The knock comes again—same rhythm as yesterday, soft and certain.

I wipe my hands on a dish towel, the smell of marigolds still clinging from downstairs. When I open the door, Ellis stands there in the same jacket, hair damp from the walk, eyes ringed in sleepless gray.

He looks at me the way tired people do—through, not at. The air that comes in with him smells like rain and car exhaust.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

Neither of us moves until the sound of a passing truck fades. Then he steps forward and folds his arms around me. His body feels heavier than before, as if he’s carrying the night that just ended.

I rest my chin against his shoulder. His breath catches once, then evens.

When we pull apart, the space between us feels thin, like fabric about to fray.

“You didn’t have to come back so soon,” I say, voice barely over the hum of the fridge.

“I didn’t sleep,” he answers. The words slide out flat, no edge.

The light through the window cuts across his face—warm for a heartbeat, then gone behind a passing cloud.

He drops his bag by the door, shoulders still rounded from carrying it. For a moment, neither of us fills the silence.

The scent of rain lingers. The air tastes like something waiting to end.

The air shifts before either of us speaks—like the room already knows what’s coming.
Light presses thin through the blinds, cutting across the floor and my hands. The city hums outside, traffic a low current under everything.

We stand a few feet apart. The marigold on the windowsill bends toward the fading light, petals catching gold that won’t last much longer.

Ellis moves first. His fingers find my face, palms warm, thumbs just under my mouth. The touch makes the air between us feel smaller. His voice is quiet, almost gentle.
“You stopped looking at me like you were waiting for me to stay.”

The words settle somewhere low in my ribs. I breathe in, but it doesn’t feel like enough.
“I think I was always waiting for something else,” I say. “But I never should’ve had to wait for you to stay. You should’ve wanted to, Ellis.”

Outside, a car horn bleeds through the open window, brief and sharp, gone as fast as it came. The air-conditioning clicks on, a hum that fills what we don’t say.

Ellis’s mouth opens—“I…”—but nothing follows. He exhales instead, closing the space between us just enough to press his lips to my forehead. The kiss lands soft, heavy, familiar. His fingers move through my hair once, slow, like he’s memorizing what leaving feels like.

For a second, I almost let myself fall into it—the warmth, the muscle memory of belonging—but the thought rises before I can stop it.

“Who are they?”

He stills. The question hangs there, fragile and full.

“Who kept you from calling me every night?” My voice shakes, small but audible over the hum. “Ellis, Caleb may have come back and that threw me off, but you—you stopped wanting me before that. And I don’t know what I did wrong.”

He looks at me, eyes tired, mouth set. His jaw tightens once, like he’s holding something between his teeth.

“Do you really want to know?” he asks, voice steady now. “Or would you rather I go?”

My throat burns. I can taste the dust in the air. It was a hail mary, I had no proof he was cheating. But the fact he didn’t deny or confirm tells me all I need to know.
“Just… go, Ellis. And don’t come back.”

The silence that follows doesn’t break—it just changes temperature. The light fades another shade darker, and the marigold loses its glow.

Ellis grabs his bag back off the floor. Gives me one long look before opening my apartment door and slipping out. The door closes.
The sound stretches longer than it should, as if the room hasn’t decided to let it end. The latch clicks, soft but final, and the air shifts—lighter, emptier.

I stay standing where I am. My hands hang useless at my sides. The smell of rain follows him out, but something colder stays. The kind of quiet that hums inside the ribs.

Light slips through the blinds in thin gold strips. Dust moves in it, slow as thought. The marigold by the window trembles from the door’s motion, one petal falling, catching on the sill.

The city hums outside—traffic, brakes, someone’s laugh drifting up from the street. It doesn’t touch me. Everything in here feels sealed off, like air after thunder.

My body moves before I think to. Knees bend. The floor meets me hard and real. I draw my legs in and fold down, forehead against my arms. My breath comes uneven—half-sob, half-exhale.

The fabric of my sleeves grows darker where tears land. Each drop spreads in small circles, disappearing into the cotton. I can hear the wet sound of breathing, the pulse behind my eyes.

The note sits on the nightstand still, a corner lifted in the air from the hum of the vent. Its shadow stretches toward the bed, faint and wavering.

I watch it until my vision blurs.

The marigold moves again in the draft, small and alive despite it all. The air smells like soil, like something that’s been turned over but not yet replanted.

Outside, headlights pass—brief flashes of white against the wall, then gone. The quiet folds back in around me, thick and complete.

I stay there, listening to my own breathing, the faint sound of the city moving on without us. The room holds what we were—his warmth still in the air, my heartbeat still catching up to the silence.

Nothing breaks it. Not yet.