Posted it with the caption: "They spelled it wrong," plus a rainbow flag and the middle finger emoji.
It got three thousand likes in under ten minutes.
Bravado, Maya would call it. A shield. Or, if you asked Dr. Sharma, "an adaptive coping mechanism."
But she’s not here, and neither is Maya, and the only thing filling the air is the industrial sting of solvents and the faint, plastic note of burning electronics.
The apartment is a warehouse for all the shit I keep telling myself I’m going to use, but never do.
Weight bench, never assembled. Guitar, never tuned. A single lawn chair set up facing the window, because it’s the only way to get any light in this cave.
On the nightstand, the paperback from Darius.
Still unread, ticket stub marking a page barely past the intro. I touch the cover, run my thumb along the crease, but I can’t open it. It’s Schrodinger’s book, if I finish it, the story is over.
Every hour, I check my phone for a message from him.
Every hour, it’s just another round of “You’re a hero” and “Kill yourself.”
At six p.m., the phone vibrates so hard it falls off the ledge and lands facedown on the floor.
I don’t pick it up.
I just sit, elbows on knees, staring at the window as the day goes from gray to blue to black.
The city outside is still moving, cars, ferries, people in jackets shuffling fast to get out of the wind, but up here, it’s just me, the smell of solvent, and a half-eaten Pop-Tart.
Eventually, I get up.
I brush the crumbs off my shirt and walk to the bathroom, splash water on my face, stare at the bloodshot green eyes in the mirror and wonder if it’s possible to just will yourself invisible.
The only sound in the whole apartment is the electric whine of the fridge and the faraway thump of subwoofers from the neighbor’s Saturday party.
My hands are shaking, so I put them in my pockets.
The phone buzzes again, a flat, insectile drone against the hardwood.
I walk back, pick it up, and stare at the screen.
Still nothing from Darius.
I type his name in the search bar, just to see what comes up.
There’s a blurry photo from last season, both of us on the ice, helmets off, sweat plastering the hair to our foreheads. He’s grinning.
I’m grinning. We look like idiots.
The caption under it: “Gayer than the Olympics.”
I laugh, loud and ugly, but the sound dies before it reaches the ceiling.
I start to text him. “Hey.” “You alive?” “Miss you.”
Delete, delete, delete.
I put the phone facedown again, grab the bottle of degreaser, and go back downstairs, scrubbing the trunk until my knuckles bleed, until the word is gone, or at least hidden under a layer of new, angry scratches.
When I come back up, my phone is still silent.
