I knocked. Soft. Two knuckles against wood.
No answer.
The vacuum cut off. In the sudden silence, I heard my own breathing.
A woman emerged from 216—wearing a gray uniform, with tired eyes. She saw me and paused.
"Friend of his," I said. "I'm waiting."
She looked at me. Looked at the door. Shrugged and went back to loading towels onto her cart.
I pushed the door open another few inches.
"Adrian?"
Nothing.
I stepped across the threshold. One step. Two. Just far enough to be inside, close enough to the door to still feel the hallway air on my back.
Don't close the door. Don't go further. Don't do anything you can't explain.
Behind me, I heard the housekeeper's cart squeak as she pushed it down the hall. The vacuum started up again somewhere distant.
I stood in Adrian's doorway and looked at what he'd been living in for two weeks.
I’d been there before, and it still looked like nobody lived there.
For two weeks, Adrian had been sleeping in this space, and there was nothing. No coffee mug with a dried ring at the bottom. No book splayed open on the nightstand. No jacket thrown over a chair.
The bed was made with military precision. Hospital corners. Pillows aligned like soldiers awaiting inspection. I'd seen my bed in the mornings after Adrian slept in it—sheets twisted, blankets half on the floor. This wasn't that. This was a bed made by someone who expected to be evaluated.
His clothes hung in the open closet. Dark jeans. Soft sweaters in gray, navy, and black. So perfectly folded, it made my fingers itch.
He was always planning to leave.
The thought arrived out of thin air. I shoved it aside, but it left residue.
Five coffee cups clustered on the dresser. I counted them automatically—the thing my brain did when it needed something small to hold onto. Five cups, all empty, lined up in a neat row. The only crack in the stage dressing.
So much coffee. So much not sleeping. Whatever Adrian had been handling, it had been eating him alive.
For one stupid second, I wanted to—
No.
He didn't get my sympathy. Not when he'd had my trust and done this with it.
There, on the desk: the laptop.
Closed but not put away.
The vacuum stopped somewhere down the hall. Silence flooded in.
I heard the cart wheels squeak. Footsteps moving away. Another door closing.
I was alone.
I crossed to the door and closed it.
