O QUE RESTOU DE NÓS

THE ANNIVERSARY — PART 3

Mael remained seated in front of the cold dinner, still holding the gift he had prepared for his husband, while Adrian remained beside Julian on the screen.

There was no great revelation.

Mael had always known who Julian was.

He had always known there were places inside Adrian he had never been allowed to reach.

What broke that night was something smaller and, for that very reason, more humiliating:

The hope that the box might have been for him.

The idea that, perhaps just once, Adrian had remembered.

Mael closed the livestream.

The silence returned so quickly that, for a few seconds, his ears seemed to keep hearing the music.

He looked at the empty chair.

Then at the gift in his hands.

He didn't open it.

He didn't need to.

He took it upstairs to his room and, before putting it away, found a card.

He wrote:

"Happy wedding anniversary."

The pen remained still over the paper.

Mael breathed, feeling a kind of exhaustion that didn't come from that night, but from all the nights before it.

Then he added:

"I hope that one day I'll be seen."

He placed the card with the gift and closed the package.

Adrian never received it.