The silence after every door closed was louder than any of the noise that had come before it.
I woke in the thin gray light of another winter morning and lay still for a long time, listening to the hostel settle around me. No messages waiting. No one trying to reach me. My mother had finally stopped calling. Daniel had stopped too. The absence of both of them should have felt like peace. Instead it felt like standing in the middle of a house after the furniture has been carried out—echoing, too large, and full of the shape of what used to fill it.
I dressed slowly. The competition jersey stayed folded at the bottom of my bag. I reached past it for a plain black base layer and the same hoodie I had been living in for days. Armor had become habit. Habit had become the only thing that still
