My former apartment.
Where they are currently existing without me.
Laughter drifts through the shared wall. Light and genuine and completely unbothered by the chaos of the past twenty-four hours.
Mae's laugh.
I recognize it immediately, the sound imprinted on my memory despite only knowing her for two days. It is warm and unguarded, carrying the particular joy of someone who is genuinely amused rather than performing amusement for an audience. She laughs like she forgot people might be listening. Like she is comfortable enough to let the sound escape without filtering it first.
She never laughed like that around me.
The observation lands with an uncomfortable weight.
I move to the kitchen wall, the one that shares the most surface area with the neighboring unit, and lean my shoulder against the bare drywall. The laughter comes again, followed by Cal's voice, groaning with theatrical distress.
"I ain't the one who burned the bacon, MaeBell! That was a team effort! Etienne distracted me with his boring egg opinions and Raph over there was doing his whole French phone call thing, and suddenly the bacon was on fire! Fire, Mae! I almost died!"
Mae's response is muffled but clearly amused, something about smoke alarms and evacuation plans, and Cal's indignant defense escalates into what sounds like a spatula being brandished as a weapon while multiple people tell him to calm down.
They are laughing.
All of them.
Together.
Without me.
I push off the wall with more force than necessary, pacing the empty room like a caged animal whose territory has suddenly shrunk to a fraction of its original size. My hands find my hair, raking through the strands with an agitation that has nowhere to go.
They are acting like I never existed. Like three years of living together, training together, building something together means nothing. Cal is cooking breakfast like it is a normal morning. Etienne is offering his boring opinions like I did not just tell him his friendship means nothing to me. And Raphaël is sitting in my spot, breathing my air, making himself comfortable in the space I carved out for myself.
With her.
I hate that I can hear their domesticity through the walls. Hate that the sounds filter through the thin barrier like a constant reminder of what I walked away from. Hate that Mae's laugh hits my ears and my body responds with a visceral reaction I refuse to name.
I grab my phone from my pocket, scrolling through contacts with aggressive swipes, looking for distraction. Looking for anyone who will remind me that I exist outside of this clusterfuck.
I text Dillon. He responds with a string of emojis and a question about whether the rumors are true that I got kicked out of my own dorm. I do not respond.
I text Marcus. He asks if I am okay and offers to grab drinks later. I tell him maybe and do not elaborate.
I text Vanessa. She responds immediately, asking where I have been and why I did not answer her calls last night and whether I am coming to her practice this afternoon. Her messages carry the particular neediness that used to stroke my ego and now just irritates me.
I do not respond to her either.
The phone goes back in my pocket.
The problem with being the leader, the one who barks orders and sets the pace, is that when you lose your pack, you lose your purpose. I have spent three years being the center of gravity for Cal and Etienne, the one who decided where we ate and when we trained and how we presented ourselves to the world. Without them orbiting around me, I do not know what shape I am supposed to hold.
Raphaël is nothing like me.
The realization gnaws at my insides with an uncomfortable persistence.
He does not bark orders. Does not demand attention. Does not fill every silence with his own voice to ensure no one forgets he exists. He observes. He waits. He speaks when speaking matters and lets the quiet do the work when it does not. His leadership style is the opposite of mine in every conceivable way, and the worst part is that it seems to be working.
The perfect golden child. The one who left and still managed to succeed. The one who did not have to stay and fight for every scrap of recognition because recognition followed him like a shadow he did not even notice.
He got everything. The academics, the athletics, the European education, the captain title, the natural authority. And now he is here, and within forty-eight hours he has taken my apartment, my packmates, and my...
