Chapter 7
I didn't realize how much noise Amber made until the apartment went quiet.
That was the first thing I noticed when I let myself back in. The key turned the same way it always did. The lock clicked. The hallway light came on warm over the little table by the door where she always dropped her hoop earrings into a ceramic dish. The dish was empty now. I stood there with my hand still on the doorknob and listened.
The terrace doors were closed. The city lights were still out there, same bokeh blur over the marina I'd seen every night from the bar. Same warm bulb over the kitchen counter. Nothing had changed, but the air felt thin, like someone had left a window open in winter and all the heat had slipped out without me noticing.
I dropped my keys on the counter. They made a sound that was too loud.
I hadn't brought her luggage up. It was gone with her. That patterned case with the light wheels that had sat behind us on the terrace all night, the one that had made every minute feel borrowed - it wasn't in the corner by the closet anymore where she'd parked it that afternoon while she finished packing. The space looked wrong without it. Too clean. I found myself staring at that empty patch of floor longer than I meant to.
I walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge out of habit. Her oat milk was still there, half full. A lemon she'd cut for water, wrapped in plastic. I closed it again.
On the couch, her pink top wasn't draped over the arm the way it usually was. She'd worn it to the terrace and left in it. I sat down where she'd sat that morning, and the cushion was cool. I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. My beard itched. My eyes were still raw from the terrace, from trying not to blink too much while she was looking at me.
"It's because this place only feels like home when you're in it."
Her voice came back without me calling for it. Not loud. Just clear, the way she'd said it on the terrace after I'd told her I didn't think saying goodbye for a few days would hurt that much. I heard the exact pause she took before "home," the soft catch in it. I hadn't answer her right away that night. I just breathed and held her face and let the tears sit there.
Now the line sat in the empty living room and filled it.
I got up and went to the terrace doors and slid one open. Night air came in off the water, cooler now. The bar down the hill was still open - I could see its string lights, hear faint music and glasses. For a second I thought about going back down. Changing my jacket. Ordering something. Letting the noise fill the apartment for me. It would have been easy. The terrace crowd would still be there, and I wouldn't have to hear how quiet my own breathing was.
I put my hand on the door frame and didn't go.
If I left, I'd come back to the same emptiness. Louder, maybe, with whatever I'd drunk still sitting behind my teeth. I didn't want to numb it. I wanted to feel where the cold was coming from.
I stepped back inside and left the door open a few inches, just enough to hear the city.
I started moving through the apartment slowly, not cleaning, just noticing. In the bathroom, her hair tie was still around the faucet handle. In the bedroom, the closet door was half open and her side was light but not empty - two sweaters folded, a pair of shoes she hadn't taken. She'd left room. On purpose or not, she had. On my nightstand, the gold chain I'd taken off before bed the night before was still tangled the way she'd laughed at and fixed for me.
I picked up the chain and put it back on. The metal was cold.
I pulled the blanket up on the bed where she'd kicked it down that morning. I didn't smooth it perfectly. I left the dent where her pillow had been. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the room as it was - not as a place I needed to erase her from to make it hurt less, and not as a place I needed to keep frozen like a museum.
I understood something then that I hadn't on the terrace. Home wasn't the lights or the view or the warm bulb in the kitchen. It was the way she left her dish by the door and her shoes by the closet and expected the space to hold them. The apartment felt cold because it was doing what she'd said - waiting to be a home again only when she walked back into it. And my job wasn't to fill it with something else.
May you like
I turned on the small lamp by the bed and turned off the big overhead light. The room got warmer immediately. I opened my phone, saw no new messages, and set it face down. I wasn't going to hover over it.
I lay back on my side of the bed and listened to the terrace door rattle a little with the wind and to the faint hum from the marina. I let myself breathe slow. I was going to keep the oat milk in the fridge. Keep the dish by the door empty but there. Keep the apartment as it was - lived-in, quiet, still hers too - until she decided what a few days really meant.
