation had described the evening as A Celebration of Old Friendships, which Chloe Bennett thought was a rather cruel choice of words. The reunion was being held in the gymnasium of their old high school, now transformed with warm lights, round tables, and an open bar. Former classmates wandered between clusters of familiar faces, exchanging stories about teachers they had hated, exams they had barely passed, and people they had not thought about in years. Everywhere Chloe looked, someone seemed to be doing better than they had a right to be doing. There were successful entrepreneurs, married couples with photographs of their children on their phones, and former athletes who had somehow managed to preserve their school-day reputations well into adulthood. Chloe smiled when people approached her, accepted compliments about her appearance, and answered questions about her modeling work. From the outside, she looked like the sort of woman who had won at life.

At twenty-eight, Chloe was the kind of woman who made people turn their heads when she entered a room. Her glossy auburn hair fell in perfect waves over her bare shoulders, her green eyes were accentuated with smoky makeup, and her black evening dress clung to a figure that seemed almost impossibly sculpted: a narrow waist, generous curves, long legs, and the toned definition of a fitness model. Years of cheerleading, followed by a successful career as a fitness influencer and model, had given her a physique that looked spectacular in photographs. In person, she was even more striking. She had the sort of beauty that made strangers stare a second too long, and the confidence to pretend she never noticed.

And yet, as she stood beneath the lights of her old school's decorated gymnasium, clutching a glass of champagne, she felt exhausted.

Beside her stood Brandon Cole, her boyfriend of nearly fifteen years. Once, Brandon had been the golden boy of Westbrook High: the star quarterback, the homecoming king, the young man whose future everyone had confidently predicted would involve professional football, lucrative sponsorships, and a lifetime of being admired. At twenty-nine, he was still handsome. He had broad shoulders, a strong jaw, carefully styled blond hair, and the athletic frame of someone who had spent years taking pride in his physical appearance. But the years had been unkind to his ambitions. His football career had ended before it truly began. A succession of injuries, unsuccessful tryouts, and increasingly bitter explanations had left him with little to show for his years of chasing professional sports. He now worked sporadically as a private coach, complained constantly about missed opportunities, and relied heavily on Chloe's modest office salary to cover their rent and bills.

He had become resentful of her success. Resentful when she booked a modeling job, resentful when strangers complimented her, resentful when she came home tired from work and didn't have the energy to listen to him explain, once again, why the world had failed to recognize his talent. Chloe, who had once been one of the brightest students in her class, had spent so many years prioritizing Brandon's ambitions that she'd never quite recovered the direction she'd lost. She had stopped studying with her best friend, stopped spending afternoons at the library, and stopped applying herself because Brandon had always insisted that her attention belonged elsewhere. At first, it had felt like love. Eventually, it had become a life she hardly recognized.

"Try to smile," Brandon murmured, adjusting his jacket. "You look miserable."

"I'm fine."

"Then stop looking like someone died."

Chloe took a slow breath and looked away. She had learned that arguing with Brandon in public was rarely worth the effort. He would find a way to make her feel guilty for embarrassing him, and somehow the evening would end with her apologizing. She was about to make a polite excuse to get herself another drink when a sudden commotion rose near the entrance. Several former classmates had gathered around someone who had just arrived, and their expressions suggested that they were witnessing something extraordinary.

Then Chloe heard a familiar laugh.

Her heart seemed to stop.

A woman had just walked into the gymnasium, and she was so enormous that, for a moment, Chloe struggled to understand what she was seeing.

Maya Sterling had arrived.

