Gwen didn’t argue. The words sat on her tongue, heavy and hot, but she swallowed them back. Maggie’s shoulders were tense, her jaw locked — nothing Gwen said in an airport terminal was going to soften that.
So she stayed quiet.
Through boarding, through stowing their bags, through two and a half hours of recycled air and the low hum of the engines. Maggie leaned against the window, earbuds in, eyes closed. Gwen sat rigid in the aisle seat, staring blankly at the book in her lap she never turned a page of. Every so often Maggie shifted, brushing against her, and Gwen’s heart would leap stupidly before it settled into the ache again.
They didn’t speak once. Not in the air, not during landing, not while shuffling off the plane with the rest of the herd.
The silence didn’t budge until they walked down the escalator into arrivals, the buzz of Austin wrapping around them — Spanish mingling with English, guitar licks from someone inexplicably playing electric guitar in an airport bar, the smell of coffee and BBQ from the food court.
“Mama! Mommy!”
Three voices at once, shrill with excitement.
Their kids came barreling across the terminal, backpacks bouncing, sneakers squeaking. Gwen barely had time to drop her carry-on before they collided into her legs, arms thrown tight around her waist.
Maggie crouched low, pulling all three kids against her, laughing through fresh tears. “I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,” she said, kissing their hair, their cheeks, their sticky faces.
Gwen dropped to her knees beside them, smoothing ahand over Rosie’s hair, pressing her cheek to Arlo’s as he hugged her, reaching to tug Jude into the fray. The ache in her chest shifted — still heavy, but different now.
Maggie glanced up, just once, eyes red and wet.
And then one of the kids pulled free, waving frantically toward the baggage claim. “Come on, Grandma brought cookies.”
The spell broke. They all stood, moving as a family toward the carousel, the sound of the terminal folding around them. Side by side, but with miles still stretched between.
The apartment smelledlike paint and carpet glue. Brand-new construction, all beige walls and echoing corners, the kind of place staged for the “empty, picture your things here” photos in a realtor’s slideshow.
Gwen set her suitcases just inside the door and stood there, staring at the empty expanse of it. She’d signed the lease yesterday, filled out all the online forms, transferred the deposit with a few clicks. Efficient. Orderly. Necessary.
It didn’t feel like hers.
She sat on the edge of the bed she’d panic-ordered to be delivered on time, palms pressed to her knees, and let her mind circle the weekend like a wound she couldn’t stop touching.
Vegas. Two nights they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, months of anger dissolving into heat and hunger. Then that angry sex, the slower love the morning after, sunlight soft across Maggie’s bare skin, when Gwen had felt stupidly and recklessly certain. Certain they could find their way back, certain this wasn’t the end. She’d let herself imagine rebuilding, one kiss at a time.
Now here she was, surrounded by beige walls and freshlylaid carpet, nothing but her folded clothes and the hum of the empty fridge to keep her company.
She reached for a laundry bin to begin to put a few things away, startled to find Maggie’s Rice University shirt tucked near the bottom. A faint bleach stain near the hem, a stretched-out collar… She held the fabric to her nose, knowing it would smell like all of her other laundry, but she could have sworn the sweatshirt held just a hint of Maggie’s perfume. Blinking back a tear, she tucked the sweatshirt onto a high shelf of the closet.
She’d thought separation would be big and loud, all slammed doors and shouted arguments. But it wasn’t. It was silence.
Just her.
She lasted lessthan an hour in the silence before picking up her phone. Her thumb hovered over Maggie’s name, then her mom’s, then finally landed on Logan.
Her brother answered on the second ring. “You sound like someone who’s either drunk or about to be.”
“Neither, unfortunately,” Gwen said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “I just moved in to the new place.”
There was a pause, a low whistle. “So it’s official, then.”
“Yep.” She looked around the sterile one-bedroom — blank walls, bare counters, not a single thing that betrayed anyone with a personality had ever set foot inside. “It’s official.”
Logan let out a sigh that crackled through the line. “How’s it feel?”
She swallowed. “Quiet.”
“Quiet good or quiet bad?”
