Page 51 of One Room Vacancy
We both laugh, and for a moment it feels easy again. Familiar in a way that doesn’t ache.
I remember watching them that night—Liam rolling his eyes while carrying Hannah, ignoring how she clawed at his back,like she didn’t terrify him and delight him in equal measure. He didn’t even like her back then, but he still would’ve fought anyone who looked at her wrong. That kind of care was instinctive.
I thought maybe, if I waited long enough, Gabe would care about me like that.
I glance over at him now—still barefoot, still quiet, still here.
I think part of me is still waiting.
We fall quiet again, the silence expectant. Not tense, not uncomfortable—just full.
I twirl my fork once, twice, then set it down and look at my plate instead of him. “I loved you, you know. Back then.”
The words come out lighter than they feel, like I’m trying to pass them off as something casual. But they hang there, suspended in the space between us.
Gabe doesn’t answer right away. I hear the soft clink of his fork against the plate as he sets it aside, slow and deliberate.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think I knew.”
And maybe he did, or maybe he just knows now, with the benefit of hindsight and all the damage done.
I keep my gaze averted as I add, “It’s not…like that anymore.”
A lie. But one I’ve gotten good at telling.
He doesn’t call me on it. Just nods, then says, quietly?—
“I’m sorry. For back then…and for a few months ago…and all the time in between.”
That part almost undoes me.
Because it’s not just an apology for the ghost of a relationship we never had; it’s for the way he kept showing up and leaving like it didn’t cost me something every single time.
I don’t say anything. I just nod, because I can’t trust my voice, and we both know it.
We finish eating in silence, forks scraping gently against the plates. The air between us stills, not heavy, just…different. Something has shifted, something has cracked.
And maybe it’s not everything, but it’s more than I ever thought I’d get.
THIRTEEN
GABE
It’s been forty-five days since Sage sat across from me at the kitchen counter in my T-shirt, picked at her breakfast like it might say too much, and told me she loved me—back then.
She said it like it was a throwaway, like she wasn’t still wearing the shirt a year after she left in it.
But the past tense clung to every syllable.
Back then.
Notnow.
I haven’t been able to stop hearing it since.
We haven’t hooked up again, not since the bar, when she kissed me back like she meant it, pulled me close like she was starving for it—until Liam walked out, and she stepped away as though she’d been caught stealing something that didn’t belong to her.
She doesn’t talk about that night, and doesn’t talk about the morning after, either.