At twenty-seven, Maya was a physical impossibility in the shape of a woman. She stood six-foot-eight in a pair of elegant black heels, with a beautiful face framed by long, dark hair and bright hazel eyes. Her features were strikingly feminine: high cheekbones, full lips, a strong but graceful jaw, and an expression that seemed perpetually on the verge of laughter. She wore a sleeveless midnight-blue evening dress, custom-tailored to accommodate a body that no ordinary designer would have known how to approach. The dress emphasized her extraordinary silhouette, tracing a remarkably narrow waist between broad shoulders and full, curvaceous hips. Her long legs were thick with muscle, her thighs so enormous that the fabric had required special reinforcement, and her calves bulged with the proportions of sculpted stone. Despite her incredible size, she moved with an easy, unhurried grace, as though the world had simply been built a little too small for her and she had long ago learned to make allowances for it.
Her upper body was even more astonishing. Maya's shoulders were wider than Brandon's entire torso, her deltoids forming colossal, perfectly rounded domes that made her seem almost impossibly broad. Her arms hung beside her like gigantic pillars of muscle. Her biceps were immense even at rest, bulging in smooth, absurdly large curves, while her triceps formed massive horseshoes at the backs of her upper arms. Her forearms were thick enough to resemble the cables of industrial machinery, with tendons and veins winding over their dense contours. Her back flared into an enormous V, tapering toward her tiny waist, and her abdomen was a landscape of sharply defined muscle, every segment pronounced beneath her skin. Her proportions were so exaggerated that it was difficult to decide where to look first. She seemed to have the musculature of a mythical giantess, the curves of a classical statue, and the face of the girl Chloe remembered sitting beside her in middle-school classrooms.
But Maya's chest was perhaps the most unbelievable feature of all. She had no breast tissue whatsoever; her entire chest consisted of enormous pectoral muscles, two gigantic, rounded masses extending from her sternum toward her shoulders. Their upper edges rose toward her collarbones, while their lower borders swept across her rib cage in thick, dramatic curves. A deep central groove divided them, and even when she stood completely relaxed, their sheer volume gave her torso the appearance of an armored statue. When she moved her arms, the muscles shifted visibly beneath the fitted fabric of her dress. When she rolled her shoulders, their contours changed, and the sheer mass of her upper body seemed to rearrange itself beneath her skin. She was beautiful, curvaceous, and so monstrously muscular that she seemed to belong to an entirely different order of life.

And she looked happy.

Not the brittle, performative happiness that Brandon had perfected over the years. Maya looked genuinely delighted to be alive. She was laughing with a former teacher, accepting compliments from classmates, and greeting people by name. She had become a successful strength athlete and fitness personality, with sponsorships, a devoted following, and enough money to live comfortably. She traveled, trained, worked on projects she loved, and seemed to have built a life entirely on her own terms. There were rumors that her physique had baffled every specialist who had examined her. Her muscles had grown far beyond anything ordinary training could explain, and she had never been particularly interested in providing a satisfying explanation. She simply enjoyed being Maya.

Brandon stared at her enormous arms, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and irritation.

"What the hell happened to her?"

Chloe didn't answer. She couldn't. Beneath the astonishment, beneath the years of regret and the uncomfortable memories, something else had awakened. For the first time in nearly fifteen years, she was looking at her best friend. Not the shy, gangly girl she'd left behind, but the girl who had shared her lunches, helped her with algebra, and stayed up late on the phone talking about the future. The girl who had once promised that no matter what happened when they got older, they'd always be best friends.
Maya looked across the room. Her eyes found Chloe's, and for one brief moment, the noise of the reunion seemed to fade. Maya's expression softened. Then she smiled, not triumphantly or bitterly, but warmly, with the uncomplicated affection of someone who had never quite forgotten the person she was looking at.

"Chloe!"

She started walking toward them.

Brandon's hand tightened around his glass.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."




2. The Old Best Friends
Maya stopped in front of them, and the difference in their physiques became even more astonishing at close range. Chloe was tall in heels, fit, and beautifully proportioned, but beside Maya she seemed almost delicate. Maya's shoulders towered above her, and her massive arms were individually thicker than Chloe's waist. Brandon, who had always taken pride in being the biggest person in most rooms, had to look up at her. Maya's shadow fell across him, and he shifted his weight as though he were trying to remind himself that he had no reason to be intimidated.

Maya, however, seemed interested only in Chloe.

"Hi, Chlo."

Chloe's lips parted, but for several seconds, nothing came out. She had imagined seeing Maya again over the years, sometimes in dreams and sometimes in the quiet moments when Brandon was asleep beside her and she was left alone with her regrets. In those imagined reunions, she had always had something prepared to say. She would explain herself, apologize, and somehow make the lost years seem less terrible. Now that Maya was standing in front of her, enormous and beautiful and smiling as though no time had passed, every rehearsed sentence had vanished.

"Hi, Maya," she finally whispered.

Maya smiled a little more. "Wow. Look at you."

Chloe gave a nervous laugh. "I could say the same thing."

"Fair."

Maya glanced at Brandon. "Brandon."

"Maya."

