He looked at the shelf. At the books he'd loved. At the photograph of himself and Jenna, both of them laughing in the sun. At the small glass whale.
He picked up the whale. Put it carefully in the keep box.
Then he packed everything else he wanted in silence, taped the box shut, and carried it downstairs.
They drank tea at the kitchen table. His mother talked about the renovation, about a friend's holiday, about a gallery opening she was attending on Thursday. Adriel listened and nodded and said the right things at the right intervals, and when a reasonable amount of time had passed he stood, kissed her cheek, picked up his box, and said goodbye.
The door closed behind him.
He stood on the sidewalk with the box under his arm and breathed the cold air in, long and slow, and waited for the tightness in his chest to ease.
∞∞∞
The pub was called The Anchor and it had no business being as warm as it was.
Low ceilings, sticky floors, a jukebox in the corner currently playing something that had been a hit about fifteen years ago and showed no signs of stopping. It smelled of spilled beer and fried food and the particular brand of cheerful noise that came from a room full of people who'd decided the week was over regardless of what day it was.
Adriel loved it unreasonably.
He spotted Jenna at a table near the back, her hand raised before he'd even made it through the door. Beside her, a man with sandy hair and the build of someone who'd played rugby in his twenties; Chris, her boyfriend of three years, who had introduced himself the first time they'd met by handing Adriela pint and sayingJenna talks about you constantly, mate, it's actually a problem.
Adriel threaded his way through the after-work crowd and dropped into the seat across from them.
"You look terrible," Jenna said warmly.
"Thank you."
"Fun day with mother dearest?" Chris said.
"Oh yeah."
Chris winced with the sympathy. He pushed a pint across the table without being asked. "Drink that."
Adriel drank.
For a few minutes they talked about nothing; Chris's work, a film they'd all watched separately and needed to compare notes on, a mutual friend's engagement that had apparently surprised everyone except Jenna, who had seen it coming for two years and was insufferably pleased with herself about it. The noise of the bar pressed in around them, warm and impersonal, and Adriel felt his shoulders drop by slow degrees.
"Okay," Jenna said eventually. She had her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, which meant she was preparing to attack. "How was it? Really?"
Adriel wrapped both hands around his glass. "She's converting my room into a study."
"Of course."
"She spent ten minutes telling me about meal prepping." He stared at the table. "Sent me some recipes. Said it was about energy and clarity." A pause. "Said I carry my stress in my body."
Jenna's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"And then," Adriel continued, "she told me I push people away. That people can sense when someone doesn't believe in themselves. That if I just carried myself differently…" He stopped. "Took a little more care of myself. In all the ways."
"In all the ways," Chris repeated.
"In all the ways."
Chris set his glass down. "Right, so she managed to tell you that you need to lose weight and that you're emotionally constipated in the same sentence."
"She said it nicely," Adriel said. "That's the thing. She always says it nicely."
"That," Chris said, pointing at him, "is what makes it worse. If she were just horrible you could write it off. But she says it like she's doing you a favor."
