He opens his mouth like he wants to say something else, then shuts it. I don't help him. After our tragic fall out what do you even say?
So we're brewing in the tension over the ten floors, and I pretend that that I don't feel his heat—that familiar warmth that somehow always seeps into my skin.
The elevator slows.
Chime.
A mercy.
The door slides open and I step out, telling myself not to glance back.
Go home to your grey pajamas and empty pages, pretend this never happened. You're good at pretending.
"See you around, Emma," he says behind me, softer but heavier now, like he wants me to turn.
Don't turn, Emma. Don't.
I turn.
And in that one heartbeat as our eyes catch, the air between us pulls—three years with everything unsaid, unfelt, unforgiven.
"See you, Ben," I mutter.
"See you, neighbor," he says, eyes stuck on mine as the doors shut between us.
And then he's gone. But the burn in my chest? It stays,spreading like a wildfire across my whole body.
Three years, all that work to forget him, and all it took is one elevator ride to find out it was for nothing.
I shouldn't be surprised.
Because the truth is, once you give someone a piece of your soul, you never get it back—not really—and no matter how much time or logic or therapy, you still ache for them to come back and make you feel whole again.
And now? He's one floor above me.
Just a ceiling away.
2
I stare at the bathroom mirror with pupils blown.
Adrenaline, dopamine—the chemical shot your body fires when everything shifts in an instant.
I should have checked his socials, prepare myself. I didn't. Not because I'm a sociopath or didn't care, but because I'm a coward. And twofold when it comes to him.
Why is he back? And out of all the buildings in San Francisco, he had to choose mine? What kind of twisted fate is that?
Maybe he really didn't know. I mean, how could he?
Still, the drama queen in me wants to believe he flew across the country for me.
The teenager in me wants to run upstairs and yell at him to get out.
The self-destructive part fears what I'd do if he opened the door.
"Fuck," I mutter against the mirror. Heat crawls up my neck in an apartment I always complain is too cold.
My head spins back to the few glances I stole, replaying him in front of me to remind me he was real.
