Page 61 of One Room Vacancy
I finally look at him.
He’s still seated, elbows on the table, hands open like he doesn’t want to spook me.
“I wasn’t pushing you,” he says gently. “I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do. I just—” He exhales, rubs a hand across his mouth. “I just wanted you to remember you have options. That you’re more capable than you think.”
His voice is soft—not defensive, not combative, just steady. Like he’s offering me something to hold onto instead of throwing something in my face.
But my body doesn’t know what to do with kindness when I’m spiraling. It always reads like pity, like disappointment dressed up in concern.
“You think I’m capable,” I say, the words brittle. “But that’s the problem, Gabe. You don’t know me. Not really.”
He shifts like he’s about to say something, but I don’t let him. I can’t. The words keep coming, too fast to stop.
“You think just because you’ve fucked me on and off for the last couple years, that means you know me?” I let out a dry laugh, sharp and humorless. “Come on, Gabe. Be serious. Half the time it was when you were bored, or lonely, or, God, for whatever reason Kara wasn’t answering your calls that week.”
His jaw tenses, but I’m already spiraling.
“I was the stand-in. The one you crawled back to when it was convenient, when it didn’t work out with her. And I let you; I let you use me like a—like a fucking pit stop between breakdowns. Because I was too dumb, or too desperate, or whatever it was, to walk away.”
My voice breaks, and I hate it. Hate the way it makes me sound small. But it’s the truth, the messy, bleeding truth I’ve never said out loud.
“I wasn’t a person to you,” I finish, quieter now. “Not really, just something soft to land on until you went back to the life you actually wanted.”
He stares at me.
No denial, no rebuttal.
Just…silence.
His shoulders rise with a slow breath—controlled, careful.
“I deserved some of that,” he says finally, voice low. “Probably most of it.”
He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t flinch. Just takes it in like a man used to standing in the middle of someone else’s storm.
“But not all of it.”
I cross my arms tightly over my chest, like I can hold myself together if I just squeeze hard enough.
He takes a step back—not away from me, not quite, but like he’s putting space between us before he says something he can’t unsay. “I haven’t talked to Kara in months, not since I moved in here,” he says quietly. “I left that part of my life behind for a reason. And yeah, I fucked up with you. I know I did, I know I kept coming back, and I never gave you the clarity you deserved. But this version of me, the one standing here now, he’s not crawling back. He’s here, and he’s been here.”
I look away, jaw clenched.
He waits a beat, giving me a chance to say something, anything.
But I don’t.
“I don’t even know why I’m here if you won’t talk to me,” he says. “If you won’t let me be here.”
His words are calm, not cruel. But they still knock the wind out of me.
“Then leave!” I snap, voice louder than I intend.
It echoes through the kitchen like something thrown.
We both freeze.
The words hang between us like smoke—acrid, impossible to take back.
