"With Love, Quinn" Chapter 1

 Chapter One: Static Between Us

The phone rang four times before Quinn finally picked up. “Hey,” she said, her voice a soft rasp. On the other end, Mia’s tone was half-concern, half-sarcasm: “Girl, I know you see me calling. You better not be screening again.” She paused, then added, “Finally. I was about to send a carrier pigeon. You good?” There was a beat of silence before Quinn replied, “…Yeah.” But Mia wasn’t convinced. “You sure? You sound like yesterday’s weather.” Quinn hesitated. “Just… tired.” Mia frowned. “It’s barely noon. What’s goin’ on?”

Outside, Los Angeles rumbled and cracked, impatient and indifferent. Mia weaved her way through downtown traffic in her white Range Rover, hands gripping the wheel tighter with each honk and near miss. Construction blocked the usual route to Quinn’s apartment, sending her down an unfamiliar backstreet where a palm tree leaned suspiciously close to a transformer box and a cyclist nearly clipped her mirror.

She cursed under her breath, but her voice softened when she glanced at the name glowing on her phone screen, propped up on the dashboard.

"Stay with me, Q,” she whispered, as if Quinn could hear her thoughts through the static. “Just stay with me a little longer.”

---

Miles away, Quinn Madison sat on the floor of her black and white apartment, leaned against her couch like she had nothing else to hold her upright. Her long, slender fingers cradled a bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey like it was communion. The lights were off. The curtains drawn. Her body still, but her mind was racing—a violent loop of memory and melancholy she couldn’t turn off.

The only sound was her breath, the low hum of the fridge, and Mia’s voice pouring through her phone like a lifeline. Half-smoked blunts crowded the ashtray on the glass coffee table, their ends jagged like old wounds.

Across the room, a small glass vase sat quietly on the kitchen table, holding a bouquet of Lily of the Valleys—delicate, white, and trembling. Quinn’s eyes flickered toward them briefly.

“I hate how quiet it is when I’m like this,” she murmured.

Mia didn’t say anything right away. She knew better. Instead, she let the silence stretch, not with judgment, but with presence.

“Wanna talk about it?” she finally asked.

Quinn took a long sip, then exhaled a bitter laugh. “What chapter of my downfall do you want today? Childhood trauma, artistic rejection, broken relationships, isolation, failure to thrive?”

“I want the truth,” Mia replied. “All of it. Messy and in your voice.”

It had always been like this between them. A rhythm. A slow dance between vulnerability and survival. They’d met fifteen years ago at Virginia State, over stale cafeteria coffee and a spontaneous Nikki Giovanni quote battle. Since then, they had laughed, cried, buried secrets, and built a bond that felt more like blood than friendship.

“I saw a post today,” Quinn said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Someone wrote, ‘I don’t want to die. I just want everything to stop.’ And I swear to God, it felt like they read my mind.”

Mia’s heart thudded in her chest. “Quinn…”

“I’m not gonna do anything,” she added quickly, then paused. “Not today.”

But the weight of “not today” hung in the air like a broken promise.

Mia swerved around a stalled Prius and hit the gas harder. Her eyes darted to the screen again, watching the location dot move closer to Quinn’s apartment. She had twenty minutes, maybe less.

“You remember when we were high out of our minds freshman year and you tried to paint the stars?” Mia asked suddenly.

Quinn chuckled. “I used a toothbrush and blue glitter.”

“You ruined my sheets.”

“They needed to be ruined.”

“That was the night I knew I loved you,” Mia said. “Not romantically. Just… soul-level.”

Quinn swallowed hard. “You’re the only person who ever saw me before I disappeared.”

A beat.

“I’m still here, Q.”

Outside, a red light turned green, but Quinn didn’t see it. She was still staring at the flowers. Lily of the Valley. Sweet. Symbol of a return to happiness. But also, deadly.

QUINN: Mia?
MIA: Yeah babe?
QUINN: If I ever tell you I’m okay when I’m not—promise you’ll know the difference?

Mia’s voice cracked, barely audible. “I already do.”

The bottle tilted again. Quinn winced as the sweetness of the whiskey hit her tongue. It burned a little less than it used to. Or maybe she had simply adjusted to the ache.

“I used to think love would save me,” she said suddenly.

Mia inhaled, cautiously. “What do you mean?”

Quinn pulled Sugar Bear into her lap, the worn brown fur pressed beneath her chin. “Like if I just loved someone hard enough... or if someone loved me loud enough, all the broken parts would come back together. Like magic. Like poetry.”

“But that’s not how life works,” she added, bitterly. “You don’t get rescued. You just get tired.”

Mia’s voice softened. “You don’t have to be okay today, Q. But you do have to keep breathing. Just for now. Just for me.”

