Page 62 of One Room Vacancy
The silence that follows is thick and suffocating.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, just looks at me with something tired in his eyes, like he’s sifting through all the versions of me he’s known, trying to understand the one standing in front of him now.
My chest tightens. I want to say I didn’t mean it, but the words stay lodged in my throat, stuck behind pride and panic and too many years of not saying the right thing at the right time.
He nods, slow, hollow. “Okay,” he says at last, barely louder than a whisper.
Then he turns, grabs his keys from the hook by the door, and walks out.
The door clicks shut behind him, and I just stand there.
Frozen.
Waiting for the echo to fade.
I don’t cry, not yet, not even when the silence starts to throb in my ears like a warning.
He’ll come back; he has to.
His shoes are still by the door. His hoodie’s on the back of the couch. He left his charger plugged in, his jacket slung over the dining chair. People don’t leave for good without their stuff, and all of his stuff is here.
This is just a fight. A bad one, yeah, but we’ve had worse. Haven’t we?
Except we haven’t.
I drag in a shaky breath and sink into one of the kitchen chairs, the one he was just sitting in. It’s still warm.
He didn’t yell.
He didn’t argue.
He just…left, which might be worse, honestly.
My fingers toy with the stem of my wine glass, still half-full, but my desire for it is long gone. I glance at the clock, as if I’ll find something useful in the passage of minutes, a sign that he’s on his way back.
He just needs space.
He’ll come back.
He always does.
But even as I think it, something deep in my gut curls tight—because this time, for the first time, I’m not so sure.
FIFTEEN
SAGE
I don’t sleep.
I lie in bed, listening for the sound of the front door, convincing myself I’ll hear it open. That he’ll come back, that maybe I’ll wake up and last night won’t feel so final.
But morning comes anyway.
I shower without thinking, pull on clothes I don’t remember choosing. I stare at the stove long enough to wonder how many times he’s made breakfast here. For me. Without me asking.
And then I leave.
I drive across town in silence—no music, no distractions. Just the sound of my tires on the road and my heartbeat trying to break through my ribs.
