Thomas exhaled slowly. “That doesn’t sound like a choice, man. That sounds like gravity.”
I frowned into the horizon. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re not staying because you want to,” he said gently. “You’re staying because you don’t know how not to.”
I opened my mouth to argue. To say he was wrong, to say I could leave anytime, to say I wasn’t trapped by this. But nothing came out.
“That’s not the same thing,” he added.
I swallowed. “It feels the same.”
The silence that followed pressed heavy on my ribs. Maybe the worst part was knowing I didn’t just want to help him because I cared—I wanted to help him because I needed to. It wasn’t love, not yet. It was loyalty, obligation, habit, and something darker I didn’t want to name: the pull of someone falling, and the instinct to catch them even if it consumed me.
“And if David never comes back?” he asked quietly.
I thought about my father then. About the night he told me to leave because I was too much, because who I was didn’t fit inside his house—his life. I’d been pushed out for being myself, and the lesson had carved itself deep: love could be conditional. That safety could be revoked without warning. I hadn’t just learned to leave. I’d learned what it felt like to be the one pushed out. And I swore I’d never be the person who did that to someone else. I swore I would be the person who stayed when things got uncomfortable. When they got messy. When someone was vulnerable. Especially then.
I blinked, throat tightening. “Then I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know who Elliot becomes without him. I don’t know who I will become either.”
Maybe the worst part was knowing that I didn’t just want to help him because I cared—I wanted to help him because I was starting to need him. I hadn’t told Thomas that. I hadn’t told anyone. Because I wasn’t sure what it meant.
Was I in love with him? I didn’t know. I wasn’t ready to call it that. But it wasn’t just care anymore either. It lived somewhere in the space between wanting and needing, between obsession and something softer that terrified me because it asked for more than I knew how to give. I told myself it was obligation. That it was loyalty. That it was just me doing what I’d always done—staying when other people left. But the truth was quieter and harder to look at: he mattered to me in a way that was already changing the shape of my life.
But I did know I’d started organizing my days around Elliot’s silences. I told myself it wasn’t obsession. That it was just responsibility. That this was what you did when someone was falling and you were the only thing in reach. That I was lying awake wondering how to reach someone who couldn’t feel touch anymore. That I was terrified this fragile, fractured connection we had was the thing that might finally unmake me.
“Fuck man, that’s a lot for anyone to take on, but considering you’re just a friend…” I huffed a derisive chuckle. “Former friend I should say, this is…”
“Yeah.”
Thomas cleared his throat like he was collecting his thoughts. “Whatever you decide to do, I’m here for you.”
“Thanks.”
He hung up without another word leaving me in the silence of everything that had been left unsaid.
Back at Elliot’s place, the bathroom door was closed, the steam from earlier lingering in the air, curling into the hallway in soft white tendrils that clung to my bare feet. He was here. Still breathing.
I didn’t knock. I just sat on the floor outside, spine pressed to the wall, heartbeat clawing its way out of my chest. I thought about what it meant to stay. What it cost to love someone who couldn’t ask for it. I wanted to tear the door open, pull him into me, and protect what little was left.
But I didn’t. Some people didn’t need rescuing—they just needed someone who wouldn’t run. I hadn’t admitted yet how terrified I was of leaving.
When the door finally opened, he appeared—hair damp from the shower earlier, hands trembling, mouth a straight line of quiet devastation. He didn’t even look surprised to see me. For a fraction of a second, I saw him relax—just a little, shoulders easing, a shiver running down his spine as if my presence grounded him. A subtle invitation. A crack in the armor.
“You didn’t leave,” he said.
“I couldn’t.”
His eyes dropped, voice barely more than breath. “Even if I don’t ask you to stay?”
“Especially then,” I said and hoped I wasn’t lying to both of us.
He slid down beside me, shoulder to shoulder, that small point of contact, the loudest thing in the world. I felt every tremor of his small movements, every hesitant adjustment. It was enough just to be near him. To let him feel that this—just this—was safe. My thumb traced a slow line over the back of his hand, a silent promise: I wouldn’t leave. Not yet. Not while he let me be here. We sat in the quiet, letting it hold us. Letting it name the things we didn’t know how to say.
“I’m not okay,” he whispered. “I don’t even know if I can get better.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to let someone in without expecting them to leave.”