The memory came before Quinn could stop it—her mother, Rita, passed out on the couch in a faded yellow tank top, her mouth half-open and her leg dangling off the cushion. The TV blared static. The smell of malt liquor and cocoa butter filled the air.

Quinn had been fifteen, crouched behind the couch, crying silently into Sugar Bear’s fur while the overdue electric bill sat unopened on the counter.

She hadn’t spoken to anyone about that night in years.

“Do you remember my mom’s birthday in 2005?” Quinn asked.

Mia laughed nervously. “I wasn’t around then, remember? You hadn’t met me yet.”

“Right. Sorry.”

There was a pause.

“She got so drunk she threw a bottle at me for not putting her cake in the fridge. Called me selfish. Ungrateful. Told me I ruined her whole damn life.”

Mia’s breath hitched. “Quinn…”

“I never cried, not in front of her. I cleaned it up, took the cake outside, and sat under the porch light eating it with my fingers. I felt so stupid... eating birthday cake alone, like I could still pretend we were a family.”

Mia pulled over into a gas station and put the car in park. The sun was high overhead, casting a blinding glare across her windshield, but she didn’t care. She gripped the phone like a prayer.

“You didn’t deserve that. You didn’t ruin anything.”

“I know,” Quinn said quietly. “I just… it still feels like my fault.”

She picked up one of the blunts and lit it. The flame flickered against the dimness of the room, casting shadows on the wall behind her.

“You know I never told my therapist half this shit?”

“Why not?” Mia asked.

“Because they don’t listen like you do.”

The apartment was still dark, save for the soft glow of the city peeking in through the curtains. Quinn stared at the skyline—at the glass towers and smoke-stained clouds.

“I keep trying to write again,” she said.

“Then do it.”

“I open my notebook, and all I hear is silence.”

“Maybe that’s where you start. Write about the silence.”

Quinn smirked. “You always say something profound like that. Do you practice it in the mirror?”

“Nah, I’m just this fabulous naturally.”

Quinn took another drag, letting the smoke roll from her lips slowly. The room was beginning to feel like a weighted blanket. The kind that helped you sleep but sometimes made it hard to breathe.

“I’ve been dreaming about dying,” she said, her voice almost inaudible.

Mia froze. “What kind of dream?”

“Peaceful. Soft. Like I’m finally not running anymore. Like I can finally exhale.”

“No,” Mia whispered. “That’s not peace. That’s pain dressed in white linen.”

Quinn didn’t respond.

Instead, she looked at the vase of lilies. She had Googled them weeks ago when she saw them at the farmers’ market. The florist had smiled brightly and said, “They’re a sign of hope, of happiness returning.”

But she also read the darker meanings. Return to innocence. Regret. Death.

Duality always follows her.

MIA: Talk to me about something good. Anything. Please.
QUINN: Hmm.
MIA: I’ll wait.
QUINN: Okay. Remember my seventh birthday?
MIA: …Didn’t we just establish I didn’t know you yet?
QUINN: Right. Sorry.
[they both laugh softly]

“Okay, so it's my seventh birthday,” Quinn said, her voice warming slightly. “My dad actually came. He brought me this purple cake shaped like a book. Said it was for ‘my favorite little author.’ I didn’t even know he paid attention like that.”

“That sounds beautiful.”

“It was. I wore this ugly pink dress. And I smiled so much my cheeks hurt. That was the last birthday he came to.”

The warmth faded.

Mia closed her eyes. “You still talk to him?”

“Barely. He texts me on holidays. Sends me Amazon gift cards. I save them but never use them.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to pretend that he loves me.”

The silence returned—thicker now. More jagged around the edges.

Quinn reached for the whiskey again, hesitating.

“Mia?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“If I tell you something… will you promise not to try to fix it?”

Mia hesitated. “I’ll try.”

Quinn’s voice dropped, cracked open.

“I think I’ve been planning to die for a while now. Quietly. Without saying goodbye. But then I remembered you. And I didn’t want you to hear about it from somebody else.”

Tears hit Mia’s cheek before she realized she was crying.

“That’s why I called today.”

Outside, a single drop of rain tapped Mia’s windshield. She hadn’t even noticed the clouds forming.

She put the car back in drive.

“Where are you now?” Quinn asked.

“Close,” Mia replied, breath shallow. “Close enough to stop you.”

“Are you sure you’re not too late?”

Mia gripped the wheel. Her voice was steel.

“I don’t care if I have to kick your door down, Quinn Madison. You are not leaving me like this.”

The Lily of the Valley sat in the vase, still as death. One petal had fallen to the table.

Quinn reached over and picked it up, twirling it between her fingers.

“I didn’t think anyone would notice if I disappeared,” she whispered.

“I did,” Mia said. “And I always will.”