Episode 5: The Girlfriend's house
772 Words
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The Kirkland residence was in the old part of the city, where money didn't announce itself with glass towers and revolving doors but with privacy—high hedges, long driveways, houses set far back from the road. The Kirklands had been wealthy for three generations, which meant they no longer felt the need to prove it.
Malachi stood at the edge of the circular driveway and tried to remember how to breathe.
He'd been coming here for two years. Two years of Sunday dinners and holiday galas and carefully staged photographs that appeared in the society pages with captions like Malachi Miller and Sabrina Kirkland, continuing their families' legacy of partnership.
Two years of performing a future he'd never chosen.
Tonight, he was going to end it.
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Sabrina met him at the door.
"You're early." She kissed his cheek, a brief press of lips against skin. "Dad's still in his study. Mom wants to discuss the spring gala." She pulled him inside, her hand wrapped around his. "Come on, I'll make you a drink."
"Sabrina."
She turned.
"We need to talk."
Something flickered across her face—not surprise, exactly. More like recognition. Like she'd been waiting for this moment and had simply been hoping it would never arrive.
"Okay," she said. "Okay."
She led him to the conservatory.
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The Kirkland conservatory was glass and wrought iron, filled with orchids that required more care than most children. A koi pond occupied the center of the room, orange and white shapes moving slowly beneath the surface.
Sabrina sat on the edge of the wrought-iron bench. She didn't look at him.
"It's about the professor, isn't it."
Malachi was quiet.
"Everyone thinks I don't notice," she said. "The way you look at her. The way you find reasons to stay after class. The way you've been—distant. Present but not present." Her voice was steady, but her hands were clenched in her lap. "I notice everything, Malachi. I've been noticing for months."
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what? For not loving me? For pretending you did?" She finally looked at him. "For wasting two years of my life on a man who was already gone before he ever really arrived?"
He didn't flinch.
"Yes," he said. "For all of it."
Sabrina was quiet for a long moment.
"I knew," she said. "From the beginning, I knew. My father introduced us and I looked at your face and I thought, He doesn't want to be here." A pause. "But I wanted to be here. I wanted you to want to be here. I thought if I tried hard enough, if I was patient enough, if I loved you enough—"
She stopped.
"That's not how it works," Malachi said quietly.
"I know that now." Her voice was barely audible. "I know that now."
The silence stretched.
"My father is going to be furious," she said. "Yours too. The merger—"
"I don't care about the merger."
"No. I don't suppose you do." She stood. Her movements were careful, controlled. "What do you care about, Malachi? What do you actually want?"
He thought of the postcard. The lighthouse. The gray sky that held its breath.
"I want to stop performing," he said. "I want to stop becoming someone I didn't choose to be. I want—" He paused. "I want to find out who I am when no one is watching."
Sabrina looked at him.
"And you think she can help you find that?"
"I think she's the first person who's ever made me believe it exists."
A long pause.
"Okay," Sabrina said. "Okay."
She walked past him toward the door.
"Sabrina."
She paused.
"I am sorry. For not ending this sooner. For letting you believe I could become someone I wasn't." He paused. "You deserved better."
She didn't turn around.
"Yes," she said. "I did."
She left.
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Malachi stood alone in the glass room, surrounded by orchids and the soft sound of water.
His phone buzzed. His father, probably—news traveled fast in the circles they occupied, and someone had already seen him arrive, had already calculated the implications.
He didn't answer.
Instead he drove. Not toward his father's house, not toward campus, not toward any of the places where people expected him to be. He drove until the city thinned and the road opened up and the only light came from the moon on the water.
His grandmother's cottage was dark when he arrived.
He didn't knock. He sat on the porch, his back against the door, and watched the tide move in and out.
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- Writer
