Minutes, hours, maybe years.
It was the kind of silence that seeps into your bones, the kind that makes you wonder if you’ve stopped existing too. The night wrapped around me like a punishment, cold and sharp, and I sat there with my head in my hands, elbows digging into my knees, fingers pulling at my hair so hard it hurt.
I had thought—God, I had actually thought—she’d let me explain. That love would be enough. That if I just stood there, heart in my hands, she would take it, maybe shake her head at me, maybe punch me in the chest, but she would take it.
But the door stayed closed.
And when I finally dragged myself down the stairs, legs shaking like they were about to give out, something inside me cracked wide open.
---
The days blurred.
I don’t remember when I first started showing up at Brittany’s apartment every morning. I just remember being there. Standing outside her door, sometimes with coffee, sometimes with flowers, sometimes with nothing but my own desperate heart.
She never opened.
I’d knock, gently at first, then with more insistence, calling her name like a fool.
“Brittany, please… just five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
Nothing.
“Brittany. Please. Please, just—”
Still nothing.
Sometimes I’d sit on the stairs and wait, heart beating out its miserable rhythm, listening for the sound of her footsteps inside. Sometimes I heard Sylvia’s voice, calm and steady, murmuring to her on the other side of the door. Once, Sylvia opened the door and stepped outside, arms crossed, her eyes soft with pity but firm with boundaries.
“Ace, go home,” she said gently, closing the door behind her. “She’s not ready. Give her time.”
But time felt like poison.
Every day that passed was another thread slipping out of my hands, another chance falling into the void between us. And the worst part wasn’t the door in my face—it was seeing her.
God, it was seeing her.
At the grocery store. Walking down the street. Laughing with Sylvia on the sidewalk. Sitting at the café near the corner, sunlight catching the strands of her hair and making her look like something I didn’t deserve to touch.
And every time I saw her, she looked right through me.
Like I was air.
Like I was the ghost she had already buried.
I’d stand there, across the street or behind her in line, hands trembling at my sides, and she wouldn’t even blink in my direction. Sometimes my chest would tighten so fast, so hard, that I’d rub at it without thinking, fingers pressing into the ache as if I could dig the pain out of me.
It never worked.
---
I started spiraling.
Nights became endless. Sleep was something I used to do, back when my body belonged to me. Now it belonged to the ache, the hunger, the desperate wanting.
I stopped eating.
Stopped showering as often as I should have.
