Only my presence.
September 17th, 2024
I’ve been wondering about love, what it is when you strip it back.
Is it being someone’s most familiar thing?
Not the loud, dramatic kind of recognition. Not fireworks or grand gestures. Just… the way they can pick your footsteps out of a crowd, or the exact rhythm of your breathing when you’re trying not to cry.
The way your name lives in their mouth the same way it lives in yours—automatic, effortless, like muscle memory. Like they could find you blindfolded, in the dark, just by the shape you leave in the air.
I don’t know if that’s beautiful or terrifying.
Maybe it’s both.
Maybe it’s the only thing that ever really matters.
And maybe… I want it more than I’m willing to admit.
Even if it never comes.
Even if I spend the rest of my life humming to empty rooms and hoping someone, somewhere, is listening.
2
RETH
Flashback
Iwait across the street. Her window is a square of warmth in the dark—cheap fairy lights threading soft over books. She stands at the glass in those ridiculous wreath pajamas, hair scraped into a knot that keeps slipping, lips moving with a song I can’t hear.
She lights a candle. Match. Strike. I imagine hearing the small sound even from out here. She cups the flame like a secret and sets it in the sill beside the paper stars.
I catalog the details no one else bothers with—how she chews the inside of her cheek when she’s thinking, how she straightens the same crooked star twice but leaves it crooked anyway, smiling at her own imperfection. Study the way she leans her forearms on the frame; the way the fabric at her hips pulls when she shifts her weight; the way her breath fogs the pane and clears, fogs and clears—a rhythm I could live inside.
She leaves the window and pads across the room. The fairy lights catch on her cheeks and turn her hair gold as she sits on the stool by her kitchen counter and pulls out a braid of red ribbon, measuring it against her forearm, then snips it clean.
She fumbles with the paper, creasing each corner with her thumb, then ties the bow tight. Her tongue slips out at the corner of her mouth when she finishes the knot. When she’s done, she tosses the leftover scrap into the trash without looking.
A neighbor leaves the lobby, and I catch the door with two fingers, slipping inside and taking the stairs two at a time past the flaking green paint I already made a mental note to fix. The building was never an investment. It was proximity. Access. A way to breathe the same air she breathes.
I lean against the paper-thin walls. Life leaks through them if you know where to listen.
She hums while she works—a carol, soft and off-key, barely louder than the old pipes. I tilt my head, greedy for every note. To anyone else, it’s nothing, just a girl humming in her apartment. To me it’s a hook in the chest, sweetness I have no right to want and softness I don’t deserve.
Her phone rings, and I lean in, catching the cadence of her voice.
“Hey… yeah, I got home okay. Laundry night.” A small laugh, the one she uses when she’s trying to sound lighter than she feels. “No, I didn’t forget about you.”
She shifts, and the floor creaks under her steps.
“Coffee tomorrow morning?” Her voice lifts, hopeful in that quiet way that makes my jaw tighten. “Eight-thirty works. There’s that little place on Pine? Yeah, perfect.”
Another laugh, softer this time. “Okay. See you then.”
A pause. Then, almost under her breath, “‘Night, Dean.”
The name lands like a blade between my ribs. Jealousy slides up my spine, hot and smooth and familiar. I close my eyes, forehead against the wall, and picture his hand in her hair—casual, certain, like he has any right to touch what he doesn’t understand.
