My phone buzzed once on the cushion beside me. I didn’t reach for it right away. Let it vibrate itself quiet, like everything else that wanted something from me.
When I finally looked, it was a text from Mia.
Mia
NYE at ours tonight. As you didn’t want to do xmas. No pressure. No noise if you don’t want it. Just food, blankets, and idiots you already know.
Mia
We’ll come get you if you want. Or you can just… exist here with us.
My throat tightened in that dull, familiar way. Not sharp enough to cry. Just heavy.
I didn’t answer just set the phone face down again and pulled my sleeves over my hands, pressing my forehead to my knees. Midnight crept closer without announcement. No music. No laughter drifting in from neighbors. No countdown bleeding through the walls.
Just the refrigerator humming and the faint creak of the house settling, like it was breathing around me.
I stood up without deciding to. My body moved on autopilot, carrying me into the kitchen. I opened cupboards one by one, not looking for anything in particular.
That’s when I saw it, shoved in the back corner of a base unit. A bottle of whisky. Anthony’s whisky.
The bottle sat pushed so far into the back of the cabinet, like it had been forgotten on purpose. Like it didn’t belong there anymore. My breath caught so hard it hurt. I stared at it for a long time, pulse thudding in my ears.
I’d tried to erase him. Or at least, I’d tried to survive him being gone.
He’d packed his things and taken them away months ago. He’d removed every trace of himself from the house like he’d been cleaning a crime scene. But the house told a different story.
The spaces where heshouldhave been were louder than anything he’d left behind.
I reached for the bottle. The glass was cool against my palm, solid and real in a way nothing else had been lately. I twisted the cap off and brought it to my nose before I could stop myself.
Oak. Smoke. Something warm and grounding and unmistakably him.
My stomach twisted violently.
Blindly I poured it into the first thing I could grab. The sound of liquid hitting glass echoed too loudly in the quiet kitchen. My hand shook just enough for a few drops to spill over the edge, darkening the counter like a stain.
The first swallow burned all the way down. It hurt. I welcomed it. Surrendered to it. The second didn’t burn as much.
By the third, something inside my chest loosened. The tight band around my ribs eased just enough for a breath to slip through without catching. My head felt fuzzy, distant—like I was finally floating above myself instead of being crushed inside my own body.
I sank down onto the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets, bottle beside me like a companion.
My phone sat heavy in my hand. I didn’t want to call him. Ineededto. Not to beg. Not to plead. I just needed him to hear me breathe. To know I was still here. That I hadn’t disappeared completely like he seemed to want. Like I couldn’t erase him like he had me.
I stared at his name. My thumb hovered before I pressed call.
Just answer,I thought.You don’t even have to say anything.
The phone rang once. Twice. Then stopped. Confusion flickered through the haze. I tried again, frowning this time.
Straight to voicemail.
No. Not voicemail. Blocked. The word registered slowly, like my brain refused to accept it.
Blocked.
A thin, broken sound tore out of my chest before I could stop it. My hands started to shake violently, phone slipping from my grip and clattering onto the floor. I pressed my palm to my mouth, but it didn’t help. The sound kept coming—fractured, wrong.
