Page 9 of Rise
“She’d be really glad you’re here,” Malcolm said, eventually. “She was worried you’d stay in Boston forever.”
Hazel smiled, though it felt like habit more than feeling. She folded her arms and leaned against the counter, letting the words settle before answering.
“I think I was worried too,” she admitted. “It still doesn’t really feel real. It’s like I’m borrowing someone else’s life… like any second, someone’s going to come in and ask what I’m doing here.”
He nodded, his gaze trailing over the shelving behind her. “I get that. More than you know.”
She turned towards him, really looking this time. His jaw was sharper than she remembered, his shoulders heavier— not in posture, but in presence. There were years in his eyes. Not unkind ones, just lived-in, worn like sea glass.
“When did you come back?” she asked.
“Three years ago,” he said, voice dropping with a softened edge. “After my mom passed.”
Hazel stilled. The words settled with weight. She remembered a phone call, years earlier, her grandmother’s voice gentle near the end.“Malcolm’s mom has passed, peacefully. After a long, long fight.”She remembered the shake of her grandmother’s voice as she said the words, and then the silence that followed, both over the line and in her own chest. The ache of not knowing what to say, and being too far away to say it anyway.
And beyond that, guilt began to trickle in, a steady stream that often turned to a puddle, low in her chest. A quiet, incessant reminder—visit your mother, Hazel,she whispered to herself, trying to convince herself that it was never nearly as bad as she always remembered it being.
“I remember,” she said, that same ache lingering within her. “Gram told me. I didn’t realize that’s when you left Chicago.”
“I’d been meaning to come back sooner. Maybe not to live, but at least to visit…” he murmured, twisting one of the silver rings around and around his pointer finger, the motion slow, almost unconscious. “But it took something big to actually do it. Funny how that works.”
Hazel’s throat tightened again and she felt her cheeks warm. She knew parts of Malcolm’s life— how he’d gone to art school in Chicago, sold his work through a gallery downtown, curated shows that appeared now and then in posts she always liked from a distance. For a long time, she’d watched from afar. But at some point, when her own life became breathless and worn thin, she’d stopped keeping up. Not just with him, but with everyone. Fading into the background had always been second nature to Hazel.
Her gaze flicked to the edge of one of the boxes, as if it might hold the answer to a question she couldn’t name.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know the feeling.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment. The silence pulsed, not empty, but full of everything they hadn’t said.
Malcolm picked up the mug she’d lingered on earlier. He turned it slowly, holding it like something delicate.
“You should keep this one,” he said, offering it to her. “Put it aside for the mornings you don’t want to get out of bed. Or the ones that hit hard.”
Hazel blinked. The words landed in a place she hadn’t realized was still hollow. They shifted against a jagged edge inside her and she barely managed to keep herself still, to avoid the flinch.
“You mean every morning?”
His smile came slow. “Exactly.”
She reached out and their fingers brushed as he passed it to her, just for a second. She curled her hands around the empty mug and held it close, imagining it filled— steam rising, warmth spreading across her palms. Something solid to hold onto.
It was hard to picture… but less hard than before. That had to count for something.
“Thanks for bringing them,” she said.
“Thanks for being here to receive them.”
Their eyes met and something passed between them— quiet but sure, a flicker of shared history and something gentle regrowing in the space between. It wasn’t just gratitude, it was recognition. Of each other. Of the strange, stubborn ache of loss. Of the way people could come back into your life not as strangers, but as softer echoes of who they used to be, still familiar beneath the dust.
Malcolm shifted, his eyes drifting away. “I can stick around, if you want. Help shelve them.”
Hazel shook her head. “I think I need to do that part on my own.”
She said it automatically and too fast, maybe. Because the truth was, she didn’t know how to accept help like that. Not without bracing for the shift in someone’s face, the edge in their tone when it became inconvenient. She’d learned, a long time ago, that offers didn’t always mean what they sounded like. That people didn’t always follow through on the things they’d promised.
Better to keep it easy, manageable. Hers. Better to be alone, in case the ache returned.
Malcolm nodded, unsurprised.
