God, I’ll miss her.
When I step inside, the house is quiet.
“Olive?” I call.
Silence. No answer.
She probably needs some privacy right now—holed up in her room reading, writing, or talking to Nina. The least I can do is give it to her.
I shower for the second time today, eat lunch, and check my inbox. Try to answer a few emails before getting frustrated and closing my laptop again. I wander through the house like a guy pretending he has better things to do than knock on a door and say,Hey. Can we talk?
Eventually I head to the studio. It’s the one place that usually works as a distraction. The familiar weight of the guitar in my hands, the quiet hum of the amp warming up, the feel of sound vibrating through my chest—it usually resets me.
Not today.
Every chord I play leads me back to her.
To the way she looked at me. The way she saidI love you—like she couldn’t keep it in.
To the silence I gaveher in return.
I try switching to something louder, heavier. Something with bite. But my fingers don’t cooperate, and my thoughts keep drifting. Her laugh, her tiny annoyed huffs when she loses her page, the sound of her slippers padding around the house—all of it fills the silence like a ghost.
I last maybe an hour before I give up.
She’s still not out.
No sound. No movement. No creak of a floorboard. I wait a little longer. Tell myself she’s probably just sleeping. Or journaling. Or whatever it is people do when they’ve just been emotionally gut-punched by someone they trusted.
But as the sun shifts lower in the sky, something starts to twist in my gut.
This isn’t space.
This is silence.
And something about it feelsoff.
I head down the hall, heart knocking a little harder than I want to admit, and stop outside her door.
I knock once. Quietly.
“Olive?”
No answer.
I wait a beat, then another. Nothing.
Weird.
I turn the knob and ease the door open.
The room hits me like a slap. What used to be all cheerful colors and fuzzy blankets is now stripped down to quiet minimalism.
No fuzzy blanket on the armchair. No stack of worn paperbacks with cracked spines and pastel covers. No fox slippers. No hoodie she stole from me and smugly claimed as her own.
My pulse stutters.
I step toward the closet. It is empty.
