Chapter Four – The Space He Leaves
657 Words
Inigo did not come by the next day.
Amelia noticed it in the way one notices a missing tooth with their tongue—instinctively, repeatedly, painfully.
She told herself it was nothing. That people were allowed to disappear back into their own lives. That she had only imagined the quiet understanding in his voice at the market, the steadiness that had anchored her when everything inside her threatened to unravel.
Still, when morning turned to afternoon and the gate remained untouched, disappointment settled deep in her bones.
“He won’t come,” Lola Cora said casually, sorting sitaw on the kitchen table.
Amelia looked up too quickly. “I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t need to.” Her grandmother clicked her tongue. “Inigo does that. He pulls away when he feels too much.”
That should not have hurt.
But it did.
Amelia busied herself with errands she didn’t need to run. She walked into town with her head high, spine stiff, daring the place to say her name out loud. The sun was merciless, pressing down like judgment.
At the bakery, conversation dipped.
At the sari-sari store, a woman smiled too sweetly. “You’re staying long this time?”
Amelia swallowed. “I live here,” she said, louder than necessary. “This is my home.”
The words echoed strangely, as if the town were testing their truth.
By afternoon, the heat and the whispers wore her thin. She ended up by the chapel near the shore, the one people visited when they had nowhere else to put their prayers. She sat on the steps, fingers laced together, breathing through the ache in her chest.
She wondered when wanting someone became this quiet kind of hunger.
She wondered if Inigo felt it too—or if he had already locked it away.
She saw him that evening.
He was at the pier, measuring lines, clipboard in hand, every inch of him closed off. When he noticed her, something unreadable flickered across his face—then vanished.
“Amelia,” he said. Polite. Distant.
“Inigo.”
She waited for him to ask how she was. He didn’t.
“I heard about your fiancée,” she said instead, because the silence begged to be broken.
His jaw tightened. “I told you more than I should have.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what I heard.” His tone was calm, controlled. Colder than the sea at dawn. “I don’t mix work with… anything else.”
Something sharp twisted in her chest.
“Right,” she said, nodding once. “Of course.”
She should have walked away.
Instead, she stayed.
“You know,” she said, voice steady despite the tremor inside her, “people here think they know my whole story. They don’t. And I’m done shrinking so they can stay comfortable.”
He looked at her then, really looked.
“I didn’t come back to be pitied,” she continued. “Or whispered about. I came back because I was tired of pretending I didn’t need a place to land.”
Inigo’s grip tightened on his clipboard.
“I’m not asking you for anything,” she said softly. “I just needed you to know.”
For a moment, she thought he might say something. Reach out. Close the space he’d carved between them.
Instead, he stepped back.
“I can’t be that place,” he said.
The words landed like a door shutting.
Amelia nodded, because dignity was the last thing she had left.
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you for being honest.”
She walked away before he could see the way her hands shook.
Behind her, Inigo stayed rooted to the pier, the cold he wore like armor cracking just enough to let regret seep in.
He watched her go.
And hated himself for wanting to follow.
End of Chapter Four
- Writer
