Work Text:
Chloe’s forty five minutes late when she steps out of the airport with her bag over her shoulder. Sky overcast with a sad grey threatening rain. She turns her phone back on and a storm of notifications floods it. A lot of texts, and twenty two missed calls. One from David surprisingly, but most from-
The phone starts buzzing in her hand and a contact photo fills the screen, a selfie of her and Max throwing the devil horns at a show they went to. She sighs and answers the call. “Hey,” she says quietly.
“Chloe?” Max’s voice comes through the phone shakily. “Y-you weren’t answering your phone, I’ve been worried.” Chloe doesn’t answer and after a moment Max continues. “I’m at the church… where are you?”
Chloe sighs again, this was gonna suck even more than she thought it would. “I’m not coming Max… I’m sorry.” She squeezes her eyes shut as a drizzle starts to fall.
A long silence follows, long enough for Chloe to contemplate just ending the call there. “Why?” Max’s voice comes through eventually, sounding just absolutely shattered.
“When we were teens, I thought that being able to rewind time was the coolest shit in the world,” she begins. Chloe had tried to rehearse this on the plane, she wasn’t sure how well it was gonna turn out. “Eventually I figured out that always going back means you’re not looking forward. Always carrying the past, Mom, Rachel, it’s not helping either of us.”
“Chloe… please,” Max was crying now. “I can fix this. I can-“
“That’s the problem Max,” Chloe cut her off. “You can’t fix everything. People are messy, real lives are messy. I want to live in the now and the messy, not the perfect past.” She sighed again. “That’s also why I had to do this like I did.”
“What do you mean?” Max croaked.
“Max…” Chloe trailed off. “You let a whole town get wiped off the map to save me… I don’t know what you’d do just to keep me.”
“I… I would never!” She sounded so desperate now.
“I want to believe that Max,” Chloe sighs again. “But the fact that I don’t know that, scares me.”
“Chloe don’t do this, please!” Max begs.
“I love you Max, that will always be true,” Chloe breathes. “I hope you find someone you no longer feel the need to rewind for.”
“Chloe-“
“Goodbye Max,” she hangs up the phone and blocks the contact before it can ring again.