“I thought that's what you wanted,” he said. “Me out of your life. Out of your way.”
“You think I wanted that.”
“Could've fooled me.”
“I let you leave because you needed to go. That's not the same as wanting you gone.”
“Same result, though.” He shrugged, a dismissiveness in it that was practiced enough to be a habit. “You didn't call. I didn't call. We went six years without talking like two adults who'd decided it was easier that way.”
“You went eight months without answering my texts.”
His jaw tightened. “I was busy.”
“For eight months.”
“Yeah.”
“Right.”
“Don't do that either.”
“Do what?”
“The quiet disappointed thing. I liked the arguing better.”
“I'm not disappointed.” It came out steadier than I felt. “I'm trying to understand what the hell happened to us.”
That landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to. I saw it in the way his eyes shifted, just for a second, before the wall went back up. “Nothing happened. People grow up and move on. That's all it was.”
“That's all.”
“Yeah.”
It wasn't, and we both knew it, but I let it lie. He was tired and I was too close to saying things that couldn't be unsaid, and the night was still young enough to ruin.
“I'm tired,” Troy said, finally. “Can we not do this tonight?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We can table it.”
He stood, grabbed his bag, and headed for the stairs. I watched him go, the set of his shoulders, the careful distance he kept from everything in the room.
At the bottom of the stairs he stopped. He didn't turn around right away, just stood there with his hand on the newel post like he was deciding whether to keep moving or say the thing he was clearly turning over.
Then he looked back.
“Declan.”
“Yeah.”
“It's good to see you.” A short pause. “Even if I'm shit at showing it.”
Before I could get a single word out, he was up the stairs and gone. The guest room door closed with a quiet click that landed harder than it had any right to.
I sat there in the living room for a long time after. The house felt different with him in it, smaller and more alive at the same time, like it had been holding its breath for years and could finally let go.
I'd missed him. Not the abstract idea of him but the actual man. His stubbornness. His anger. His refusal to make a single thing easy when it could be complicated instead. And I was already losing the thread of whatever plan I'd had for getting through his return intact. Already letting him see too much. Already making the selfish, necessary mistakes I'd told myself I wouldn't make.
This was going to wreck me. I could feel it settling in the same way I felt it in a fight when I knew I was outmatched and couldn't make myself step back from it.