They exchanged a brief nod. There was no accusation in Maya's voice, no hostile glare, no pointed remark about the way their lives had turned out. She didn't mention the past or ask why they had stopped talking. She didn't demand an explanation for the fifteen years of silence. She simply stood there, her enormous arms relaxed at her sides, her expression open and friendly. Somehow, that made Brandon more uncomfortable than anger would have. Maya was not behaving like someone who had come to settle a score, and yet her mere presence seemed to bring the past into the room with her.

Brandon shifted uncomfortably. "So, what? You just decided to show up and scare everybody?"

Maya looked down at herself, briefly examining the sheer bulk of her shoulders and arms as though she had only just noticed them. "Was I supposed to send a warning?"

A few nearby classmates chuckled. Brandon's jaw tightened.

"Very funny."

"Thanks."

Maya turned back to Chloe, and her smile softened. "I've missed you."

It was such a simple sentence that Chloe felt it like a hand closing around her heart. She had expected accusations, perhaps even hatred. She had prepared herself to be told that she was a terrible friend, that she had abandoned the one person who had always been there for her. Instead, Maya was standing in front of her, looking at her with an affection that had somehow survived everything.

"I've missed you too," Chloe whispered.

Maya's smile became gentler. "I wondered what happened to you. I tried calling for a while, remember? You stopped answering, and then your number changed."

Chloe looked down at her champagne glass. "I remember."

"I thought maybe you'd gotten busy. Then I figured you didn't want to talk to me anymore."

"No." Chloe's voice cracked. She looked up quickly, desperate to make Maya understand. "No, Maya. It wasn't that."

Brandon interrupted before she could say anything else. "Can we not do this here?"

Maya turned her head toward him. "Do what?"

"This whole dramatic reunion thing. You two haven't spoken in years. People grow apart."

Maya considered him for a moment. "Sometimes."

Brandon folded his arms, apparently satisfied that she had agreed with him. "Exactly."

"Sometimes people grow apart because their lives change," Maya continued. "Sometimes it's nobody's fault. And sometimes somebody spends years making sure one person never gets a quiet moment alone with the other."
The smile never left her face, but something in her voice had changed. Brandon's expression stiffened. Chloe looked up sharply, because she knew exactly what Maya meant, and because she had spent years trying not to think about it.
Maya wasn't shouting. She wasn't even particularly angry. She was simply speaking about things that had happened, things that Brandon had spent years insisting she had imagined or misunderstood. Every word landed with the weight of something long overdue.

"Remember when Chloe and I used to study together?" Maya asked him. "We'd spend entire afternoons at the library. She was brilliant at math. Better than me, honestly."

Chloe gave a tiny, involuntary laugh. "You used to say I could solve anything if I stopped panicking."

"You could."

For a moment, Maya and Chloe were looking at one another as though they were back in middle school, sitting shoulder to shoulder over a textbook, laughing about something neither of them could remember afterward. Then Maya looked at Brandon again.

"Then you two started dating. Which was fine. I was happy for you."

Brandon scoffed. "Glad to hear it."

"But then every time Chloe wanted to see me, you had something to say about it. I was a bad influence. I was boring. I was jealous of your relationship. I didn't understand what it meant to be in love." Maya shrugged, the movement making the enormous muscles of her shoulders roll beneath her dress. "I remember Chloe apologizing to me for things she hadn't done. I remember her canceling plans because you were upset. I remember her grades falling because she stopped studying with me. And I remember you telling people I couldn't stand seeing her happy."

Chloe felt as though someone had pulled the floor out from beneath her. She remembered all of it: the missed library sessions, the canceled birthdays, the afternoons she'd spent waiting for Maya to call, only to tell herself that she was too busy to answer. She remembered Brandon telling her that Maya was trying to sabotage their relationship, that Maya was jealous, that she wanted Chloe all to herself. At twelve, thirteen, fourteen, she had believed him because she had loved him and because she had been too young to understand that love should never have required her to surrender every other meaningful relationship in her life.

"It's not like I stole her from you," Brandon snapped. "Chloe made her own choices."

Maya nodded. "She did."

That answer seemed to throw him off balance. He had clearly expected her to accuse him of controlling Chloe, perhaps to blame him for everything that had happened. Instead, Maya looked at Chloe with compassion rather than blame.

"That's why I'm not angry with her."


Chloe's eyes filled with tears. She wanted to tell Maya that she had never stopped thinking about her, that she had often wondered what her life would have looked like if she had stayed friends with the girl who understood her better than anyone else. She wanted to explain that, little by little, she had stopped being herself. But she could not find the words, and the shame of that silence was almost unbearable.

