Camila | Mini-Series Stories by JBE Mindful Pathways
Mini-Series Stories | JBE Mindful Pathways
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Camila had been smiling for three hours straight, and her jaw was starting to ache.
Not from joy—no, joy had left sometime after the second awkward hug from relatives who barely knew her.
It was from holding it together.
The speeches were done, the tassel turned, the photos taken. Everyone kept saying, “You made it, Camila!” like they knew what it took. They didn’t know about the rent notice shoved in her purse. They didn’t know the internship she’d fought for had fallen through the week before finals.
They saw a graduate. She saw a deadline.
When her phone buzzed in the middle of a toast, she glanced down. It wasn’t a congratulations text. It was the kind of message you don’t read twice unless you’re ready to feel your stomach drop. And in that moment—surrounded by laughter and champagne—Camila knew her night was about to end very differently than it had begun.
The text was from Mateo. She hadn’t heard from him in six months—not since that night in the rain when she’d slammed the door and told him to never call again. Camila, I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to reach out to. I’m in trouble.
Her first thought was to delete it. Pretend she’d never seen it. But her hands shook as she typed, What happened? and hit send.
The reply came fast, like he’d been staring at the screen, waiting for her name to appear. Not here. Can’t explain. Please—meet me at our place.
Her stomach knotted. Our place wasn’t just any place—it was the bench under the fractured streetlight, half-hidden by the twisted branches of the old elm. The last time she’d been there with Mateo, he’d whispered things that made her blood run cold, then swore she’d be safer if she forgot.
She slipped her phone into her gown pocket, murmured something about air, and left the table. The night was cool, the kind that made your skin prickle. Every step toward the park felt heavier, her breath syncing to the steady click of her heels.
When she reached the corner, the broken streetlight flickered once—on, off, on again—just like the night they’d first met there.
There was no one on the bench.
Only a scrap of paper weighed down by a key.On it, in Mateo’s handwriting, were three numbers: 144.
And beneath them, a single word: Run.
—JBE Mindful Pathways
Where the last word is never the end.
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