It started without me noticing. Somewhere between the second week and the third, Vance's presence had become the axis around which my days turned. The sound of his key in the lock. The heavy tread of his boots in the hallway. The way he'd pause in the doorway, scanning the room before his eyes found mine.
For a few brief days, that pause had felt like coming home. Like being seen.
Now I counted the hours he was gone because they were the only hours I could breathe without the weight of his absence crushing my chest.
The blackout had changed everything.
That night, huddled together on the floor with flickering candles, I told him things I'd never told anyone. About my family. About Elizabeth. About the hollow years of performing a version of myself that had never been real. He held my hand in the darkness, and when the power came back on and we stood too close, faces inches apart, I was certain he was going to kiss me.
He hadn't.
He stepped back, creating distance between us. He said goodnight in a voice that sounded like gravel.
And in the morning, he was gone.
On the first day, I told myself it was work.
He'd mentioned catching up after the power outage, systems to check, reports to file. The hotel didn't run itself, and he was head of security. Of course, he had responsibilities.
I made breakfast for two anyway, setting his plate across from mine. I waited until the eggs went cold before scraping them into the trash.
On the second day, I told myself it was coincidence.
He came home late, after I'd already eaten. He mumbled something about overtime and went straight to the shower. Iheard the water running for a long time, longer than usual, as if he were washing off something that wouldn't come clean.
When he emerged, he didn't look at me.
"How was your day?" I asked.
"Fine."
"I made pasta. There's some in the fridge if you're hungry."
"I ate at the hotel."
He crossed to the couch, turned on the TV, and that was it. The entirety of our conversation: three sentences followed by a wall of silence.
I went to bed and stared at the ceiling for hours, replaying every moment of the blackout, trying to figure out what I'd done wrong.
By the third day, I knew.
It wasn't work. It wasn't coincidence. It was me.
Something had shifted during that storm; a line had been crossed that I couldn't uncross, and now he was pulling away. I'd revealed too much, wanted too much, let him see too much of the desperate, hungry thing inside me.
And he was running.
I tried to fix it.
That's what I did, wasn't it? Fixed things. Made myself useful. Smoothed over problems until they disappeared. The Langford family specialty: make everything look perfect, even when it was rotting from the inside.
I cooked his favorites: the carbonara that had made him grunt with approval, the roasted chicken he'd eaten seconds of without being asked. I cleaned things that were already clean, organized drawers that didn't need organizing, and filled every moment with activity so I wouldn't have to sit with the growing certainty that I'd ruined everything.
He came home later and later, left earlier and earlier. The spaces between us stretched until I could barely remember what it felt like to be close to him.
I started leaving the bedroom door cracked at night, telling myself it was for airflow. Really, it was so I could hear him moving around the apartment, to know he was still there, still real, still mine in some small way, even if he couldn't stand to look at me.
Most nights, I fell asleep listening for footsteps that never came close enough.
