I hadn’t.
The airport felt like a blur of fluorescent lights and mechanical voices. Gate 47. Boarding Group A. First class again, even without him.
Worsewithout him.
I sank into the too-large seat by the window, knuckles white around my boarding pass. I triedsohard not to think about the last flight… about his hands and his lips and his mouth…
I was crying before we even left the ground.
Because it wasn’t just the physical. It hadneverbeen just physical. He had been kind. Observant. A man I’d want to take home to meet my parents.
“Fuck,” my voice stuttered, heart racing as the plane pulled away from the gate. “Fuck,” I had been dreading the flight home, evenwithhim next to me. But I had taken a little solace in the fact that he could read me like a book, and just…comfortme.
But not this time.
This time, I just stared out at the tarmac, crying. Alone.
Stupid.
The days blurred together after that.
I threw myself into work because it was the only thing that didn’t feel hollow. Sorting shipments, making displays, ringing up customers, talking about new releases — it was all mechanical. Easy. Predictable.
But every quiet moment felt like it stretched on forever.
I’d catch myself glancing at my phone, heart lurching every time it buzzed — only to find it was a text from Raymond, or aspam email, or a shipping notification for a book I’d forgotten I preordered.
Not him.
Never him.
I’d even starting lurching at the sound of the bell, tinkling as someone entered the store. Was it him? Would he come back?
At night, I’d lie in bed with my laptop open, halfheartedly scrolling through our fake-dating photos online. The comments underneath them still made my cheeks burn — people fawning over how perfect we looked, how in love we seemed.
They didn’t know that the smiles in those pictures had stopped being fake somewhere along the way.
Sometimes I’d laugh at a memory — something stupid he’d said, the way he’d tease me just to see me roll my eyes — and then I’d cry, because even thinking about him hurt now.
And then there were the moments that I wanted to text himsobadly. Tell him some stupid take or theory I’d seen online about ‘Battle for the Cosmos’ or tell him I’d ordered another Eryk Moonstrider t-shirt.
I was coming apart at the seams.
Raymond noticed.
“You’re quiet,” he said one night as we closed up the shop together.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re lying,” he replied, giving me a look I didn’t have the energy to argue with.
But I didn’t explain. I couldn’t.
Because how do you sayI ruined the only thing that made me feel alive againwithout sounding pathetic?
By the time the second week rolled around, I’d almost gotten used to the ache. It was just there now, a dull throb beneath my ribs.
Raymond dropped a box on the counter in front of me,startling me from my thoughts. “Put this together for me?” he asked with a wink.
