Handle it. I can’t today. Get Thomas on it if you can’t do it.
The three dots appeared. Paused. Appeared then disappeared again. Unwilling to see his reply, I slid the phone face down and felt the quiet cost of that choice settle somewhere behind my ribs.
I didn’t knock on the door. Didn’t call his name as I slipped from his room. If he needed space, I’d give it to him—but it twisted something ugly inside me to leave without touching him. Without grounding him in something other than that pain he wore like second skin. A pain I’d added to.
Downstairs, I started the coffee maker. Watched the grounds spin and swirl like a storm building. I didn’t wait for it to finish brewing.
I left.
The roads were empty, morning light bleeding into the asphalt like the world hadn’t just tilted off its axis. At the Inn, the room looked unfamiliar. Like a crime scene that had already been cleaned. The bed was neatly made. The air smelled likepotpourri and sea salt, but there was no trace of the man I was before left in it.
I moved like a stranger through the space, folding my shirts, unplugging chargers, zipping bags like I was erasing a version of myself I didn’t know how to be anymore.
After I checked out, I dumped everything in the backseat and walked barefoot to the shoreline, letting the cold bite into me. I breathed. I listened. I tried to make sense of what the hell had just happened.
The ocean didn’t offer answers. Just endless space.
My fingers hovered over my phone, pulse skipping. I didn’t want to feel alone in this. Not in that way that chews through bone and softens your edges until you forget what it felt like to be whole.
So I called the only person who might know how to help me.
“Anthony?” Thomas’s voice cracked through the line, warm and jarring. “Holy shit, man. You’re alive?”
“Barely,” I muttered, the laugh caught somewhere between a wince and a sob. “How’s work? My business still running?”
“Oh, you know. Concrete still dries slow. Subcontractors still lie fast. We’re surviving.”
We talked about nothing for a while—foundation delays, inspection drama, the extra client meeting he now had to do—the usual litany that used to anchor me. Today, every word sounded like it belonged to someone else’s life.
Thomas went suspiciously quiet. “You okay?”
I tipped my head back, stared at the tumultuous gray clouds above me and let the silence stretch until it hurt. “No,” I said. “I don’t think I am.”
“What’s going on?”
And I told him. Not everything. Not the parts that would make it too real. Not the things I couldn’t say out loud without sounding like I was losing my mind.
But I told him about Elliot.
About the way he’d started to disappear piece by piece. How his eyes no longer tracked the world, how his voice had hollowed out until even silence felt louder. About how David’s absence hadn’t just left a hole, but a canyon. And how Elliot was teetering on the edge of it, looking down like he couldn’t remember why he should hold on.
I told Thomas about the days Elliot didn’t leave his bed. About the dishes piling up. About the job he probably didn’t have anymore. About the way he stared through me like I wasn’t there.
How every time I tried to pull him back, it felt like drowning in quicksand—like the harder I reached, the deeper we both sank.
But I didn’t tell him everything. Not how it broke something in me every time Elliot flinched from a simple act of kindness. Not how I found myself watching him when he wasn’t looking, cataloging every breath, every tremor, like maybe if I knew the signs well enough, I could stop him from vanishing completely.
Not how it gutted me to be so close to someone I couldn’t touch without bleeding for it. Not how I ached with guilt for the way my heart kept falling into his, even as he slipped further away.
“Jesus,” Thomas breathed. “What do you need?”
I laughed, bitter and frayed at the edges. “A time machine. Or maybe an instruction manual on how to care for someone who's already halfway gone.”
He didn’t speak right away. I could feel him looking at me, trying to fit the pieces together, trying to name what I hadn’t said.
Finally: “Is he breaking you?”
“I think I’m breaking myself,” I said, then shook my head like I could take it back. “Or maybe I’m just tired. I don’t know.Maybe this is what it’s supposed to feel like when you don’t walk away. Because I keep reaching for him, and he’s just... not there. And I don’t know how much more of that I can take.”
