I stood in my living room and breathed in evidence of someone who wasn't here anymore. Not gone-gone. Absent. Probably temporarily.
My apartment had feelings in it.
The walls were saturated with the last forty-eight hours—kissing and laughing —and his commentI like you exactly as you are. The air was thick with the ghost of his hands and his mouth and all the things I'd let myself believe while his body was wrapped around mine.
I couldn't think there. Every surface was a crime scene.
My legs ached from hockey—post-adrenaline exhaustion that settled into my muscles like wet sand—but my nervous system hadn't gotten the memo. I paced to the kitchen and back. My body wanted to move, do something physical with all the energy that had nowhere else to go.
I grabbed my jacket and locked up without drama, taking the stairs two at a time.
I walked fast, not because I was in a hurry but because my legs needed the work. The ache in my thighs felt good. It was something real to focus on instead of the mess inside my chest.
I passed the laundromat where Jake had once lost a sock and filed a formal complaint with the owner. The parking lot where Hog taught me to parallel park after I'd failed my road test twice. The alley where Desrosiers had puked after his birthday last year.
Thunder Bay landmarks. Evidence of a life I'd built here, piece by piece, before Adrian Richter showed up with a camera and rearranged everything.
By the time I reached Jake and Evan's building, my face was numb, and my thoughts had stopped shouting. Not fixed, but less loud.
I climbed the stairs and knocked.
Jake opened the door mid-sentence.
"—and I'm saying, if the producers actually cared about the integrity of the competition, they wouldn't let someone with that obvious of a spray tan make it to the final round—"
"I don't agree with you," Evan called from inside.
Jake looked at me. "He agrees with me spiritually." He stepped back to let me inside. "The spray tan industrial complex has infiltrated reality television, and nobody is talking about it."
I walked past him into the living room.
Evan was on the couch, folding laundry. The TV was frozen on what looked like a dating show—two people in formal wear on a beach, one of them crying and both deeply tan.
"Beer's in the fridge," Evan said without looking up. "Jake bought cheese puffs."
"Cheese puffs are real food," Jake said. "They're made of cheese. And puffs."
"They're made of corn and orange dust."
"Orange dust is a flavor, Evan."
I grabbed a beer. The bottle was cold and familiar—the same brand Jake always bought. It had a label that peeled off in satisfying strips when you needed something to do with your hands.
Jake deposited himself on the couch. He was already elbow-deep in a bag of cheese puffs the size of a small child. He gestured to the armchair. "Sit. You look like a person who needs to sit."
I sat. Or tried to. The armchair was hideous—brown corduroy that rubbed rough against my forearms, a suspicious stain on one cushion—but usually it swallowed me like a hug.
Tonight, my body wouldn't settle. My knee bounced. I pressed my hand against it. It bounced anyway.
Jake noticed. Didn't comment.
He shoved the cheese puff bag in my direction. "Okay. What's your story?"
No buildup. No careful circling.
I took a handful of cheese puffs. Shoved three into my mouth at once.
This was why I'd come. Not because they had answers—nobody did—but because they had the noise, snacks, and the complete absence of expectation.