Brandon gave a disbelieving laugh. "Oh, come on. Are you seriously going to stand there and act like some kind of saint? You disappear for fifteen years, turn yourself into—"

He gestured at Maya's enormous body.

"Whatever that is, and now you think you can come back and judge me?"

Maya glanced at her arms. Her biceps were enormous, their rounded contours visible even with her hands resting loosely at her sides. Her chest rose and fell with a slow, steady breath. Then she looked back at him.

"No, Brandon. I don't need to judge you."

She smiled.

"You're doing a pretty good job of that yourself."

A ripple of laughter spread through the surrounding crowd. Brandon's face darkened, and his embarrassment quickly curdled into anger.

"Seriously, what the hell happened to you? How did you even get muscles like that? And don't you know you look like a fucking freak?"

The word hung in the air.

Several people fell silent. Chloe stared at Brandon, horrified by the sheer pettiness of the remark, while Maya looked at him for a moment with an expression that was difficult to read. Then her face brightened with amusement, as though he had just offered her the perfect opportunity to make a point.

"Oh, you can't GET muscles like these~ Especially not the likes of YOU~"

As she spoke, Maya brought her arms forward and flexed her pectorals.

The effect was spectacular.

Her already enormous chest tightened, the two colossal muscle masses swelling into dramatically rounded slabs. The central groove deepened, and their thick lower borders stood out sharply beneath the fitted fabric. Her gigantic deltoids rose into enormous domes, while her upper arms tightened into mountains of muscle. She drew her elbows inward, emphasizing the immense breadth of her chest, and held the contraction with a playful, almost theatrical confidence.

For a moment, she looked like a living monument to physical power.

Brandon's mouth fell open.

He was a big man. Broad shoulders, muscular arms, a solid chest. In his younger days, he'd been the strongest boy on the football team, and he had carried that distinction like a badge of honor for years. Standing beside Maya, however, he looked as though he had wandered into the wrong weight class. She was not merely bigger than him. She was so much bigger that the comparison seemed almost unfair. Her shoulders dwarfed his, her arms made his look ordinary, and the immense breadth of her pectorals gave her upper body a solidity that his own physique could not approach.

Maya tilted her head. "Anything else you'd like to say?"

Brandon's jaw worked silently. Maya relaxed her chest, then flexed one arm. Her biceps rose into an enormous peak, so large that several people nearby actually laughed in disbelief.

"Sorry," Maya said with a grin. "Was that intimidating?"

"You think you're so impressive," Brandon muttered.

Maya glanced around at the smiling faces, then back at him. "No. I know so. But I also think I'm happy."

That answer struck harder than any insult could have. Brandon seemed unable to understand it. He had spent so many years measuring himself against other people, so many years believing that his worth depended on being admired, that the idea of someone simply enjoying her life without needing his approval seemed incomprehensible.

"I love my life," Maya continued. "I love my work. I love my friends. I love what I've built. And I don't need you to understand any of it."

She leaned forward just slightly, her expression still cheerful.

"But I do think it's funny that the guy who spent middle school trying to make me feel small is now upset because I'm bigger than him."

The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.

Brandon looked around, humiliated. His gaze settled on Chloe, and the familiar expectation returned to his face: she would defend him, smooth things over, and somehow make this all go away.

"Chloe," he snapped. "Are you seriously just going to stand there?"

Chloe wiped her eyes. For the first time that evening, she looked directly at him without fear of what his expression might mean.

"Yes," she said.

Brandon blinked. "What?"

"I'm going to stand here."

"Chloe—"

"No." Her voice trembled, but she did not look away. "You've had fifteen years of telling me who I could see, what I could do, how I should feel, and why everything that went wrong in your life was somebody else's fault."

His face twisted. "I'm the reason you have anything!"

"You have a part-time coaching job, Brandon. I pay our rent. I pay our bills. I pay for almost everything, and somehow I'm still the person who has to apologize whenever you're unhappy."

"Don't embarrass me in front of everybody."

Chloe let out a bitter laugh. "That's what you're worried about?"

He reached for her wrist.

Maya didn't move. She didn't threaten him or step between them. She simply stood nearby, enormous and silent, her expression suddenly unreadable. Brandon noticed her watching, and perhaps for the first time in his life, he seemed to understand how little his usual tricks would accomplish here. He let go.

