Just quieter.
Like a presence you don’t actively look for anymore, but still feel when things go silent.
She finished her NYC feature weeks ago.
It was published.
Read.
Shared.
Quoted incorrectly in places that didn’t matter enough to correct.
But that wasn’t what stayed with her.
What stayed was the feeling that none of it actually ended when she stopped writing.
It just changed format.
Mason didn’t text her immediately after NYC.
Not because he didn’t want to.
Because there was no clean way to restart something that had been built under pressure and then left hanging in the air.
So instead, there was silence.
Not blocked.
Not avoided.
Just… suspended.
The kind of silence that doesn’t feel final.
Just delayed.
Rowan broke it first.
Not intentionally.
Not dramatically.
Just late at night, after rereading notes she shouldn’t have been rereading.
Rowan:
Are you still annoyed at me?
It took Mason twelve minutes to reply.
Mason:
No.
Pause.
Mason:
