Not faint. Not questionable.
My grip tightened without thinking, the edge pressing into my palm just enough to ground me there, to keep the moment from slipping into something unreal.
A pulse hit hard behind my ribs—once, sharp enough to feel like contact—before everything inside me shifted to meet it.
Not panic.
Not confusion.
Mine.
The thought didn’t hesitate. It didn’t ask permission. It settled in clean, absolute, like something that had already decided itself before I got there.
Something in my chest gave under it—not breaking, not fracturing—just… shifting. Space where there hadn’t been space before. Air where everything had been held tight and controlled for longer than I could remember.
Hope.
I exhaled slowly through my nose, the sound barely there, my thumb dragging once along the edge of the plastic before I stilled it again.
She knew.
She had to.
The way she’d moved when I walked in. The way she wouldn’t hold my gaze.
And she hadn’t said anything.
My jaw set, a slow tightening that worked its way down through my shoulders, into my hands, into the way I stood there with something that should have been shared sitting alone in my palm.
Why?
It was building its own answer.
Control. Timing. Risk. Everything she prioritized whensomething mattered.
Everything she was choosing now. Without me.
I looked at it once more. Then set it back. Exactly where it had come from.
Hidden.
The drawer slid shut with a quiet, final sound.
I reached for the shirt, pulling it over my head in one clean motion, the fabric dragging briefly across my shoulders before settling into place. My hands moved without hesitation after that—watch, sleeves, collar—every adjustment precise, practiced, controlled.
By the time I crossed back to the door, there was nothing in my posture that gave anything away.
But everything inside it had shifted.
The restaurant was alreadyloud when we sat down. Not chaotic. Just full—voices rising, constant waves, silverware against plates, the muted hum of a room built to hold people without letting them spill over into each other.
I didn’t remember getting there.
The drive—gone.
The cold—gone.
The space between the apartment and this table—nothing but fragments that didn’t hold long enough to connect.