Chloe looked down at her wrist, then back at him. The decision that had been building inside her for years suddenly seemed so obvious that she wondered how she had managed not to make it sooner.

"I'm done."

Brandon stared at her. "You're what?"

"I'm done. We're done."

He laughed sharply, as though he expected her to take it back. "You can't be serious."

"I've never been more serious in my life."

She removed the little silver ring he'd given her years ago and placed it in his palm. Her fingers were shaking, but her voice grew steadier as she continued.

"I loved you. But somewhere along the way, you decided that loving you meant giving up everything else. My friends. My ambitions. My own judgment. And I let you."

Her eyes shone with tears, but she did not look away.

"And I am so tired of being the person who has to make herself smaller so you can feel important."

Brandon's face hardened. "You're throwing away fifteen years because your old friend showed up with a pair of freak-show arms?"

Maya raised an eyebrow. "Technically, they're attached to the rest of me."

A few people snorted. Even Chloe almost laughed despite herself. The absurdity of Maya's response, delivered with such effortless confidence, cut through the tension like a pin through a balloon.

Chloe took a step away from Brandon.

"I'm leaving with Maya."

Brandon stared at her. "You're making a huge mistake."

Chloe looked at him one last time. "No. I made that mistake a long time ago."

Then she turned toward Maya, and the confidence she'd displayed a moment earlier faltered into something painfully vulnerable.

"Would you..." Chloe began, then stopped.

Maya's expression softened. "Would I what?"

Chloe swallowed. "Would you mind if I stayed with you tonight? I don't really want to be alone."

Maya didn't hesitate.

"Of course you can."

She opened her arms.

They were so enormous that Chloe could have disappeared between them. For a moment, Chloe simply stared at her, overwhelmed by the sight of the girl she had lost and the woman she had become. Then she stepped forward and hugged her.
Maya wrapped her massive arms around her former best friend with extraordinary gentleness, careful not to squeeze too hard. Chloe pressed her face against Maya's shoulder and began to cry. The fabric of Maya's dress felt warm beneath her cheek, and the immense solidity of her friend's body was somehow reassuring. It was difficult to reconcile this gentle embrace with the sheer size of the woman holding her, but Maya had always been stronger than she looked, even when they were children. Back then, it had been a quiet strength: the patience to explain a difficult problem, the courage to stand up for someone being picked on, the determination to keep trying when Chloe wanted to give up. The muscles were new. The kindness was not.

"I'm so sorry," Chloe whispered. "I'm so, so sorry."

Maya rested her cheek against Chloe's hair. "I know."

"I should have called. I should have stood up for you. I should never have let him come between us."

"Maybe."

Chloe drew back, horrified by the answer. Maya smiled and brushed a tear from her cheek with a surprisingly delicate thumb.

"But we're here now."

Chloe laughed shakily. "You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?"

"Nope."

Maya's eyes twinkled. "You owe me at least fifteen years of friendship. I'm planning to collect."

Chloe laughed again, more freely this time. The sound seemed to surprise her, as though she had forgotten what it felt like to laugh without worrying about Brandon's reaction. For a few seconds, she was simply herself again, standing beside the person who had once known her better than anyone.

Then she looked at Maya's face.

Really looked at her.

At the familiar hazel eyes. The smile she remembered from childhood. The warmth she'd missed for so long. And something else surfaced beneath the regret, something she had buried so deeply that she'd almost convinced herself it had never existed.

"Maya?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I tell you something incredibly embarrassing?"

"Please do."

Chloe took a breath. "I used to have the biggest crush on you."

Maya went completely still.

Then her mouth fell open.

"YOU WHAT?"

The entire nearby crowd turned toward them. Chloe covered her face, laughing.

"Oh my God, please don't shout!"

Maya was grinning so widely that it transformed her entire face. "Chloe Bennett! I was in love with you for, like, three consecutive years!"

Chloe lowered her hands. "You were?"

"Yes!"

"But I thought you just wanted to be friends!"

"I did want to be friends! I also wanted to hold your hand and kiss you, but I was twelve and thought that would make my head explode!"

Chloe stared at her. Then both women began laughing, years of awkwardness and regret dissolving into the kind of laughter they'd once shared over whispered jokes in the back of class. They had been so young, so confused by their own feelings, and so afraid of being honest that they had somehow managed to turn affection into distance. Chloe had mistaken Maya's shyness for indifference, while Maya had mistaken Chloe's teasing for rejection. By the time either of them might have understood what was happening, Brandon had already begun driving a wedge between them.

