Zara
The estate walls never felt so suffocating until I came back. Same streets, same trimmed hedges, same neighbors peeking through curtains as if gossip is their only fuel. And of course—Alex.
She lived just across, her house visible from my bedroom window, her presence lingering even when she wasn’t there. The thought of bumping into her at the gate, in the supermarket, or worse, on our shared street during one of those forced neighborhood barbecues, made my chest tighten.
Our birthdays were only hours apart. Maybe that was why she had come that night. Maybe she thought it meant something, some twisted thread of fate binding us together. The reminder made me want to claw my skin off.
But that was the least of my problems.
At breakfast, my father dropped the bomb.
“You’re engaged.”
