"I need to do this," I tried to argue. "I need to prove I can stand on my own. I can't keep hiding in your apartment forever."
Something flickered across his face. He wanted to talk back. I could see it in the set of his mouth, the way his hands tightened on the drill. Although he decided just to nod.
"I know." He went back to the deadbolt. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."
He finished the lock, tested it three times, and wrote down his number on a piece of paper even though I already had it in my phone.
"Anything feels wrong, you call me. I'm twelve feet away."
"I know."
He lingered in the doorway, looking at me like he wanted to say something else. Then he nodded once and walked across the hall to his own door.
I closed mine. Locked it. Tested the deadbolt, the chain, and the windows.
And I was finally alone.
The silence was deafening.
I'd been alone in this apartment a hundred times before. Six months of solitary evenings, of quiet dinners, of falling asleep to nothing but the sound of my own breathing. I'd thought I was used to it. Thought I'd made peace with emptiness. Thought I'd learned to fill the space with routines and distractions and the steady hum of a life lived small.
But that was before Cal's apartment. Before breakfast and late-night conversations and the steady presence of another person existing in the same space. Before I'd learned the rhythm of his footsteps, the sound of his laugh, the way he cleared his throat before saying something he wasn't sure he should say. Before I'd remembered what it felt like to not be alone.
Now the silence pressed against my skin like something physical. Every creak of the building made me flinch. Every car passing on the street below made me hold my breath, waiting to see if it would slow down, if it would stop.
I moved through the apartment without purpose. Opened the refrigerator, stared at the mostly empty shelves, closed it again. Turned on the TV just to have noise, then muted it because the voices felt wrong, too bright and cheerful for the darkness pressing in from the windows. Stood at the window watching the street below, scanning the shadows between streetlights, looking for movement, for a shape that didn't belong.
I hated this. Hated that Evan had made me afraidof my own house. Hated that I couldn't sit in silence without hearing my heart racing. Hated that I kept glancing at the door, half expecting it to burst open, half expecting to hear his voice on the other side.
Eventually, I found myself in front of the dresser.
The bottom drawer. The one I hadn't opened in weeks, but used to open every morning, back when ritual felt like the only thing keeping me tethered to the world.
I knelt down, my movements so cautious they felt skeletal. My knees pressed into the thin carpet, the floorboards beneath offering no comfort, just a hard, unyielding reality. I reached for the handle, my breath hitching in my chest. I pulled the drawer open slowly, not by inches, but by fractions, convinced that the air itself was a predator. I moved as if whatever was inside might disappear, dissolving into ash or spirit, if I dared to disturb the stillness too fast.
There it was.
My mother's chemo scarf. It lay right where I’d left it, a quiet inhabitant of the dark. I reached out, my fingertips barely brushing the soft blue fabric, now faded and weary from a dozen washings. The material felt unnervingly cool against my skin.
She had worn it every single day during the treatment, a crown of faded cotton that she refused to take off even when the first soft fuzz of hair began to sprout back. She used to say it made her feel brave. She’d wrap it around her head, looking at her reflection with a gaze I’ve spent a lifetime trying todecipher, and tell me it reminded her she’d survived worse than this.
The silence in the room thickened, tasting of salt and old dust.
She hadn’t survived, in the end. The bravery hadn't been a shield against the inevitable, but a choice she made until her very last breath. And here I was, standing in my own storm, clutching her courage in my trembling hands.
I lifted the scarf to my face, my hands moving with a rhythmic, aching slowness. I closed my eyes, seeking a sanctuary within the fabric. I breathed in deep, a long, desperate pull of air, searching for some trace of her presence. I wanted the ghost of lavender, the sharp, clean scent of her hand lotion, anything that could prove she had once occupied this space.
But her scent was long gone. It had been eroded by the relentless passage of days, worn away by washings and the simple, quiet cruelty of absence. It wasn't her anymore. It was just fabric. Just a hollow cage for a memory that was beginning to fray at the edges.
Then, my fingers brushed something hard, something hidden.
Deep within the blue folds, cradled like a secret, lay Mateo’s badge.
I unwrapped it with the care of someone handling a live nerve. The metal was unnervingly cold against my skin, a sudden, piercing chill that felt heavier than it looked. I stared at the soot I’d never been able to scrub away; it had settled into the engraved lettersof his name, a dark, permanent shadow worked into the grooves until it had become part of the badge itself. Part of him.
Mateo Reyes. West Valley Springs Fire Department.
The world outside the room ceased to exist. There was only the silver and the soot. I traced the letters with my fingertip, moving so slowly I could feel every microscopic scratch on the surface. In the stillness, the past bled through. I remembered the day he’d shown it to me, fresh out of the academy, his grin so bright it felt like a physical warmth, like a kid on Christmas morning.