"I was so stupid," Chloe said.

"We were both stupid."

"You could have told me!"

"You could have told me!"

They dissolved into laughter again. Maya wiped a tear from the corner of her eye and took a breath, trying to recover some semblance of composure.

"Okay. Important question."

Chloe smiled nervously. "What?"

Maya leaned down, her expression suddenly shy despite her monumental size. It was almost comical to see someone so physically imposing look nervous about asking a simple question, but Chloe found it unexpectedly endearing.

"Do you still have that crush?"

Chloe's smile faded into something softer. She looked at Maya's beautiful face, then at her enormous shoulders, the ridiculous breadth of her chest, and the warmth in her eyes.

"Unfortunately," she whispered, "I think it's gotten worse."

Maya's cheeks colored. "Good."

"Good?"

"Because I've been looking at you all evening, and I'm pretty sure my eighteen-year-old self would be screaming right now."

Chloe laughed. "Your eighteen-year-old self?"

"She was very dramatic."

"And what does your twenty-seven-year-old self think?"

Maya smiled. "She thinks she'd really like to kiss you."

Chloe's breath caught. For a moment, the years between them seemed to collapse. She was twelve again, sitting beside Maya in a classroom, secretly wishing she could hold her hand. She was sixteen, watching Maya from across a school corridor and pretending not to care when they passed without speaking. She was twenty-eight, standing in a room full of people who had known them before either of them had learned how to hide what they wanted.

"Then what are you waiting for?"

Maya bent down.

Chloe rose onto her toes.

And they kissed.

It began as a tentative, almost disbelieving meeting of lips, a question asked after fifteen years of silence. Then Chloe's hands found Maya's face, and Maya's enormous arms wrapped around her waist, drawing her close with careful tenderness. The kiss deepened, full of laughter and relief and the overwhelming sweetness of discovering that something precious had survived the years apart. Chloe felt Maya smile against her lips, and she laughed softly before kissing her again.

Someone in the crowd cheered.

Then another person clapped.

Within seconds, the entire reunion hall had erupted into applause, whistles, and delighted laughter. Several former classmates were openly grinning, while others exchanged looks of delighted surprise. Somewhere behind them, someone shouted that they had been waiting fifteen years for this to happen, prompting another burst of laughter.

Maya and Chloe finally broke apart, both blushing.

Maya looked around at the cheering crowd. "Well," she said, "this is slightly more attention than I was expecting."

Chloe rested her forehead against Maya's. "I've always been good at making a scene with you."

"That's true."

Maya grinned. Then, with almost absurd ease, she lifted Chloe off the floor in a gentle embrace.

Chloe squealed, wrapping her arms around Maya's neck. "Maya!"

"What? You're very portable."

"I'm going to kill you!"

"Not before our first date, please."

Chloe burst out laughing, clutching Maya's shoulders as her feet dangled above the floor. Maya held her as though she weighed practically nothing, which, given the extraordinary size of her arms and torso, seemed entirely plausible.
Across the room, Brandon stood alone, holding the ring he'd just been given back. For once, nobody was looking at him. His expression was a mixture of anger, humiliation, and disbelief, but none of it mattered to the two women near the exit. Maya didn't spare him another glance. She had said what she needed to say without ever needing to shout at him, and now she was far too busy enjoying the company of someone she had thought she'd lost forever.

Chloe kissed Maya's cheek.

"So," she murmured, "what happens now?"

Maya looked down at her with a radiant smile.

"Now? We get dinner. We talk until three in the morning. You tell me absolutely everything I've missed."

"And after that?"

Maya pretended to think, her enormous arms still wrapped securely around Chloe's waist.

"After that, I take you on a date so spectacular you'll regret every single year we lost."

Chloe smiled, her eyes shining. "Sounds ambitious."

Maya flexed one enormous biceps beside her head.

"Darling, have you seen me?"

Chloe laughed and kissed her again.

And for the first time in nearly fifteen years, neither of them had anywhere else they needed to be.

---

Thanks for reading, feedback is appreciated.

[zertus2]

⚡ Support Saradas

Keep the archive alive with Bitcoin

1QDxcxUx8pnsZvauyVxTqaJrWkeNhQrPdK

Donate →

[JangoFitt5]

Good job, I look forward to your new stories!