The Mirror Before Her

Chapter 11 — Almost Something

Three weeks.

That’s how long it had been since the coffee in the fire exit. Since her tears. Since I’d seen her come undone and still manage to hold herself together.

Since then, everything between us has lived in the quiet hours — the spaces after midnight when the rest of the world shut down and only people with tired hearts stayed awake.

She never said much, but I could tell when she was stressed. Her replies came slower. Her messages are shorter.

Still, she never ignored me.

Sometimes she’d send photos — not of herself, but of the view from her desk, or a poorly lit cup of ramen at 2 a.m. with the caption:

“Living the dream.”

Sometimes, I’d reply with a meme.

Sometimes, I’d ask:

“You eaten?”

Or:

“Don’t die. We need your slides.”

It was nothing.

But it also wasn’t.

In the office, she was careful — too careful. Kept everything professional. I respected that. But I hated it, too. Hated how her voice changed when someone passed by. How she avoided eye contact when we were around the team.

Like I was a risk she couldn’t afford.

I told myself I understood.

I told myself I didn’t mind.

But the truth? I noticed everything.

I noticed the way her fingers paused over her keyboard when I passed her desk. How she would smile when she read my messages but hide it behind her mug. How she laughed quieter when other people were around.

One night, after a long stretch of messages about childhood cartoons and breakfast preferences, I asked her:

“Why do you never let anyone in?”

She didn’t reply for two hours.

I almost took it back.

Then came her message:

“Because the last time I did, I never came out the same.”

I stared at those words longer than I should’ve.

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t the right person to ask that. Not when I had my own graveyard of ghosts.

So I sent the only thing I could:

“I get that.”

A few minutes passed.

“Do you?” she wrote.

I almost told her everything — about Selene, about how I had once walked into love without looking and never walked out of the wreckage. But I didn’t.

I just said:

“Yeah. I do.”

The next day, in the office, she brushed past my desk and dropped a chocolate bar beside my laptop without saying a word.

That small act nearly undid me.

Because that’s how it always was with her — never loud. Never big declarations. Just quiet things that meant too much.

Sometimes, I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. If she knew I wasn’t whole. If she could tell I was still trying to forgive myself for the one I lost.

But she never asked.

And I never told.

Because this — whatever it was — felt too fragile to define.

We were two people orbiting the same silence.

And maybe that silence was safer than anything else we could say out loud.

But still…

Still, I found myself staring at my phone every night, waiting for her to ask something silly or send a blurry photo of her dinner.

Still, I found myself watching the back of her head in meetings, wondering what it would feel like to run my fingers through her curls.

Still, I kept telling myself:

Don’t fall. Not again.

But she made it hard.

God, she made it hard.