When I wake up, it’s still dark, and for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel the urge to punch a hole in the wall.
Instead, I text Ash, “Same time tomorrow?”
He replies instantly, “Yeah. You bring the bagels, I’ll bring the self-loathing.”
I laugh, a real one, then close my eyes and let the silence fill the room.
Maybe, just maybe, I can do this.
Maybe we both can.
———
The coffee machine is an antique from my mother, a hulking thing she bought at a Salvation Army in the ‘90s, and I can’t get rid of it because every time I try, I picture her ghost calling to check if I’ve had a “proper breakfast” before she’s even off her morning Peloton.
The heating element is warped, so it hisses and spits like it’s leaking radiator fluid, and if you don’t line the pot up exactly, like, within millimeters, you get a counter full of scalding brown runoff that smells like desperation.
It’s the first thing I do when I wake up, zombie shuffle to the kitchen, jam the filter in, scoop grounds by the handful, slam the switch, wait for the smell to punch me in the brain.
My apartment is still dark except for the city-glow leaking past the blinds, a neon tattoo across the eggshell cabinets and the magnetic poetry on my fridge.
I used to rearrange the magnets every day, some kind of ritual to force a sense of progress, but lately the words just blur together, play, bruised, always, never.
I grip the edge of the counter, knuckles white, and try to focus on the heat radiating off the mug, the way the steam curls around my face, but all I see is Ash, sleep-fucked and blinking at the sunlight, slumped against this exact counter with my shirt on, my favorite black long-sleeve, stretched at the neck from his habit of pulling at the collar when he’s nervous.
I imagine him pawing at his hair, the strands sticking up at angles, eyes still red from last night’s crying jag or whatever, and the vision is so vivid it feels like a hallucination.
I squeeze my eyes shut, force myself to count the sounds in the room, the kettle’s cough, the fridge compressor, the bass rumble of a garbage truck from down the block.
It doesn’t help.
The ghost of Ash is still here, so I grab the loaf of bread and start hacking at it, fingers stupid from lack of sleep, slices jagged and uneven.
I drop two into the toaster, get distracted, and burn both to charcoal. The smell sets off the detector, which wails like a banshee for a solid twenty seconds before I can jab it quiet with a broom.
In the silence that follows, I see the next vision, Ash on my couch, legs up on the coffee table, watching some trash movie and laughing so hard he chokes, one hand bracing his stomach, the other gesturing wildly at the screen.
In the vision, he’s happy, really happy, and that’s the part that fucks with me most.
I don’t remember the last time I saw anyone that happy in my apartment, least of all myself.
By the time I finish choking down the bitter coffee and the marginally edible toast, my phone has racked up three unread messages.
Two are from teammates, one a meme about cats on ice, the other a link to a GoFundMe for Cap’s memorial fund—and the third is a calendar alert, “Dinner with Nia 7PM.”
I’d scheduled it weeks ago, a recurring event, and hadn’t even considered canceling, because that’s how you know things are terminal, when you just let the momentum carry you forward, even if it’s straight off the edge.
———
The rest of the day is a series of small, controlled burns, cardio at the gym, a call with the team counselor where I say “fine” so many times she writes “delusional” in my file, a trip to the mailroom to pick up a package that turns out to be a condolence basket from the league, full of gourmet popcorn and cookies I will never eat.
I leave it on the lobby table for the next poor bastard to deal with.
I spend an hour thinking about Ash. Not just the gym, or the track, or the endless DM banter that’s developed in the last forty-eight hours, but about what it would be like if we just said fuck it and let the universe run its course.
The thought is equal parts electric and nauseating. I can’t decide if I’m more afraid of what it would mean, or how badly I want it.
At six, I shower, shave, and put on my best “going out” shirt, the blue one that Nia said brought out my eyes, even though I’m ninety percent sure she’s colorblind.
