But he didn’t believe it. I could see it in the way his shoulder tightened. In the way he pulled back into himself. In the way he leaned away but kept watching me like he was waiting for me to change my mind.
He shifted just enough that the warm air between us thinned. The absence hurt more than the closeness ever had.
I sat there with my hands clenched in my lap, feeling the shape of everything I wasn’t letting happen. I could see whatcould have been when I closed my eyes to hold back tears of my own.
Restraint wasn’t noble.
It was violent.
It was standing inside a fire and calling it safety. It was loving someone when they cracked open and choosing not to crawl inside the break with them. It was choosing their stability over your relief.
It hurt like hell.
Elliot turned away first. Not dramatically. Not angrily. Just… carefully. Like he was handling something sharp inside himself.
He slid off the bed and stood with his back to me, arms folded loosely across his chest like he was trying to hold himself together in one piece.
“I should go shower,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even really a statement. It was a withdrawal.
The bed felt larger without him in it. Colder.
I watched him take three steps toward the bathroom door before I moved. “Elliot.” He paused. But didn’t turn. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He nodded once. Still didn’t look at me. “I know.”
That was worse than if he’d argued. That was forgiveness without relief.
He left. The door clicked shut behind him with a sound that felt much louder than it was. The shower flicked on, the sound of the spray pounding against the tiles echoed in my head.
Sitting on the edge of the bed I stared at the place where he’d been. The dent in the mattress. The faint warmth from his body still there. The ghost of him. The ache in my chest grew.
I pressed my hands flat against my thighs and felt the shake finally reach them. I had promised him I wouldn’t leave. And I had.
Not physically.
But emotionally?
I had stepped back into a place he couldn’t follow. I had done the one thing he was most afraid of. I had made space. And space, to someone like Elliot, felt exactly like abandonment.
The guilt came in waves pulling me under like a riptide. They weren’t loud. Just relentless.
I had hurt him. Again. After promising I wouldn’t. After watching him break apart and trusting me with the pieces.
My elbows dropped to my knees as I leaned forward, hands dangling between them. That's when the second wave hit.
David. My friend. His father. The man who had looked at me, hollow and broken, abandoned his child and asked me to look after him.
Not to control him. Not to save him. Just be there. And here I was. Wanting him. Wanting the son of my best friend. Wanting the person I was supposed to protect. Wanting him in a way that felt too large to be harmless.
This was too deep to be simple. Too real to be ignored. My chest tightened. And then the last, quietest guilt:
That something pure had tried to happen between us. And I had been the one to stop it. Not because it was false. Not because it was ugly. But because it was dangerous. It was fragile. Because it was happening inside grief and trauma and dependency and need. Because timing was everything.
Even when the feeling was real. Especially then.
I dragged a hand down my face and exhaled slowly. My hands still ached with everything I wasn't letting them do. I stayed there longer than I should have. A part of me waited for Elliot to come out and demand that I take back everything I’d said. If he had? I’d have broken and fallen to my knees. And begged him to give me another chance.
When it was clear he wasn’t going to do that. I stood and straightened the bed. Smoothed out the blanket. Erased theevidence that we’d been there. Together. Like I was trying to make it hurt less by pretending it hadn’t happened.
