The Sin Between Us

Chapter 6: Thirty-four Days

Two months hit different once he was actually on the other side of an ocean.

Week one, I had it together. Showed up to work on time, made it to the gym twice, sat across from June at dinner. Thursday and managed to talk about everything under the sun except the one thing sitting in the back of my skull.

My boss complimented a report I barely remembered writing. I laughed at June's jokes in the right places, nodded along at the right moments, and ordered the same salad I always ordered.

I was fine. I was managing. That's the word I kept using in my head, on repeat, like if I said it enough times it would stop being a lie.

Week two, I stopped pretending I wasn't checking the phone every time it buzzed, and then checking it even when it didn't buzz at all.

Not the dramatic kind of checking. Not desperate. Just…aware. Like knowing exactly where a bruise sits on your body. You don't press on it constantly, but you know it's there, and every so often your thumb finds it anyway, just to confirm it's still tender.

Mine was tender in a place I couldn't name out loud to anyone, not even to myself in the shower, where I did most of my honest thinking, the water running long past the point where it made sense.

No texts from him. I hadn't expected any.

We weren't built that way… not the kind of two people who kept up a running conversation, who checked in for no reason at all.

Before the party, before those three seconds in the hallway and the four words at two in the morning, we were just relatives who crossed paths at family dinners and made small talk when we happened to end up in the same room with nothing better to do.

That was the entire architecture of us. Simple. Bloodless. Safe. The kind of relationship that didn't require maintenance because there was nothing in it to break.

So the silence wasn't new. It was just business as usual, wearing a different coat.

Except this time it sat in my chest like something with weight, something that had learned to breathe on its own.

"You're doing the thing again," June said, eyes on her salad, not even bothering to look up at me.

"What thing?"

"The way you keep glaring at your phone like it personally stole something from you and won't give it back."

"I'm expecting an email."

"Hyacinth." Her fork hit the table with more force than a piece of romaine required.

"Twelve years I've known you. Twelve. Not once have you looked like that over an email.

Not even the one that got you the promotion, and that one actually mattered."

I flipped my phone face-down against the tablecloth.

"Leave it alone."

"Fine… Leaving it." She picked her fork back up, studied me over the rim of her water glass like she was deciding whether to push further, weighing it, and then, mercifully, didn't.

"For now," she added, because June never let a thread go completely…she just set it down somewhere she could find it again later, filed under things to bring up when I least expected it.

My mother rang me midweek to report that Jude had checked in, that he sounded well, that London was clearly agreeing with him.

She talked about him the way she always did … that soft, particular tone she saved only for people she'd loved for a long time, the tone that made her voice go warmer at the edges, rounder, easier.

She adored him. My father adored him. My grandmother adored him in that fierce, proprietary way old women adore the grandsons of their oldest friends, like he belonged to the family in some deeper, older sense than blood accounted for.

The whole family did, in fact, adore him, effortlessly, the way you'd adore weather that was always good, that never needed forgiving.

That was the part I never let myself linger on for more than a few seconds at a time.

"He asked after you, actually," she added, almost as an afterthought, already half onto the subject of whether I'd eaten a proper dinner or just cereal again standing over the sink.

My breath caught for a full second, maybe two.

"What did he say?"

"Just wanted to know how you were doing. Work, all that." A small pause on her end, the kind that meant she was refilling her wine glass, unbothered, humming something under her breath.

"Why? Does that seem strange to you?"

"No." Too fast. Entirely too fast.

"No, that's not strange at all."

I told her that was great, that I was happy for him, and I meant every word of it. Whatever was tangled up inside me had nothing to do with wishing him anything but good.

That was the truest thing I knew about myself in all of this… I wanted good things for him even when wanting them cost me something I couldn't put a name to yet.

I just also, quietly, selfishly, wanted a text from him myself.

I didn't get one. Not for five weeks straight.

Five weeks of his name surfacing at every family dinner like clockwork, arriving in the conversation the way certain names always did in that house…easily, fondly, without anyone noticing the way I went still when it happened, fork suspended halfway to my mouth.

Five weeks of my grandmother wondering aloud, over dessert, if anyone had actually spoken to him lately, or if he was too important now for the rest of us.

Five weeks of me sitting there, knowing more about his exact whereabouts than anyone else at that table and volunteering none of it, because to say anything at all felt like handing someone a key to a room I hadn't fully mapped myself.

Day thirty-four.. and yes, I had been counting, and yes, that cost me something even to make to myself in the privacy of my own head…I cracked.

I kept it light. Nothing that would mean anything if someone read it over my shoulder.

Just a link to a write-up on some London restaurant that had gotten good press that week, the kind of place I figured he'd be into, dim lighting and a wine list longer than the menu, with a throwaway line attached..saw this and thought of you.

Breezy. Effortless. Purely a niece being friendly, if niece were still the cleanest word for whatever we actually were.

I set the phone face-down on the counter and went to deal with the coffee maker, mostly so my hands would have something to do besides hover.

He'd already answered by the time I turned back around.

I went there twice already. The second visit topped the first. The bread alone is worth the flight.

I stood there in my kitchen, mug halfway to my mouth, reading it over four separate times like it might rearrange itself into something less loaded on the fifth read. Twice already.

He'd gone back. He'd registered, somewhere in that head of his, whether I'd like the bread.

And he'd written back inside of four minutes, which for a man who'd let five weeks pass in total silence, felt like something close to urgency.

I typed…How's London treating you?*

Cold. Runs like clockwork. Rain in the air constantly.

Sounds like your kind of place.

It fits me, yeah. A pause, long enough that I watched the three dots appear and vanish twice before the next message finally landed.

And you? …How are you holding up?*

Two words, really, buried inside an otherwise ordinary question.

But something in my chest came loose anyway, some knot I hadn't noticed tightening over the past month, because thirty-four days had gone by and he'd asked, unprompted, and then my own name showed up in the very next bubble like he needed it there for emphasis

I mean it, Hyacinth. How are you really doing?

I answered him straight, which was probably a mistake, but I was tired of being careful with a man who apparently wasn't being careful with me.

I'm fine. Work's fine. My head's been loud lately.

Three dots. Then..

Loud with what?

I stared at that question far longer than I should have, long enough that the milk in my coffee separated into its own pale ring, long enough that my screen dimmed twice from inactivity and I tapped it back awake both times just to look at the words sitting there, patient, waiting me out.

I never answered it directly.

I just typed..doesn't matter….get some sleep.

His reply landed a minute later, no more than that.

Hyacinth…

Nothing else attached to it.

Just my name, standing entirely on its own …exactly the way he'd said it that night in my aunt's living room, low and unhurried, like a sentence he'd started and hadn't yet decided whether he had the right to finish.

I could still hear it if I closed my eyes. I did close my eyes, actually, right there at my kitchen table, and I heard it perfectly.

I set the phone down, screen against the wood, like putting it somewhere I couldn't see it would stop me from thinking about it.

It lit up again before I'd even taken my hand off it.

Not a text this time.

Jude is calling…

I watched the screen glow and buzz against the table, once, twice, my own name for him lighting up over and over in that stupid cheerful font my phone used for incoming calls, and I sat there with my hand still hovering an inch above it, not sure yet which version of myself was about to answer.