Eli knocked on my door an hour later with a cup of chamomile tea and a book he'd pulled off the shelf. A collection of short stories he said he'd read in college when things felt too heavy to manage. He didn't ask what was wrong. He just sat in the chair by my window and read his own book while I drank the tea, and he stayed until I fell asleep and left the lamp on low so I wouldn't wake up in the dark.
I never told him how much that night meant.
I never got to.
The memory hits without warning and my eyes fill before I can stop them.
Eli sees it. His own eyes go bright immediately, like they always did when he was trying to hold back tears.
"The tea," I say. My voice comes out unsteady. "That night with the tea and the book. You always just—knew."
His brows furrow. "Yeah."
"That was real," I say. "I need you to know I know that was real. Who you were to me before all of this… that was real."
"It was," he says. His voice breaks on it. "God, Vee, it was. I'm so sorry I let that person get buried. I'm so sorry I let you down when it mattered most."
The tears come and I don't try to stop them. Eli isn't stopping his either, which I've only seen once before in five years, and seeing it now in this context—because of me, because of what he did and didn't do— breaks me open in a place that's still fragile.
We sit on the couch and cry a little, which is not what I expected from this conversation, but maybe it's exactly what it needed to be.
Eventually the wave passes.
I wipe my face. He does the same, the back of his hand pressed to his eyes in that precise, controlled way even grief has with him.
Then I say the thing I've never said to anyone.
"During my heat." I stay steady. I've had a long time to find the words. "I didn't just go to the porch. Before that—I came to the door."
Eli goes very still.
"I could hear you." I keep my voice even. "Through the door. You and Marie. I was—I was crawling. I was that far gone. I needed someone and you were the one I still believed in. You were the last one I thought might still be mine."
He doesn't make a sound.
"I heard what was happening in that room and I turned around." The words come out quieter now. "I went back down the hall To the porch. Alone." I look at him. "That was the moment I knew. Not that you'd failed me—you'd done that before and I'd survived it. That moment was different. That was the moment I understood none of you were safe anymore. Not even you. Especially not you, because you were the last one I had."
Eli's face has gone white. He's looking at me with an expression I've never seen on him—it’s not grief or guilt. It’s rawer than either. The specific horror of understanding the full cost of what you already knew was bad.
"I didn't know," he says. Barely audible.
"I know you didn't."
"Vee—"
"I'm not telling you to make it worse," I say. "I'm telling you because you deserve to know the full shape of it. You're a person who needs the complete picture to understand what you're carrying."
He closes his eyes. One breath. Two.
When he opens them, they're wet again.
"I would have come out," he says. "If I'd heard you. If I'd known. I swear to you—"
"I know." I do know. That's the part that makes it hard. "That's what makes it what it is."
Silence.
I let him sit with it… the full weight of that hallway and that door and what was happening on both sides of it.
