CHAPTER SIX
721 Words
Sunday, 7:42 a.m. – Lena’s apartment
The sun is a traitor.
It slips through the half-open blinds in thin, merciless blades and lands across Eli’s face like it’s trying to wake him up to the crime he committed last night: falling asleep holding her.
Lena is still curled against his chest, one leg thrown over his, her palm flat over his heart like she’s checking it still works after everything she’s done to it.
Her breathing is slow, even, the kind of sleep she only ever finds when he’s near.
Eli hasn’t slept at all.
He’s been counting her exhales since 4:11 a.m., terrified that if he closes his eyes the dream will end and he’ll wake up on his own couch again with only the echo of her tears.
She shifts, makes a small sound (half sigh, half whimper), burrows closer.
His arm tightens reflexively around her waist.
For one suspended moment he lets himself pretend.
That this is allowed.
That this is theirs.
That the word pretend never clawed its way out of her mouth on that rooftop.
Then her phone vibrates on the coffee table.
Once. Twice. A third time.
The screen lights up with a name he doesn’t want to see: Marcus.
Good morning beautiful. Last night was really special. Round two tonight?
Eli feels the words like a blade sliding between his ribs, slow and surgical.
Lena stirs again, eyes fluttering open.
For three full seconds she doesn’t move, doesn’t pull away. She just looks at him (really looks) like she’s trying to memorize what safety feels like before she has to ruin it.
“Morning,” she whispers, voice cracked from crying.
“Morning,” he answers, and it sounds like please don’t leave this couch.
She notices her phone.
Sees the preview.
Her whole body goes stiff.
Eli pretends he didn’t read it.
He’s gotten good at pretending.
She untangles herself gently, carefully, like he’s made of glass she’s terrified to shatter.
The absence of her warmth is immediate and brutal.
“I should…” she starts, gesturing vaguely toward the kitchen, the bathroom, another planet.
“Yeah,” he says. “Coffee?”
She nods too fast.
They move around each other like strangers who once shared a womb.
She disappears into the bathroom.
He hears the shower start, hears her crying again under the water because she thinks the sound will hide it.
He stands in her kitchen holding two mugs that never get filled.
Marcus’s text is still glowing on the table like radioactive waste.
Eli stares at it until the letters burn into his retinas.
He thinks about deleting it.
He thinks about replying: she’s busy forever.
He thinks about smashing the phone against the wall and screaming until his throat bleeds.
Instead he makes coffee exactly the way she likes it (oat milk, one sugar, dash of cinnamon) and sets it on the counter like an offering.
When she comes out twenty minutes later, hair wet, face scrubbed raw, wearing his hoodie from two winters ago, she looks twelve years old and a thousand years tired.
She takes the mug with both hands, doesn’t meet his eyes.
“Thank you,” she says to the liquid. “For last night. For… coming.”
“Anytime,” he says, and hates how true it is.
Silence swells, thick and horrible.
She finally looks at him.
“We’re okay, right?” she asks, voice trembling. “We’re still… us?”
He wants to say: There is no us. There’s only me loving you and you refusing to let it be enough.
He wants to say: Stop dating men you don’t want just to prove you can live without me.
He wants to say: I felt you choose me in your sleep. Why won’t you choose me when you’re awake?
Instead he smiles the smile that’s been killing him for eight years.
“We’re still us, Len.”
She exhales like he just pulled her from drowning.
Her phone buzzes again.
Marcus: can’t stop thinking about you.
She silences it without reading, but they both know what it says.
Eli drinks his coffee black and pretends it doesn’t taste like goodbye.
End of chapter six.
The pretending is now a living thing with teeth, and it’s eating them both from the inside
- Writer
