Chapter 10
The phone rang at 9:14 and I knew before I answered. I'd been sitting on the floor of the apartment with my back against the couch, the terrace doors open to the marina lights, Amber's pink top still folded on the chair where she'd left it that night. I hadn't moved it. I hadn't touched the luggage corner either.
Her name lit up the screen. I picked up on the second ring.
"Hey," she said. Her voice was thin, like she was in a hallway somewhere and didn't want anyone to hear.
"Hey," I said. I tried to keep my breathing even. "Where are you?"
"Conference center. Between sessions." A pause. I heard a door close on her end, a chair scrape. "I got pulled aside after the panel."
I waited. The lights across the water blinked through the glass.
"They offered me the extension," she said. "Same project, different city. Six weeks. Paid. It's the lead track. The one I didn't think they'd give me."
I stared at the suitcase shadow in the corner. "Six weeks."
"I know," she said quickly. "I told them I needed forty-eight hours. I told them I had to talk to you."
That was the part that caught me. Not the offer, but the way she said it, like she was asking permission she didn't need and didn't want to need.
I pressed my palm flat against the floor. The tile was cool.
"When would it start?" I asked.
"Monday. I'd go straight from here. I wouldn't come back in between."
I nodded even though she couldn't see me. My throat did that tight thing it had done on the terrace when she said this place only feels like home when you're in it. I remembered the tears on her cheek, the way I'd cupped her face and couldn't fix anything by holding it.
"What do you want?" I asked.
She breathed out. "I want you not to hate me for wanting it."
"I don't," I said. Too fast. I made myself say it again slower. "I don't hate that."
"Don't you?" Her voice cracked a little. "Because last time we did this you said few days and it wrecked us both. Six weeks is different. I know it is."
It was. Few days had been a lie we both let stand that night on the terrace. We'd said a few days because it was easier than saying we didn't know. Now she was telling the truth, and truth had a number and a deadline.
I wanted to say stay. I wanted to say come home. I wanted to say the apartment already felt empty with just her shirt on a chair, and six weeks would hollow it out completely. I had the whole selfish speech lined up in my chest, the one that started with I need you here and ended with don't go.
I didn't say it.
"What happens if you take it?" I asked.
She shifted. I could hear her earring tap against her phone. "It puts me on the short list for the permanent role. It's what I've been working for since I was twenty-two. If I say no, they give it to someone else. They won't ask again."
"And if you don't take it?"
"Then I come home Monday," she said. "To Monaco. To you. To that terrace."
Home. She said it the way I'd said it that night, like a place was a person.
I closed my eyes. The marina lights made red lines on my eyelids. I thought about the night I watched her luggage sit behind us while we cried and pretended a short goodbye would be manageable. I thought about waking up alone and reaching for a side of the bed that was already cold.
I thought about what it would mean to ask her to choose me over the thing she'd earned. I could do it. She might even listen. And she'd resent me for it by week three, and I'd resent myself for needing her to.
"Amber," I said. "You should take the time to decide. Real time. Not my time."
"I'm asking what you think," she said.
"I think you already know what you want to try," I said. "And I think if I tell you not to, you'll wonder forever if you should have."
Silence stretched. I heard her breathing, small and uneven, same as on the terrace when we'd held eye contact and said nothing because nothing would help.
"I'm scared," she whispered. Not about the job. About us.
"I know," I said. My voice was rougher than I meant. "I'm scared too."
"Are you mad I'm even considering it?"
"No," I said. And I meant it. I was gutted, but not mad. "I'm proud of you. That hasn't changed since the night you left."
She laughed once, wet. "You have to say that."
"I don't have to say anything," I said. "I want you to have forty-eight hours that's actually yours. Not mine. No guilt. No clock from me."
"Forty-eight hours," she repeated.
"Yeah."
"And you won't —" She stopped.
"I won't call and tip the scale," I said. "I won't text a sad photo of the apartment. I won't do that."
She was quiet again. Then, softer, "Will you still be there when I decide?"
The question landed hard. It was the same one I'd been asking since she left, just pointed the other way.
"I'll be here," I said. "Monaco doesn't move."
She exhaled. I heard someone call her name faintly in the background, muffled.
"I have to go back in," she said.
"Go," I said. "We'll talk tomorrow."
"Okay," she said. "Forty-eight hours. I promise I'll call before then."
May you like
The line clicked. The apartment stayed the same. The lights still blinked. The shirt still sat on the chair. The only thing that had changed was that now we both knew the few days were over and the real separation had a name and a number, and I had chosen to let her carry it without my hands on the scale.
I stayed on the floor a while longer, listening to the water and the traffic down on the port, trying to learn how to be home alone without asking her to fix it for me.
