“I just…” My throat burned. “I moved. Into a new place. With Thalia and Claire.” Background noise crackled like static through the phone. “I thought maybe you could come by.”
There was a painful delay in his response. I had to check to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected.
“Sin. I can’t. I’m flying to Atlanta tonight. Last-minute work thing. Sponsorship meeting. I’ll be gone a few days.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll call when I land, okay? I’m just about to board the jet.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Sure. It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t. He hung up, and the room felt too big for my body. The silence was pressing in from every side. I set my phone down gently, like it might break if I let go too fast.
Something inside me cracked. Just… a fissure. A hairline fracture from trying too hard to hold it all together. First my parents. Then my aunt. Now Theo. All three left like I didn’t matter. One left because he had to. Both felt the same.
I curled up on the mattress, gripping the edges like they might slip out from under me. Tears pricked and burned the back of my eyes. No one was coming. No one ever did.
Outside, the city kept moving. Someone shouted in Spanish two floors below. A siren wailed three blocks over. Thalia’s laugh breached the walls before a door slammed, muting it slightly. Life kept going. It always did.
The sun bled across the sky, time marching forward continuously because it didn’t know how to stop. It should’ve been beautiful. But all I saw was the space between me and everyone else.
Wide. Silent. Unbridgeable.
I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper and told myself I didn’t care. That I never had. Even if some part of me was still screaming for someone—anyone—to prove me wrong. Finally, the tears I’d been blinking back fell. Once the floodgates opened, I couldn’t shut them again. Eventually exhaustion claimed me.
He never called.
Morning sunlight knifedthrough my closed eyes—sharp, merciless—splitting my skull like an axe. I groaned and yanked the pillow over my head like it could muffle the truth. Like it could shut out the silence, the absence, the ache of him.
Sleep had been a war I lost over and over again. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him. Every time I opened them, I reached for a phone that stayed cold, silent, empty.
I checked it like an addict, religious and desperate, chasing phantom notifications that never came. Pathetic didn’t even begin to cover it—I was unraveling.
Every hour that passed without a call, without a text, without a single fucking syllable from him burrowed deeper beneath my skin, like splinters of glass under my nails.
I’d spent years building armor so thick not even grief could touch me. I’d trained myself to survive without softness, without anyone. I’d turned my own heart into a weapon and taught myself never to need.
And then Theo. Fucking,Theo.Fucked it all up.
He didn’t knock. He didn’t ask permission. He just walked in andmade a home out of my ruins.He found the cracks, slidbetween them like smoke and violence, sweet-talking the barbed wire I’d wrapped around my ribs until it bent to make room for him.
And now he was gone. And I was still here. Waiting like I said I’d never do. Waiting like some pathetic cliché, a discarded version of myself curled around a silence that felt like it might kill me.
I kept lying to myself. It was better this way. I didn’t need him. None of it mattered. But no one ever tells you that pretending doesn’t kill the truth. It just feeds it in the dark until it grows teeth.
I sat up with a suddenness that felt like I was breaking apart. Dragged my hands down my face like I could tear him out of my skin. Kicked the sheets off and stumbled into the shower, hoping that maybe hot water could scorch the ghost of him off my body.
It didn’t.
Eventually, I threw on clothes, jogged down the stairs, and collapsed onto the creaking chair behind the building—the one the attendant used when he needed to hide from the world. Same, dude. Same.
I lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Tried not to count how long it had been. Three days. Three days of silence. Three days of pacing the floor like a caged animal. Three days of wondering if he ever meant a single goddamn word he said.
Twenty minutes later, Thalia joined me. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. She’d heard it all. Every pathetic, humiliating detail. She’d given me the usual escape routes. Leave. Start over. Travel. Follow your heart. But all I had was a flatlining bank account and a heart that didn’t know how to beat right without him.
“Learn some new skills,”she’d said, and I’d rolled my eyes so hard I nearly dislocated something.
Eventually, I gave in. Said I’d stay until the end of summer, work at the club until the gala, then vanish. While everyone celebrated under chandeliers and expensive champagne, I’d disappear down a highway with no destination in mind.
