Chapter 9
I scheduled the call for nine. I told myself nine was neutral. Not too eager, not too late. I spent the hour before wiping down the kitchen counter I had already wiped down.
My apartment in Monaco still held the warm night air from the terrace. I left the door to the balcony open so I could hear the water below. My phone sat face-up on the coffee table. I had changed out of the black suit jacket but kept the black shirt on. My beard was still trimmed. My neck tattoos caught the lamplight when I shifted. I checked my reflection once in the dark window and looked away.
At 9:02 my phone lit up. Amber's name. I answered before the second ring finished.
The screen filled and there she was. Same pink top, same large silver hoop earring catching light, hair pulled back tight just like on the terrace. But the background was wrong. No bokeh of marina lights, no railing, no bar stools. A plain white wall, a cheap ceiling light, a window with blinds I didn't recognize. She was sitting on the edge of a bed that wasn't ours.
She smiled when she saw me, but it was the restrained kind, the one where her lips pressed together and her eyes did the work.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," I said. "You made it work."
"Yeah. Sorry I'm two minutes late. Couldn't get the WiFi to connect."
I laughed a little. "You are never late."
She looked down for a second, then back at me. Her camera was a little low, so she had to look down at the lens. I could see her breathing in the slight rise of her shoulders. The light in her room was flat and overhead, nothing like the warm artificial key light that had made her glow on the terrace.
We did the first few minutes the way people do when they don't want to say the real thing. She asked if I had eaten. I asked if her room was cold. She said the heater clicked. I said Monaco was still warm enough to leave the balcony open. She said she missed the sound of the water.
She kept looking just off to the side of the camera. Not at me. At something else on her screen, or maybe at herself in the little box. I watched her micro-expressions the way I had learned to on the terrace. The way her mouth tightened before she swallowed. The way she blinked twice fast when she was holding something back.
"You okay?" I asked.
She nodded. Glossy lips, teary already but not spilling. "Yeah. I'm okay. Just tired."
We were both quiet for three seconds. I could hear her breathing through the phone speaker, soft and a little uneven.
"This place is fine," she said suddenly. She gestured with her hand at the wall behind her. "It's clean. People are nice. It's just..."
She stopped.
I waited. I didn't fill the pause.
She looked directly into the camera then, and her eyes were red at the edges. "It doesn't feel like anything," she said. Her voice dropped. "I walked around all day today and kept thinking I was going the wrong direction. Like I was supposed to turn and see the bar, or the railing, or you. And then I realized I wasn't there anymore."
My chest tightened. I leaned closer to the phone without meaning to.
"It's because this place only feels like home when you're in it," I said quietly, not quoting her, but repeating what she had told me that night. "That's what you said."
She closed her eyes for a second. A tear slipped before she could stop it.
"Yeah," she whispered. "And it's true here too. Here doesn't feel like home either. I thought it would. But I keep reaching for things that aren't here."
Behind her, over her shoulder, I saw it. The patterned rolling luggage. Same one that had sat in the background on the terrace, light wheels visible, half-zipped. It was against the wall of this new room, still packed. She hadn't unpacked. The handle was still extended like she had just rolled it in and left it.
I stared at it while she was looking down.
"You didn't unpack," I said.
She turned her head slightly, following my gaze, then looked back at me. A small, sad smile.
"I tried," she said. "I opened it and then I just... didn't."
"No room?"
"No reason," she said. "It felt weird to put everything away."
I understood. Putting everything away would have meant staying. Leaving it packed meant she was still between.
For a long minute we just looked at each other through the screens. The distance made everything we usually read in person — the slow eye movement, the breathing, the way she held her neck — flattened into pixels. I wanted to cup her face again like I had on the terrace, but my hands had nothing to hold.
"I miss home," she said finally, and I knew she didn't mean the city on either end. She meant the space between us that had been our apartment, our terrace, our night.
"I do too," I said. My own voice was rough. "This place is quiet without you."
She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, careful not to smudge her hoop earring. "I don't know what to do yet," she said.
May you like
"I know," I said. "Me either."
We didn't solve it. We didn't set a date. We just stayed on the call until her eyes started to droop and my phone burned warm in my hand, both of us homesick for the same place that only existed when we were in it together. When we finally said goodnight, neither of us hung up first for several seconds.
