Chapter 6
1527 Words
I woke before my alarm.
For a few seconds I lay still, staring at the ceiling, caught in that quiet space between sleep and awareness where nothing bad had happened yet.
Then the familiar weight settled back onto my chest, and I remembered everything all at once.
Claire was already moving around in the kitchen. I could hear the soft sounds of her getting ready. The running tap. The quiet clink of a mug.
The careful way she moved as though trying not to disturb anything.
I sat up slowly and reached for my phone from the nightstand out of habit, already knowing what I would find.
The voicemail app showed nothing.
Just the same empty screen I'd stared at yesterday.
I stared at it anyway for a long moment before locking the screen and setting it face down on the bed.
Claire appeared in the doorway, already dressed, her bag over one shoulder. She looked at me the way she had been looking at me for days now.
Carefully.
Like she was trying to read something I wasn't saying out loud.
She had seen me check the phone. I could tell.
But she didn't mention it.
"I'll be back by seven," she said quietly. "There's coffee in the pot."
"Thank you."
She hesitated in the doorway for a moment longer.
"Don't stay in all day, okay? You don't have to do anything. Just don't disappear into yourself."
I nodded. "I won't."
She gave me one last look before she left. The front door clicked shut behind her, and the apartment went completely silent.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a while without moving.
Coming back here after two weeks at my parents' house felt strange. Like returning to a life that belonged to a version of me that no longer existed.
Everything looked the same.
The stack of books on the shelf.
The throw blanket on the couch. The half-burned candle on the windowsill.
Everything exactly where I had left it.
As though the world had simply paused and waited for me to return.
It hadn't, of course. The world had kept moving. It was only mine that had stopped.
I eventually got up and drifted through the apartment without any particular direction. I wasn't looking for anything.
I was just moving, because movement felt less unbearable than stillness.
I ended up in the kitchen, where I stood holding the coffee mug Bella had bought me two birthdays ago.
It was pale yellow with a small chip on the handle that she had called character and I had called a reason to throw it away.
I had kept it anyway.
I set it down carefully and pressed my fingers against the rim.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, beneath everything else, her voice played on a quiet loop.
If anything happens to me.
I moved to the living room. Her sweater was still folded over the arm of the couch. The green one she had left here months ago and kept forgetting to take home.
A framed photograph of the two of us sat on the shelf beside my books.
Taken three summers ago at the coast. She was laughing in it, her head tipped back, her hair catching the wind.
I remembered the exact moment.
I remembered thinking she looked like she belonged in a painting.
I picked up the photograph and held it for a long time before setting it back down.
I needed to do something.
Anything.
I started cleaning, not because the apartment needed it but because sitting still had become physically painful.
I wiped the kitchen counter. I straightened the cushions.
I folded her sweater more neatly over the couch arm before realizing what I was doing and stopping.
I stood there holding it against my chest instead. The fabric soft and worn.
And I breathed through the tightness in my throat until it became manageable again.
Each small thing I touched brought a memory with it.
That was the worst part. Not the big moments. The small ones.
The ordinary, forgettable ones that had never felt important enough to hold onto until now.
My phone rang in the early afternoon.
Nathan.
I answered on the second ring. "Hey."
"Hey." His voice was careful.
The kind of careful that meant he was choosing his words before he spoke them.
"How are you doing?"
"I'm okay."
A brief pause told me he didn't entirely believe that.
"You eating?"
"Yes."
"Sleeping?"
"Enough."
"Getting out of the apartment?"
"Nathan."
"I'm just asking."
"I know." I leaned against the kitchen counter. "I'm fine."
He didn't push it.
We talked for a few minutes about nothing in particular.
The easy surface-level conversation of two people carefully avoiding the thing that sat between them.
Just before he hung up, his tone shifted.
"There's something I wanted to mention," he said.
"Bella's landlord reached out to the family."
"They're giving everyone a few days to collect anything personal before the rest gets packed up."
I went still. "How many days?"
"A few. Maybe three or four." He paused.
"I thought you should know in case there was anything you wanted to get before strangers cleared it out."
After I hung up I didn't move for a long time.
I stood in the kitchen with the phone in my hand and stared at nothing.
Then I remembered something Bella had said once, months ago, when she had been talking about the idea of moving in with Adrian after the wedding.
She had said it casually. Laughing. Not thinking anything of it.
"You're getting all my books when I go. I'm not leaving them for strangers."
I had rolled my eyes at the time. Told her she wasn't going anywhere.
She had thrown a cushion at me and said I was being dramatic.
I set my phone on the counter.
Then I went to find my shoes.
The cab ride was quiet.
I sat with my hands folded in my lap and watched the city pass outside the window.
Everything looked ordinary. People going about their afternoons. Cafes and crossings and the familiar rhythm of traffic.
None of it felt real.
It felt like watching a film through glass.
Something happening at a distance that had nothing to do with me.
Bella's building came into view sooner than I was ready for.
I paid the driver and stepped out onto the pavement. I stood there looking up at the building for a long moment.
The building I had visited dozens of times.
The familiar entrance.
The potted plants flanking the door.
The worn brass numbers above the letterboxes.
Nothing had changed.
Nothing about this building knew what had happened.
I almost turned around.
The thought was sudden and serious.
I could go home. I could come back tomorrow. I could let someone else do this.
But then I thought about strangers moving through her rooms. Packing her things into boxes without knowing what any of it meant.
I reached into my bag for the key.
My hand was not steady.
I pushed through the front entrance and stepped into the lobby.
The lobby smelled the same as it always had.
Something faintly floral and familiar.
I climbed the stairs slowly, one hand trailing against the wall.
When I reached her door I stopped.
I stood in front of it for what felt like a long time.
The last time I had knocked on this door, she had opened it in her old university sweatshirt with flour on her hands because she had been attempting to bake something she had seen online.
She had been laughing before she even said hello.
This time there would be no answer from the other side.
I pressed the key into the lock and turned it.
The door swung open, and the smell reached me before anything else.
Her perfume. Faint and familiar.
Layered beneath the warmth of coffee and vanilla candles that had long since burned out.
I stood in the doorway and let it wash over me without moving.
Her shoes were by the entrance.
The cream ones she wore for work, sitting exactly where she had stepped out of them.
Her coat hung beside the door.
A coffee mug sat in the sink, unwashed.
A wedding magazine lay open on the sofa, one page folded at the corner as though she had meant to come back to it.
Her cardigan was draped across the chair by the window, sleeves hanging loose.
Nothing had moved.
Nothing in this apartment knew she was dead.
I pressed my hand against the doorframe and closed my eyes for a moment.
When I opened them again, the tears came quietly and without warning.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
I stepped inside and let the door close gently behind me.
My eyes moved slowly across the room.
Taking in everything she had left exactly as it was.
Every ordinary detail of a life that had simply stopped mid-sentence.
Then...
Something near the dining table caught my attention.
I stopped.
A small frown pulled at my brow.
I was almost certain it hadn't been there before.
- Writer
