A double with no connection isn't a crew. It's two people in the same boat.
I knew that. I knew it because three days ago the boat had been alive and now it was dead and the only thing that changed was us.
***
My dorm room was exactly how I'd left it, so clean and organized that Liam would have said something about it.
I set my bag down. Showered. The hot water loosened the knots in my shoulders but not the one in my chest. I dried off, pulled on sweatpants and a t-shirt, sat at my desk.
Opened my laptop. Stared at the screen. Closed it.
My phone was on the nightstand. I'd been checking it every ten minutes since Saturday—not for the anonymous number, though that fear was constant. For Liam. For the text that hadn't come. For the reaching-out that neither of us was doing because reaching out meant cracking open the thing we'd sealed shut the other morning.
No new messages.
I picked up the phone anyway. Opened my photos. Scrolled past the screenshots of training plans and class schedules and the one picture of my mother's garden she'd sent last month.
Found it.
The bridge. Marlow. A week and a half ago—before the texts, before the party, before any of this. The two of us standing on the old stone bridge over the creek, the trees behind us turning gold and copper in the late autumn light. Liam's arm slung around my shoulder. Both of us grinning—not posing, not performing, just happy.
I'd saved it the second it came through. Hadn't opened it since.
Now I stared at it. Zoomed in on his face. The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. The way his whole body leaned into mine like gravity worked differently when we were close. The ease in his expression—no walls, no armor, no calculation. Just Liam. The version of him I only got when nobody else was watching.
The version I'd pushed away.
My thumb hovered over the delete button. A reflex. Maybe instinct—eliminate the evidence, control the narrative, leave nothing that could be used against you.
I couldn't do it.
I locked the phone. Set it face-down on the nightstand.
Got into bed. The sheets were clean—I'd washed them Sunday afternoon.
But the pillowcase.
I'd changed the left one. My side. The right one—Liam's side, the one he'd slept on Friday night, the one his head had rested on while I'd pressed back against his chest and his arm held me in place—I'd left it.
It was pathetic. I knew it was pathetic. The kind of thing a person did when they were holding onto something they'd already thrown away. Like keeping the wrapper from a gift you'd returned.
But when I turned onto my side and pressed my face into the fabric, I could still smell him. Faintly. Soap and something else—the scent of his skin. It felt like home. It was fading. By tomorrow it would be gone.
I breathed it in. Closed my eyes.
The fragments came again. Not the fight. The before.
His hands untying my shoes. Setting them by the desk, lined up, the way I'd want them.
Lie down. On your side.
The blanket tucked around my shoulders. Careful. Firm. Like I was something worth taking care of.
Then the other fragments. The ones that made my skin burn.
You're the best thing that's ever happened to me.
My own voice. Slurred. Stripped. Saying things I'd spent years not saying.
